The Washington Post crunched the numbers on the votes of the 114th Congress so far and came up with a list of the ten most bipartisan lawmakers of each party in each chamber.
Sen. Michael Bennet ranks fifth among the most bipartisan Democratic senators and is the only member of the purple state’s delegation to make the cut. His equivalent on the right is Kentucky senator and presidential candidate Rand Paul.
WashPo got the numbers by tallying how many times lawmakers voted against the majority position of their parties.
This month Bennet was one of only nine Democrats to vote in favor of spending nearly $400 million more on the Army’s Stryker Vehicle Program (high-tech tanks). Some of that money will flow to the Fort Carson Army Base, where there is a Stryker combat team.
Bennet bucked his party again, along with five other Dems, when he voted to limit debate on a cyber-security measure that will encourage the government to share cyber threat information with private businesses.
Yet the senator’s most famous bipartisan votes are also his most controversial in Colorado. Back in January, Bennet voted in favor of building the Keystone pipeline, along with just eight other Senate Dems. When President Obama vetoed the bill, Bennet voted again in March to override it. That position brought protestors to Bennet’s 2016 re-election campaign kickoff.
Image by Bernard Pollack.
This is why guys like this are NOT democrats but something other. He’s no friend of mine.
“Bipartisan”–is a euphemism for selling out his constituents. Too bad he isn’t honest enough to switch parties so that we can elect a real Democrat. It’s a dubious distinction for a Democrat to be ranked alongside Rand Paul, who opposes civil rights, wants more tax cuts for billionaires and corporations, voted for deregulation that ruined the economy in 2008 and is devastating the environment, wants to eliminate women’s right to choose, and to completely cut Medicare and Social Security.