North Dakota has the two biggest spenders in the U.S. House and Senate, according to an anti-tax group that grades members of Congress based on how they vote on taxing and spending.

The National Taxpayers Union analyzes every roll call vote that affects fiscal policy and scores congressional members on a scale of 0-100, based on their support for reducing spending and lowering taxes. The group says it analyzed 287 House votes and 269 Senate votes to come up with its scorecard. The higher the score, the more anti-tax-and-spend the lawmaker.

Based on the NTU's analysis of 2003 votes, Sen. Byron Dorgan and Rep. Earl Pomeroy received "Fs" and posted the lowest scores in their chambers. Dorgan scored 11 percent, and Pomeroy scored 16 percent.

The National Taxpayers Union called it a "curious twist" that "two North Dakotans bottomed out the rating for their respective chambers."

But spokesmen for Dorgan and Pomeroy said it's not curious at all that they were given failing grades because they consider the NTU a partisan, conservative, anti-Democrat group that targeted Dorgan and Pomeroy because they're up for re-election in November.

"This is a group that is widely known as a Republican front group," said Dorgan's spokesman, Barry Piatt. "The reason they exist is to run down Democrats and puff up Republicans. The way to get a big rating from this group is to support big tax cuts for only the wealthiest Americans and the biggest corporations and not to worry about how that might affect the deficit. Senator Dorgan doesn't support that, so it's not surprising that he wouldn't get much of a rating from this group."

The National Taxpayers Union claims 350,000 members and bills itself a "non-partisan citizen organization working for lower taxes, less wasteful spending and accountable government at all levels."

Piatt said the group's weighting system minimized a Dorgan amendment to cut $20 billion in funding to rebuild Iraq - which he said was one of the biggest cost-cutting measures proposed in the Senate.

Pomeroy's press secretary, Mac Schneider, said the NTU opposes spending that's important to North Dakota, including the Farm Bill.

"This group clearly doesn't have North Dakota's interest in mind and doesn't understand Earl Pomeroy's record," Schneider said. "Earl is a deficit hawk who does what's right for North Dakota every day and if this group had their way, there would be no Farm Bill and no rural hospitals."

But the National Taxpayers Union said it is not partisan. NTU spokesman Pete Sepp said prominent Democrat William Proxmire, author of "The Fleecing of America," once called the NTU's annual ratings "the fairest and most accurate representation" of lawmakers' fiscal policy habits. Sepp said the NTU analyzes more votes than any other group that does "ratings of any kind."

He said the NTU has been sharply critical of plenty of Republican proposals, particularly the president's Medicare prescription drug bill and increased funding for Mars and moon exploration. He noted that the average score in the House and Senate was below 50 percent.

"That's hardly a ringing endorsement for a Republican-controlled Congress," Sepp said.

In 1993, the group called Dorgan one of the most tight-fisted Democrats in Congress.

Annie Patnaude, NTU deputy press secretary, said her group is used to hearing such charges from congressmen who don't score well on their annual report card.

"The charge that it's partisan is really very unfair," she said. "Many Republicans didn't receive wonderful scores."

She said "yes" votes on the new Medicare prescription drug benefit were weighted "very heavily," but it takes much more than that to get as low a score as Dorgan and Pomeroy.

"To achieve such a low score he would've had to vote for a number of tax and spending bills," she said.

Dorgan's Republican opponent, Mandan attorney Mike Liffrig, said Dorgan's "F" is a perfect example of the reason he shouldn't represent North Dakota in Washington.

"(We're) a state that believes in balanced budgets and limited government, and he's a man who believes in spending every single piece of money that he can get his hands on," Liffrig said.

Liffrig said Dorgan scored among the bottom 30 senators on the last NTU report card, and he's only gotten worse.

"I don't really see any North Dakota left in this man," Liffrig said.

The campaign manager for Pomeroy's challenger, Republican Duane Sand, said Pomeroy didn't just get a low score, but the lowest out of 435 members of Congress. Matt Lewis said Sand has signed a pledge not to raise taxes and is a fiscal conservative who will cut spending.

"The contrast between Duane and Earl couldn't be more stark," he said. "This rating just underscores our point that Earl has gotten caught up in those Washington ways. You can see a trend that Earl has gotten more and more liberal over the years."

The group's 2003 ratings and a searchable database dating back to 1992 are available online at http://www.ntu.org.

(Reach Deena Winter at 250-8251 or deena.winter@bismarcktribune.com.)