Foster: Party centrist or rubber stamp?

Republican Randy Hultgren's 14th Congressional District campaign is trying to paint incumbent Democratic Rep. Bill Foster as a rubber stamp for his party's agenda.

Yet Foster has billed himself as a one of the most centrist members of Congress since he took office.

Who is correct? The record could support either view, depending on one's perspective, the source and political leanings.

Foster did, indeed, vote with the Democratic majority 92.6 percent of the time during the current Congress, according to a Washington Post database of votes cited by the Hultgren campaign.

“Bill Foster's record of voting with Nancy Pelosi 92.6 percent of the time has been well documented," read a recent statement by the Winfield resident's campaign. “Bill Foster has regularly trumpeted his opposition to the Democrats' big-spending budgets while still voting for those hundreds of billions of dollars in wasteful government spending."

However, the Washington Post figure puts Foster at the low end of the “rubber stamp scale" for Illinois' 19 House members. Foster ranks 15th when it comes to voting with one's party.

That means he votes with his party more often than Democrat Melissa Bean or Republican Mark Kirk, but less than Democrat Jesse Jackson Jr. or Republican Peter Roskam.

Whether Foster supports “big spending" or “wasteful government spending," as the Hultgren campaign claims, may depend on your view of some of the major votes taken during the Batavia Democrat's tenure.

Foster voted for the federal stimulus program, “Cash for Clunkers," the “Teachers Jobs Bill" and President Barack Obama's health care reform. He voted against “cap and trade," increasing the national public debt limit, every national budget proposed by fellow Democrats and Congressional pay raises.

The special interest view of Foster's spending also depends on how conservative or liberal an organization leans.

The National Taxpayers Union and Citizens Against Government Waste both gave Foster low marks for support of their agendas in 2009. Meanwhile, Foster is strongly endorsed by several major labor unions.

At least one neutral viewpoint places Foster somewhere in the middle of all that.

In its annual rankings of House members' leanings, the National Journal says that in 2009, Foster voted more liberal than about 50.3 percent of Congress on economic, defense and foreign policy issues.

The score, according the Journal, makes Foster the 218th most liberal-leaning of Congress' 435 members on those issues, essentially placing him directly in the middle.