Congressional Trends to Tax and Spend: Examining Fiscal Voting Across Time and Chamber

This paper examines congressional spending preferences over time by party and chamber. The data employed is the annual vote index compiled by the National Taxpayers Union for 1979-2002. NTU scores are presented with and without adjusting for interchamber and intertemporal movements of the policy space over which the scores are calculated. Results indicate that the parties and chambers are much more stable over time, and exhibit a slighter liberal trend, with adjustments for movements in the policy space. In addition, during fiscal milestones the adjusted scores indicate less pronounced changes in spending preferences than the unadjusted data do.