Monday, March 24, 2008

Local U.S. Reps score a D for anti-poverty voting

By Erin Rice

Local U.S. Congressional Representatives didn't do so well when it came to fighting poverty in 2007. It's probably not surprising to hear that our Senators faired pretty badly as well.

The Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law recently released its scorecard for 2007, in which it rates U.S. Senators and Representatives based on their voting behavior throughout 2007. Last year, fourteen bills came through the Senate that the Shriver Center deemed to be "significant poverty-related proposed legislation"; fifteen went through the House of Representatives. The bills chosen for the study represented such poverty issues as affordable housing, civil rights, early and higher education, healthcare, immigrants, rural poverty, and more. Each member of Congress was given a score based on their "yes" or "no" vote on particular measures and each vote was scored equally.

The ten House members representing North Texans averaged a 30.2%, or D*, when it came to voting "yes" on proposed anti-poverty legislation. The national average was a 66, or B. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D) of the 30th district of Texas and Rep. Chet Edwards (D) from the 17th district each scored a 100% (A+), meaning that for every vote they were present, they voted "yes" on key bills dealing with poverty. Rep. Sam Johnson (R) of the 3rd district and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R) of the 5th district both scored 0 (F-), meaning all "no" votes.

Senators John Cornyn (R) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R) averaged a 28.5%, which is well below the Senate's national average of 58.7%.

According to the study, Texas, along with South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Arizona, were states with the highest poverty rates who also had the worst anti-poverty voting records.

"The votes recorded in the Scorecard would suggest that a significant number of legislators do not believe in taking aggressive action to address poverty," commented John Bouman, President of the Shriver Center. "Given the high rates of poverty in many of their states, we are not convinced that they are paying attention to poverty, or that they have an effective, alternative strategy."

*The corresponding percentage and letter scores are different than traditional American report card scoring. Since there were only 14 or 15 votes used to create the scores, a more traditional approach would not have shown enough differentiation throughout the list. The Shriver Center's scoring method (100%=A+; 80–99%=A; 60–79%=B; 40–59%=C; 20–39%=D; 1–19%=F; 0%=F-) allows for a more comprehensive comparison among members of Congress.

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