Last year witnessed the ascendance of the Tea Party movement in response to a public disgust with irresponsible federal spending, surging deficits, and anticipated future tax increases. In the shadow of residual (yet unjustified) suspicion of private sector culpability in the financial crisis of 2008-2009, most of this backlash focused not on the regulatory functions of government but on the welfare state and an endless liberal appetite for wealth redistribution entitlements.

The Just Economic Distributions (JED) ratings are the perfect metric for this populist sentiment. They measure the degree to which members of Congress respect the property of those who earned it and look with suspicion on handouts, means-testing, and class distinctions. The ratings are cannon-fodder for those who would tar lawmakers who routinely favor big-government solutions and large welfarist entitlement programs.

It is certain that legislators who favored or continue to favor welfare state policies will be embattled in the 2010 Congressional elections like never before. The following are the JED ratings for the last three years for senators who have not announced retirement and are up for re-election this year (best to worst):

Note that the deviation between the score of the latest year (2009) and the average of the last three years (2007-2009) for most of these senators is positive. This could indicate that those senators who know they are up for re-election in the 2010 cycle have decided to scale back their redistributionist tendencies.

In the Senate, top JED honors for 2009 go to Tom Coburn (OK), James Inhofe (OK), and Jim DeMint (SC), who all scored a perfect 100. Coburn and DeMint also got perfect scores in 2007, and Inhofe did in 2008. Socialist Party senator Bernie Sanders (VT) inhabits the other extreme, as he was the only senator in 2009 to receive a score of 0.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (NV) scored 25. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY) scored 77. The Republican/Democratic Party split continues to be highly predictive of distributive justice concerns, as the highest-scoring Senate Democrat, party cross-over Arlen Specter (PA) had the same score (61) as the lowest-scoring Senate Republican, Olympia Snowe (ME).

In the House, Reps. Paul Broun (GA-10), Jeff Flake (AZ-6), and John Shadegg (AZ-3) garnered perfect scores for their performance. On the other extreme, twenty-four Democrats shared the dishonor of having a zero score, voting for economic injustice on all 26 measured votes.

Among the House leadership, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (CA-8) scored a 9, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (MD-5) scored 17, and Minority Leader John Boehner (OH-8) scored 84. Rep. Parker Griffith (AL-5), who recently switched to the Republican Party on Dec. 22 (afer all the votes that make up the JED score), would have been the highest-scoring Democrat with a 62; now that distinction will be shared by Reps. Bobby Bright (AL-2) and Walter Minnick (ID-1), both of whom scored 61. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-18) again scored the lowest among House Republicans (with 58), repeating a feat from 2008.

This year’s criteria for the Senate included twenty-two roll call votes, distributed as follows: six votes on taxes, four on health care (including Obamacare #22), three on consumer choice, two on labor issues, two on housing, two on energy/transportation issues, two on macroeconomic stimulus, and one on the federal budget. The criteria for the House ratings used twenty-six roll call votes, including: nine on labor, unemployment, and compensation issues, four on health care (including Obamacare #24), three on housing, three on the federal budget, two on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), and one each on macroeconomic stimulus, energy, taxes, small business, and the U.S. census.

The complete 2009 JED results are available at www.tonyquain.com/ratings.php. The scores are intended to reflect the percentage of legislators in the members’ respective chambers who are more likely than the scored member to vote for policies that tax success and subsidize failure. The JED ratings introduction page referenced above outlines the JED rating system.