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How does your U.S. representative vote in Congress? How about your senators? Most people don’t know, though they may mistakenly think they do based on the rhetoric they hear from their elected representatives. Yet there is typically a huge gap between our lawmakers’ rhetoric when they are on the campaign trail and how they actually vote when they are in Washington. In this episode of Beyond the Cover, host Gary Benoit interviews Peter Rykowski, research associate for The John Birch Society, about The New American magazine’s Freedom Index, a congressional scorecard that rates all members of the House and Senate based on their adherence to the U.S. Constitution. Both Peter and Gary are part of the team that puts together the Freedom Index, which appears twice a year in TNA’s print magazine, most recently in our January 30, 2023 issue. In the ensuing discussion, Peter explains the importance of knowing not only how our lawmakers vote but also how their voting records match up to their oath of office to uphold the Constitution. In fact, Peter points out, every vote description in the Freedom Index is a mini-lesson on a constitutional principle, since every vote description explains why the index rates the vote as it does. And in addition to the Freedom Index, Peter also describes two related tools that may be downloaded, for free, online: congressional scorecards that profile the record of a single member of the House or Senate on a single sheet of people, and state legislative scorecards that profile the record of a single state representative or senator. Peter urges the use of these scorecards to better inform fellow citizens in the freedom movement.
To subscribe to The New American, click here.
To see the online version of the Freedom Index, click here.
