TexPIRG Advocacy News

Fifteen out of the 34 members of Texas' Congressional delegation voted for the public interest 10 percent or less of the time, according to the annual Congressional Scorecard for U.S. Senators and Representatives on major public interest issues released today by TexPIRG. TexPIRG is distributing the individual Congressional scorecards to tens of thousands of households in Texas as part of its door-to-door campaign to work with Congress to reduce mercury emissions from polluting power plants and enforce the Clean Air Act.

"At the behest of special interests, Congress has voted to allow clear-cutting in our national forests and weaken consumer protections, and has failed to cut global warming pollution, failed to increase automobile fuel economy, and failed to make polluters pay for toxic waste cleanups" said TexPIRG Campaign Director Hugh Williams. "These scorecards are an important tool to educate the public about the voting records of their elected officials and to help citizens hold those officials accountable."

In addition to tracking such diverse public interest votes as protecting the Clean Air Act; protecting the Arctic Refuge from drilling; preventing future "Enron" fiascoes; and increasing access to affordable prescription drugs, the scorecards also list information about campaign contributions, biographical data, past TexPIRG scores, and telephone numbers for citizens to contact their elected officials.

Scores on the TexPIRG Scorecard for the Texas delegation were:

"We applaud Representatives Sheila Jackson Lee and Eddie Bernice Johnson for being public interest heroes. They received scores of 90 percent for consistently voting in the public interest," said Williams. "We are particularly proud of Representative Lloyd Doggett for voting with the public interest 100 percent of the time. He is truly a champion for consumers and the environment."

Nationally, 150 members of the House or Senate scored 80% and above, of whom 23 scored 100%. Two hundred nine (209) members of either chamber had scores at 10% or below, with 75 members scoring 0%.

"With the exception of a few bright spots like the Senate's rejection of an anti-environment, anti-consumer energy bill, the 108th Congress is continuing the anti-public interest history of recent years," continued Williams. "The Senate voted to let industries off the hook from paying for their toxic waste clean-up; the House rejected efforts to strengthen consumer protections from electric company price gouging; and the House and Senate voted to increase logging in our forests under the guise of fighting forest fires."

"We urge members of Texas' congressional delegation to strengthen our environmental laws—clean up polluting power plants, preserve our last wild forests, and defend Superfund and America's other environmental protections," concluded Williams.