WASHINGTON » U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka speaks at a college sophomore level, according to an analysis of his speeches by the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington group that pushes for government transparency.
The analysis ranks Akaka in the top five among members of Congress for his use of longer sentences and more complex words.
U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye isn’t far behind. His speeches are on the level of a college freshman. U.S. Rep. Mazie Hirono speaks at the level of a high school senior, while U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa’s speeches are at the high school freshman level, according to the study.
U.S. Rep. Mick Mulvaney, who talks at just below an eighth-grade level, lower than his 534 congressional peers, laughs at the study.
Mulvaney, a freshman Republican from South Carolina, said, "I try to write and speak in a conversational style. I have people thank me every week for at least making an effort to explain complex things in a comprehensible fashion."
The study took lawmakers’ floor speeches since 1996, as published in the Congressional Record, and ran them through the Flesch-Kincaid test, which links longer sentences and more complex words with higher grade levels.
The Sunlight Foundation ran some cornerstone U.S. political speeches and documents through the test. The Constitution came in at grade 17.8, about the level of a master’s degree student. The Declaration of Independence hit 15th grade, akin to a college junior.
The average member of Congress speaks at a 10.6 grade level, down from 11.5 in 2005. President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address to Congress in January clocked in at an 8.4 grade level. That’s almost exactly the 8.5 grade level at which the typical American speaks.
