Suppose your congressman introduces an amendment to fund grants to charter schools and it fails by a few votes. Then he attaches the amendment as a rider to another bill that later fails. Finally, he gets the money authorized in a stand alone bill and then gets an appropriation to fund the grant through the appropriation process. NTU will count that spending against your congressman at least five times and probably closer to ten times. But if your congressman had a committee chairmanship and could slip authorizations into his chairman’s mark every time he wanted something, it would only count once or twice.

Now suppose you have a slavishly obedient Republican clone like Chris Cannon who has never had a thought for the unique needs of his district or innovative policy. He’ll vote again and again for closing various programs in Republican alternatives to major bills. When Republicans had control, they never really tried to cut spending but they’ll put on a good show when they know it can’t pass. Cannon gets credit for cutting spending with those entirely insincere votes.

These biases are built in to the NTU method. They even count against Bishop, who is no giant of independence himself, just because he votes his own way sometimes and not with the leadership.

Meanwhile Matheson is the only Utah congressman who works to cut spending with the Blue Dog Budget. He co-chairs the Blue Dog caucus which keeps both parties more honest about spending and taxes and they kneecap him for repeatedly proposing responsible compromises that show more spending restraint than either party’s leadership.

I wouldn’t count those NTU numbers worth the electrons they’re printed on.