The legislative voting record shows otherwise
AUGUSTA, Oct. 17 — In the televised 2nd Congressional District last night, state Rep. Jared Golden was criticized by incumbent Congressman Bruce Poliquin for his NFIB zero-percent small-business voting record in the state legislature. Rep. Golden insisted that was not accurate, and that he had supported small businesses with his votes. He also criticized NFIB as a partisan association. NFIB strongly disagrees with Golden on both his voting history and his characterization of NFIB as partisan.
NFIB represents about 300,000 small business members across the country, with thousands of members in Maine. We are a 75-year old nonpartisan organization with offices in every state capitol and Washington, D.C. To arrive at our stance on the issues, we ballot our members. Then NFIB tracks key votes of importance to small businesses during the legislative sessions based on those balloted issues and presents the results in our Voting Record.
To clarify the record, in NFIB’s Maine legislative Voting Record, Rep. Poliquin was correct that Rep. Jared Golden did have a zero-percent voting record during the 2015-2016 session. Rep. Golden’s most recent voting record during the 2017-2018 session was not much better at 17-percent. To put it in a broader perspective, the Maine Economic Research Institute, which also tracks votes and is affiliated with the Maine State Chamber of Commerce, also ranked Rep. Golden in the 20-percentile range in their last two voting records.
While Rep. Golden did vote with every member of the state legislature to conform the state tax code with the new federal tax law last month, as he stated in the debate, that bill did not include the federal deduction for smaller pass-through companies. He has also publicly embraced Question 1 on the November ballot which will provide free homecare to seniors despite their income levels, which will raise taxes by $310 million a year and significantly affect thousands of families and small businesses in Maine. NFIB members stand in strong opposition to Question 1.
