Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mi.) holds court at the 2013 International Students for Liberty conference.
Videos By Rare
Last Thursday night, Reps. Justin Amash (R-Mi.) and Steve Womack (R-Ark.) each cast their 2,500th vote in a row, which is the longest current voting streak in the House of Representatives.
This Tuesday, Amash posted the National Journal article on his Facebook page that reported the milestone. He wrote: “I’m honored to set an example as a congressman who votes every time and explains every vote.”
National Journal’s Emma Roller noted that the average representative misses 2.4 percent of votes over their time in office.
Rare has discovered that two congressman in particular vote like average representatives: Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Mi.) and Devin Nunes (R-Ca.), two of Amash’s biggest critics. Both have gone out of their way to ensure that Amash loses his office, even resorting to demagoguery and outright falsity.
Politifact confirms Republican establishment completely wrong about Justin Amash
Rogers told Politico a month back that “[Amash is] Al Qaeda’s best friend in the Congress” because of his anti-NSA stance, while Nunes claimed in the same article that Amash “votes more with the Democrats than with the Republicans.”
Politifact investigated the latter claim thoroughly, finding it to be a distortion of reality:
On some issues, though, Amash has joined forces with Democrats. His high-profile fight to curb NSA funding for metadata collection — which put Amash on the map with civil libertarians — enlisted a coalition of Republicans and Democrats weary of the military-industrial complex.
The vote on his measure narrowly failed, with 111 Democrats supporting it — despite strong objections from President Barack Obama — alongside 94 Republicans.
Yes, Amash votes more with Democrats than Republicans — on NSA bills. As of July of last year, however, Nancy Pelosi’s profile page showed that Amash votes less often with Nancy Pelosi than any member of Congress.
The two were on the same side of just 22 percent of votes.
Which House Republican votes least often with Nancy Pelosi? (Source: http://t.co/YRq4DKCIak) pic.twitter.com/dmk73Cgsmt
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) July 8, 2013
In addition, Politifact found that Amash’s profile on OpenGovernment.org shows that he has “voted with his party 82 percent of the time since January 2013″ and has “never voted with his party less than 85 percent of the time in a given year.”
Yet, Nunes maintained that Amash is not a “serious member of Congress” and accused him of “playing games, and trying to be on the opposite side of Republicans.”
Someone who votes every time must be a joker after all.
Now for Rogers, Nunes and Amash’s voting records — screenshotted from govtrack.us for your enjoyment.
Rep. Mike Rogers
Rep. Devin Nunes
Rogers is hovering right in the middle of the pack when it comes to missed votes, while Nunes is even worse. Notice the lack of peaks, valleys — anything — in the graph below.
Rep. Justin Amash
Given this data, the one thing you can’t say is that Amash isn’t a “serious member of Congress” and yet it’s been said.
One can only wonder: What do we call Rogers and Nunes?