Making Government Transparent and Accountable
The Sunlight Foundation uses cutting-edge technology and ideas to make government transparent and accountable. Underlying all of our efforts is a fundamental belief that increased transparency will improve the public's confidence in government
The Sunlight Foundation Blog
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Health Care Word Soup: Luntz Memo
Back in May, in anticipation of the coming health care debate, Republican pollster, strategist and word smith Frank Luntz penned a memo (PDF) detailing key words and language to use to oppose the Democrats health care reform efforts. The memo stressed words like “rationing,” “doctor-patient,” “government takeover” and “bureaucrats.” After putting these words through the Capitol Words search engine, it’s pretty clear that Republicans are listening to Luntz’ advice.Over the past month, as the health care debate has really gotten off the ground, the use of these words in the Congressional Record has skyrocketed. See the numbers below:
“Rationing” goes from 18 uses in May to 90 uses in June. This marks the highest level of use for the word “rationing” in the Capitol Words database.
“Doctor-patient” goes from 6 uses in May to 20 in June. This marks the highest level of use for the word “doctor-patient” in the Capitol Words database.
“Takeover” goes from 13 uses in May to 106 in June. This marks the highest level of use for the word “takeover” in the Capitol Words database.
“Bureaucrats” goes from 53 uses in May to 78 uses in June. This marks the highest level of use for the word “bureaucrats” in the Capitol Words database.
All of these four terms are at their respective highest use points from 2001-2009. It can’t be a coincidence that these words rise after the release of the Luntz memo. And if you look at the partisan breakdown of word use in the Congressional Record you’ll find that these words are used almost exclusively by Republicans.
The word “rationing” is exemplary of this partisan split. The only Democrats to use the word are Sens. Dick Durbin and Patty Murray. However, Durbin uses the word in a speech denouncing the Luntz memo and Murray uses it in denouncing the use of the word. All other uses come from a variety of Republicans in both the House and the Senate.
“Doctor-patient” has a similar split with only three Democrats using the word. All other uses come from Republicans, largley from the Senate and more specifically the Senate Republican leadership.
The use of “takeover” is equally split along partisan lines. The Democrats using the word, Sens. Sherrod Brown, Byron Dorgan, and Murray, all use the word to criticize the use of it by Republicans with Sen. Murray explicitly criticizing the Luntz memo. The preponderance of use for “takeover,” like the other words, comes from Republicans.
“Bureaucrats” falls along the same lines as the other three words. Democrats using the word, which is rare, use it to do one of two things: attack the use of it (Sen. Jeff Merkley directly attacks the Luntz memo) or use it in reference to bureaucrats in the health insurance industry. Republicans dominate this word, as they do the other three Luntz memo words.
In some cases, all of these words come together in one sentence, highlighting the strategy recommended by Luntz in his memo. These are two of the best examples (with my own highlighting):
Rep. Virginia Foxx: “While Democrats support raising taxes and rationing care, Republicans support health care reform that controls spending and that ensures patients and doctors make health care decisions, not a bunch of bureaucrats in Washington.”
Rep. John Boehner: “The forthcoming plan from Democratic leaders will make health care more expensive, limit treatments, ration care, and put bureaucrats in charge of medical decisions rather than patients and doctors. That amounts to a government takeover of health care, and it will hurt, rather than help, middle-class families across our country.”
Winning the battle over health care reform requires framing the debate by using key words to influence public opinion. Luntz’ memo provides a view into how Republicans believe they can succeed at opposing reform efforts. Capitol Words helps us see the influence of that memo on the actual language of Republicans.
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Capitol Words: Pelosi v. Boehner
An analysis using Capitol Words comparing the words spoken by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Republican Minority Leader John Boehner in 2008 shows that the two issues receiving the most discussion by both parties in the 110th Congress were the debate over climate change legislation and off-shore drilling and the debate over the collapse of the financial sector and the ensuing recession.
Of the top fifty words spoken by both party leaders, there is overlap for only eighteen words. These eighteen words include five of the top thirty words spoken during the entire 110th Congress: Energy, Security, Country, Tax, and Oil. All of these words featured prominently in the debate over energy legislation during the summer months in 2008. Other words that overlapped include Economy, Budget, Jobs, Million and Billion, all words spoken during the September-October debate over the federal bailout of the financial services industry.
Also important are the many words that do not overlap. These show the Speaker’s support for the Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and the preview of congressional Republicans 2009 complaints about deficits and spending. The natural oppositional nature of being in the minority is also evident in the kinds of words used by Leader Boehner.
Speaker Pelosi used many words that imitated the language of Barack Obama: Future, Hope, and Leadership. These were staples of the Democratic presidential candidate’s campaign. Leader Boehner was, at the same time, showing the combative nature of being in the minority, particularly during a difficult election year. Boehner’s words included Democrat, Washington, and Ethics. These are clearly words used to attack the majority. Speaker Pelosi did not use the word Republican in her top fifty words.
The Republican Leader was also focused on traditional Republican policies of low spending with the words Spending, Prices, Cost and Growth. This definitely previewed the lines of argument coming from the minority in the current Congress.
One other interesting tidbit is the use of words that seem to stress similar ideas but from different angles. For example, Speaker Pelosi uses the word Opportunity while Leader Boehner uses the word Unemployment.
These infographics were created by Kerry Mitchell using data from the CapitolWords.org API and were visualized in Nodebox http://nodebox.net using the “graph” library.
Tell me what you see here in the comments.
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Earmark My Words
What do top earmarkers talk about in Congress? Does our money go where their mouths are?
In the case of the top ten earmarkers for FY 2008, the top words they used from 2007-2008 (110th Congress) do often align with their duties in either the Appropriations Committee or in bringing home the bacon to their home state. Six of the top ten use appropriations-related language in their top words and three use their state’s name in their top words.
The top ten earmarkers for FY 2008 were, in descending order with top word in parentheses, Rep. John Murtha (Billion), Rep. Jerry Lewis (Appropriations), Rep. C.W. “Bill” Young (Defense), Rep. Pete Visclosky (Indiana), Rep. David Obey (Billion), Rep. Norm Dicks (Million), Rep. Marcy Kaptur (Trade), Rep. Harold Rogers (Kentucky), Rep. Ike Skelton (Military), Rep. Chet Edwards (Veterans). Only one of these lawmakers (Rep. Skelton) is not on the House Appropriations Committee.
Three of these lawmakers — Reps. Lewis, Murtha and Visclosky — are either under federal investigation or have been mentioned in connection to an investigation in relation to their earmarking practices.
Check out the following word cloud visualization to see what these earmarking lawmakers are talking about. Below the visualization is a list of the Appropriations committee assignment for the nine lawmakers on the committee.
Appropriations Committee Assignments Rep. John Murtha Chairman, Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Rep. Jerry Lewis Ranking Member, House Appropriations Committee Rep. C.W. “Bill” Young Ranking Member, Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Rep. Pete Visclosky Chairman, Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee (currently surrendered position); Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Rep. David Obey Chairman, House Appropriations Committee; Chairman, Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee Rep. Norm Dicks Chairman, Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee; Defense Appropriations Subcommittee; Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee Rep. Marcy Kaptur Defense Appropriations Subcommittee; Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee; Transportation, HUD Appropriations Subcommittee Rep. Harold Rogers Ranking Member, Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee; Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Rep. Ike Skelton Not on Appropriations Committee Rep. Chet Edwards Chairman, Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee; Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Subcommittee Note: Earmark data comes via Taxpayer.net. Word data comes from CapitolWords.org. Only House lawmakers were used due to less than stellar earmark disclosure by the Senate. And thanks again to Kerry Mitchell for the visuals.
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Capitol Words: Socialism
What’s that word, you know, from the 1980s, that you’ve been hearing congressmen say all the time? It refers to some ideological position… Anarcho-syndicalism? Antidisestablishmentarianism? Suburban postmoderism? Oh wait, socialism! That’s right, socialism, the word, is back in use on the floor of Congress. Let’s take a spin through the Congressional Record — via Capitol Words and THOMAS — to see how the use of the word socialism has changed in Congress over time.
Currently, the word socialism is finding use as a way to deride any piece of the agenda of the majority Democrats. Health care reform. Socialism! Energy reform. Socialism! Bailouts. Socialism! Democrats. Democrat Socialists! Whether you agree with this assessment of these policies, it is clear that this has become the standard line of attack for opponents of President Obama when vituperative attacks are pursued.
While Capitol Words can take us back to 2001, the real interesting information comes if we look even further back. One measure of use that can be judged only through THOMAS, the Library of Congress’ congressional research engine, is the number of pages that the word shows up on, rather than the number for actual word use. Currently, for the 111th Congress (2009-2010), there are 80 pages where the word socialism is used. The chart to the left shows how many pages contain the word socialism for the past eleven Congresses.
Congressional Record Pages Referencing Socialism 111th Congress 80 (so far) 110th Congress 66 109th Congress 41 108th Congress 47 107th Congress 53 106th Congress 67 105th Congress 69 104th Congress 96 103rd Congress 117 102nd Congress 190 101st Congress 181 What emerges when looking at the use of the word over these years is the changing nature of its use. Back in 1989 to 1992, the use of socialism as a word almost exclusively refers to socialist, or communist, regimes or movements. The U.S.S.R., Cuba, China, denunciations of socialism in South Africa and Latin America, and so on. The period in question, 1989-1992, is when socialism and communism collapsed across the globe with Glasnost, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the Velvet Revolution.
The ensuing, post-communist period provides a very different use of the word socialism in Congress. While this use showed up every now and again, it became a prominent feature for two important years. The years 1993-1994 were the first two years of President Clinton’s term. Clinton was the first Democrat in office in 12 years and his opponents took quick aim at his policies, a new budget and a health care plan, as socialism. While the number of pages that the word appears on in this period is down sharply from the period where communism existed, it is still over 100 pages. In 1994, Republicans swept Congress, taking the House and Senate from the Democrats.
In the years following, after two more years of relatively heavy use of the word socialism (96 pages from 1995-1996), the word use petered out and became less about the socialism of the Democratic Party and more about Cuba, Venezuala, and other socialist movements in Africa or Latin America.
But now, much like in the first two years of Clinton’s presidency, socialism is a hot word slipping off the lips of congressmen at an unprecedented pace. (Not sure about the early 20th century and late 19th century Congresses when there were actually real socialists here in the States with increasing political power.) Clearly, the use of the word socialism is both a political tactic to increase fears about the platform and policies of an opponent and the real view of those policies among certain segments of the population. The increasing use, and type of use, of the word shows that the word socialism tracks domestic political developments regarding power shifts between the two parties.
