Clinton, Edwards and Obama's Senate Votes Compared

Congressional Quarterly:

All three of these current or former officeholders are generally in agreement on fiscal and social policy. They all side far more often with the positions of labor unions than those of business federations. And all have expressed some misgivings about the Bush administration’s handling of foreign policy and especially its current strategy in Iraq.

So, then, where do these three Democrats — who polls show at the top of their party’s likely or possible ranks of president ial hopefuls — actually disagree?

The following analysis will first compare the four-year overlap of Clinton, who was first elected to the Senate in 2000, and Edwards, who was elected in 1998 but chose not to seek re-election in 2004 in lieu of an unsuccessful bid for that year’s presidential nomination (which nonetheless resulted in his nomination for vice president on the ticket with the party’s presidential standard-bearer, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry).

The story will then present a two-year voting comparison of Obama, who was elected to the Senate in 2004, and Clinton, who was elected to a second term last November.

Edwards and Obama did not serve together, so their voting records cannot be directly compared.

Clinton and Edwards: 91 Percent Synchronicity

See the Vote Comparison Chart

According to the CQPolitics.com analysis, Clinton and Edwards agreed on 899 of 992 votes — or 90.6 percent of the time — on which they both cast an up-or-down vote from 2001 through 2004.

• National security: Both Clinton and Edwards supported the 2002 resolution that authorized the Bush administration to wage war in Iraq. In October 2003, Clinton supported an $87 billion supplemental aid package to finance military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan that was backed by 87 senators; Edwards, though, opposed the measure, arguing that it represented a blank check for President Bush to conduct those conflicts with minimal congressional input.

Edwards stepped up his criticism of the Iraq war during his 2004 campaign as a national candidate, and now calls his 2002 vote for the war resolution a mistake. Clinton has declined to follow suit about the war vote — annoying some liberal activists in the party — but has been increasingly critical of the administration’s handling of the war.

• Energy: Clinton and Edwards were on opposite sides on a number of energy-related votes, including mandates for greater use of ethanol, a corn-based fuel that has gained favor as a domestically produced and renewable resource. In June 2003, as the Senate was debating energy policy, Clinton supported and Edwards opposed a pair of amendments to weaken ethanol mandates.

The issue is certain to be revisited in Iowa, site of next January’s first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses and a major producer of both corn and ethanol.

• Trade and labor issues: In July 2003, Clinton voted for a pair of bills to implement trade agreements to reduce tariffs and trade barriers with Singapore and Chile. Both pacts were opposed by Edwards, who has voiced his concerns about the impact of trade agreements on his state’s struggling textile and other manufacturing industries.

Clinton’s general support for the positions of organized labor, leavened by her endorsement of some trade pacts opposed by unions, is reminiscent of her husband, former President Bill Clinton. He angered organized labor with his administration’s support for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico. But the president lined up with labor on nearly every other issue, and he also vetoed numerous Republican-designed bills that labor interests opposed.

Sen. Clinton sided with the AFL-CIO’s preferred position on 61 of 66 key votes from 2001 through 2005, for an overall rating of 92 percent.

Edwards, who has been courting organized labor support for his 2008 bid, sided even more overwhelmingly with that crucial Democratic Party constituency: He backed the AFL-CIO’s position on 60 of 62 scored votes, or 97 percent of the time, from 1999 through 2004.

Edwards’ only breaks with the AFL-CIO came in 2000, when he voted to grant permanent normal trade relations with China and also for legislation to expand the temporary visa program for highly skilled foreign workers.

• Taxes: While Clinton and Edwards have generally agreed on fiscal policy, they did disagree in March 2003 on an amendment to a fiscal 2004 budget resolution that would have reduced tax cuts outlined in the document to $350 billion and devote more money to deficit reduction. Clinton voted “no,” one of 12 Democrats — some motivated by opposition to any tax cuts proposed by Bush — who sided with nearly every Senate Republican; and Edwards joined most Senate Democrats in voting “aye.”

• Bush nominations: Clinton has been somewhat less deferential than Edwards to the Bush administration on nominations that require Senate confirmation. On five occasions, Clinton opposed and Edwards supported a Bush administration nominee.

Clinton was the only senator who opposed Bush’s 2001 nominations of Michael Chertoff and Viet Dinh to be assistant attorneys general. Much was made at the time of a personal angle to those votes: Chertoff was chief counsel and Dinh was an associate counsel for a Senate committee that, during the Clintons’ years in the White House, investigated their roles in financial dealings in the so-called “Whitewater” scandal.

Clinton, though, dropped her opposition to Chertoff in February 2005, when she voted to confirm his nomination to his current post as secretary of Homeland Security.

• Campaign finance: Early in 2001, Clinton and Edwards were on opposite sides of a series of votes on a proposed overhaul of campaign finance laws. Clinton backed and Edwards opposed an amendment, sponsored by Kerry, to allow for partial public financing for Senate candidates who abide by voluntary spending limits.

Clinton and Obama: Even More Aligned

In 2005 and 2006, Clinton and Obama sided on 576 of 618 votes — or 93.2 percent of the time.

See the Vote Comparison Chart

Their first major point of disagreement came in February 2005, Obama’s second month in the Senate. On that occasion, he joined a minority of Democrats who voted for a Republican-sponsored bill to overhaul laws governing class-action litigations. The measure was opposed by trial lawyers, who are a major base of contributors to the Democratic Party.

• Energy: In July 2005, Obama backed and Clinton opposed a Bush admininistration overhaul of energy laws.

Again, ethanol was a linchpin issue. As a first-year senator from a major corn-producing state, Obama praised the bill’s inclusion of a mandate that refiners use 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol. The legislation also included tax credits for construction of stations that would provide a mix of gasoline and ethanol.

Neither Obama nor Clinton found their vote easy, though. Obama said he backed the overall bill only “reluctantly” because the Senate should have done “something bolder that would have put us on the path to energy independence.”

Clinton said the legislation included some worthy provisions, including expanded use of wind production tax credits and clean coal technology. But she stated that the legislation overall “doesn’t address the most pressing and important energy challenges that we face.”

Last August, Clinton supported and Obama opposed legislation to authorize oil drilling in about 8.3 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico.

Clinton said at the time that she supported the bill because it is important to expand domestic oil and gas production. But she qualified her support by saying that the nation also needed to increase energy efficiency and expand production of renewable energy.

Obama said that the bill “continues to lull the American people into thinking that we can drill our way out of our energy problems.”

• Ethics: Obama has been a high-profile advocate of overhauling ethics and lobbying laws, and he is a supporter of establishing an independent Office of Public Integrity with broad investigative powers. Obama in March 2006 voted to include such an office in a lobbying overhaul bill, but Clinton joined most senators in opposing the amendment.

Obama then voted against the underlying bill, which passed 90-8 with Clinton’s support. Obama said that the legislation failed to curb lobbyist excesses, in part because it did not include an independent enforcement mechanism.

• Taxes: In November 2005, Clinton supported a bill to extend a series of tax cuts, including the college tuition deduction and the state and local sales tax deduction in states without income taxes. Obama joined most Democrats in opposing the measure.

On the same legislation, Obama also effectively supported and Clinton opposed an amendment that would allow senators who are physicians to continue their medical practices while they serve in the Senate, provided they do not operate at a profit. The amendment was defeated.

• Bush nominations: Clinton effectively voted against several Bush administration nominees that Obama backed. Last May, Obama voted to invoke cloture — or cut off debate — on the nominations of Brett Kavanaugh for a federal judgeship and Dirk Kempthorne, a former Idaho senator then serving as governor of that state, for Interior secretary.