Beto O’Rourke’s spirited run for the US Senate in Texas last month has prompted powerful voices in the Democratic party establishment to tout the outgoing Texas congressman as a 2020 presidential candidate who, as the party’s standard-bearer, would offer a vision of America contrasting against that of Republicans.
However, a new analysis of congressional votes from the non-profit news organisation Capital & Main shows that even as O’Rourke represented one of the most solidly Democratic congressional districts in the United States, he has frequently voted against the majority of House Democrats in support of Republican bills and Trump administration priorities.
Capital & Main reviewed the 167 votes O’Rourke has cast in the House in opposition to the majority of his own party during his six-year tenure in Congress. Many of those votes were not progressive dissents alongside other left-leaning lawmakers, but instead votes to help pass Republican-sponsored legislation.
O’Rourke has voted for GOP bills that his fellow Democratic lawmakers said reinforced Republicans’ anti-tax ideology, chipped away at the Affordable Care Act (ACA), weakened Wall Street regulations, boosted the fossil fuel industry and bolstered Donald Trump’s immigration policy.
Consumer, environmental, public health and civil rights organizations have cast legislation backed by O’Rourke as aiding big banks, undermining the fight against climate change and supporting Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda. During the previous administration, Barack Obama’s White House issued statements slamming two GOP bills backed by the 46-year-old Democratic legislator.
O’Rourke’s votes for Republican legislation – which at times put him at odds with a majority of Texas Democratic lawmakers in Congress – underscore his membership in the New Democrat Coalition, the faction of House Democrats most closely aligned with business interests.
O’Rourke did not respond to questions from Capital & Main about his votes.
O’Rourke was one of a number of younger Democratic candidates who ran unexpectedly strong campaigns in traditionally Republican states in the 2018 midterm elections. His speeches, grassroots fundraising and rejection of corporate Pac money helped his campaign build a strong online following among activists who were hoping the election would result in a Democratic Senate majority.
In recent weeks, the possibility of an O’Rourke presidential candidacy has been boosted by former Obama aides and fundraisers, as well as by Third Way – a finance-industry funded thinktank that previously made headlines deriding the Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren. He has also been lauded by the former Hillary Clinton aide Neera Tanden of the Center for American Progress, a Democratic thinktank whose officials recently slammed Republican tax and immigration legislation that O’Rourke voted for. Much of the party elite’s support for an O’Rourke candidacy has not mentioned his policy record or agenda.
In the last two years, O’Rourke was among the top fifth of all lawmakers voting against his own party’s positions. FiveThirtyEight has calculated that in that same time period, O’Rourke has voted for the Trump administration position roughly 30% of the time. The website said that is above what analysts predict would come from a legislator representing a district as Democratic as O’Rourke’s. For comparison, O’Rourke’s congressional district votes more Democratic than than most districts in Massachusetts, according to the Cook Political Report.
Each vote reviewed below was one in which O’Rourke broke from the majority of legislators in his own party.
Consumer protection
Since its creation in 2010, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has been under relentless assault by Republicans, who have sought to help the financial industry limit its authority. At times, they have found an ally in O’Rourke.
In one instance, the Texas Democrat helped the GOP challenge the agency’s bulletin, which asserted its “authority to pursue auto lenders whose policies harm consumers through unlawful discrimination”.
Republicans in 2015 introduced legislation to repeal that directive. Civil rights groups such as the NAACP opposed the GOP measure and House Democrats said it was designed to halt “recent actions to root out discriminatory practices among auto lenders”. The Obama White House said it strongly opposed the Republican bill.
O’Rourke nonetheless officially co-sponsored the bill and voted for it. Echoing the GOP’s line of attack on the CFPB, the Democrat faulted the agency for a “lack of openness”, which he asserted had created “uncertainty, criticism of the CFPB’s conclusions, and has made loans more expensive to borrowers”. While O’Rourke later voted against using the Congressional Review Act to kill the CFPB’s regulation, the original bill he voted for set the stage for the GOP to repeal it under Trump.
Also in 2015, O’Rourke voted for a Republican bill that Democrats said would weaken lending disclosure protections for home mortgage borrowers. The Obama administration agreed, issuing a veto threat declaring that the GOP bill aimed to “unnecessarily delay implementation of important consumer protections designed to eradicate opaque lending practices that contribute to risky mortgages, hurt homeowners by removing the private right of action for violations, and undercut the nation’s financial stability”.
The bill passed with the support of O’Rourke, who said: “I believe it is a practical, short-term compromise that will provide long-term benefits to consumers in the United States.” He argued that the GOP legislation would allow regulators to “continue working with banks to ensure that they are ready to fully comply with the law” and “ensure that “consumers applying for home mortgages are given all the information they need”.
Fossil fuels and energy
During his Senate race, O’Rourke was lauded for his rhetoric about the threat of climate change. In Congress, he has questioned the safety of natural gas fracking, and he has high ratings from the League of Conservation Voters.
O’Rourke, however, has also cast key votes with Republicans to boost the fossil fuel industry whose carbon emissions are at the root of the climate crisis.
For instance, O’Rourke was one of only a handful of House Democrats who voted for Republican bills to lift the 40-year-old oil export ban.
During the legislative debate over lifting the ban, the Democrats’ committee report argued that “the extreme approach taken by this bill not only repeals current crude export restrictions, but also ensures that no export restrictions – for any reason – could be implemented or enforced in the future”. The Democratic report added that “the bill could have potentially vast consequences for consumers, the environment and climate change”.
O’Rourke twice voted to lift the ban.
At the same time, O’Rourke helped Republicans vote down Democratic legislation to prevent drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and he backed a separate GOP bill to speed up natural gas exports.
He also supported GOP legislation that Democrats said was constructed to protect the utility industry. Republicans said the measure was designed “to ensure reliable electricity service and reduce the risk of fires and fire hazards caused by inadequate vegetation management” in areas where power lines cross federal lands. Repeating charges made by Democrats in the bill’s committee report, the Arizona Democratic representative Raúl Grijalva said during the floor debate: “The bill waives liability for companies that start forest fires or cause other damage. This is nonsense and shifts an incredible burden and risk on to American taxpayers.”
O’Rourke was one of 69 Democrats to support the bill, which passed.
Immigration and criminal justice
In representing the border city of El Paso, O’Rourke has been an outspoken advocate for immigration reform. His Senate campaign website said he wants to “pass the Dream Act and ensure that undocumented immigrants who were brought here as children, known as Dreamers, find a permanent home and citizenship in the US.” It also declared that he wants to “end the militarization of our immigration enforcement system”. O’Rourke this month made headlines slamming the Trump administration’s immigration policy.
However, he was one of a group of Democrats who broke party ranks to support Republican legislation to waive requirements for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents and job applicants to take polygraph tests – a proposal that was part of the Trump administration’s plan to assemble a deportation force.
A 2012 Government Accountability Office report noted that CBP uses polygraph tests as part of employment background checks “to mitigate the risk of employee corruption and misconduct” and recommended the agency consider expanding the tests.
In April 2017, the Trump administration issued a memo pushing for authority to waive the polygraph tests in order to expedite the hiring of thousands of new CBP agents. Critics immediately raised red flags – the American Immigration Lawyers Association said it was a plan “to water down hiring standards”. Tom Jawetz, the Center for American Progress’s vice-president for immigration, told Univision that “many agents brought on beforehand who had not gone through a polygraph were cooperating with cartels and subject to corruption”. James Tomsheck, the CBP’s former head of internal affairs, called the idea of waivers “preposterous” in light of what the polygraph tests had been finding.
Two days after the Trump administration’s memo, Republicans led by the immigration hardliner Representative Martha McSally of Arizona introduced legislation to allow the polygraph tests to be waived. Democrats adamantly objected.
The New Mexico Democratic representative Michelle Lujan Grisham, chairwoman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said: “Eliminating the critical polygraph requirements for certain CBP applicants only undermines our nation’s safety, given this agency’s historic connection to organized crime, drug cartels and corruption.” She asserted that “no other federal law enforcement agency in the country – not the FBI, DEA, ATF or Secret Service – makes any exceptions to their polygraph exam”.
The Democratic congressman Luis Gutierrez, declared that: “Anyone who votes for this bill is voting to support and implement Donald Trump’s views on immigration, his desire to militarize our southern border, and his fantasy of a mass deportation force.”
O’Rourke opted to join Republicans in voting for the bill, which passed. He said the measure was necessary to “help speed up the hiring process and provide the CBP commissioner additional authorities to recruit and hire quality CBP officers and border patrol agents”.
During the same two-month stretch, O’Rourke also broke ranks from his party in supporting GOP legislation that, according to GovTrack, would “add the killing or attempted killing [of] a law enforcement officer to the list of aggravating factors in federal death penalty cases”.
The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights said the bill was “an unnecessary and misguided attempt to politicize the unfortunate deaths of law enforcement officers and could ultimately exacerbate existing tension between law enforcement and the communities they serve, especially African Americans”.
The Democratic representative Jerry Nadler of New York argued that it would change the fundamental threshold for capital punishment by “impos[ing] a death penalty for attempted murder”.
O’Rourke was one of 48 Democrats to join Republicans in supporting the legislation, which passed.
Regulating Wall Street
O’Rourke has a somewhat mixed record on financial issues, according to the watchdog group Americans for Financial Reform (AFR). At times he has voted with Democrats to protect existing regulations. Still, he has also frequently aided the GOP in some of its efforts to deregulate Wall Street.
For instance, in 2014 and 2018 O’Rourke cast votes for GOP bills that included provisions weakening the so-called Volcker Rule, which aims to prevent financial firms from using depositors’ savings for their own speculative trading.
In 2017 and 2018, O’Rourke also voted for:
GOP legislation that Democrats said would empower financial institutions to shield themselves from bank examiners.
A package of Republican bills that Democrats said would reduce independent audits of corporations, deregulate stock exchanges and high-frequency trading.
A Republican bill to permit larger number of bank holding companies to take on more debt.
And a Republican bill that Democrats said would “eliminate meaningful, clear disclosures to consumers about their privacy rights, including their ability to opt-out from having their information sold to unaffiliated third party companies”.
Healthcare
O’Rourke has been a supporter of improving Obamacare, expanding Medicaid and adding a public option to compete with private insurance. At times, though, he broke with the majority of House Democrats to help Republicans try to chip away at the healthcare law, and in one instance, he backed a GOP bill Democrats said was designed to prop up the Trump administration’s attempts to replace Obamacare.
The ACA established the independent payment advisory board to recommend ways to reduce Medicare spending. According to the non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the language creating the board prohibited it from proposing rationing, reduced benefits, higher premiums or restricted eligibility.
Despite those safeguards, Republicans led by the former vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin soon pointed to the board as proof that Democrats were aiming to create “death panels”. As that mythology spread throughout conservative media, Republicans in 2015 and 2017 brought up legislation to stoke those fears and eliminate the board. O’Rourke defied his party and twice voted with Republicans to kill the board. He also officially co-sponsored both measures.
Additionally, when Republicans were pushing to replace the ACA with Trump’s American Health Care Act (AHCA), O’Rourke voted for Republican legislation to provide special tax credits for Cobra benefits – an initiative that the Democratic representative Richard Neal of Massachusetts said was “simply a backdoor way for states to discriminate against existing conditions”.
Taxes
In 2017, O’Rourke joined his party in voting against Trump’s tax cut package. His Senate campaign website cited deficit concerns about those tax cuts’ cost.
But that was not the end of the story. Within months, Republicans began pressing a new package of tax cuts that Democratic groups such as the Center for American Progress deemed the “tax scam 2”. One piece of that package was a proposal that a critical Los Angeles Times editorial said “would carve out a new tax shelter for start-up businesses”. The Center for American Progress singled out those provisions as one of the objectionable aspects of the tax package.
As Democrats sought to present a unified front against the new GOP tax cuts, O’Rourke broke ranks with House Democrats – and most of the Texas Democratic delegation – to vote for the GOP legislation. He supported the initiative, even though the Congressional Budget Office warned that the bill would expand the deficit.
This story was reported by David Sirota of Capital & Main.