Environmental report card for Congressional Texas

From the Inbox:

The Texas League of Conservation Voters highlighted Texas’ leadership and failures on national environmental issues, based on today’s release of the League of Conservation Voters 2011 National Environmental Scorecard.

The 2011 National Environmental Scorecard grades Congress’ work as the ‘most anti-environmental session of the U.S. House of Representatives in history.’

“We’re fortunate to have a great champion for the environment in Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Austin). Sadly, the same cannot be said for Rep. Cuellar (D-Laredo) who far too often sided against the environment and against public health.  His votes on global warming, pesticide pollution and offshore drilling safety placed Rep. Cuellar much more in line with the Republican House majority and corporate polluters than for the constituents who elected him,” said David Weinberg, Executive Director of the Texas League of Conservation Voters.

The 2011 National Environmental Scorecard includes 11 Senate and a record 35 House votes on issues ranging from public health protections to clean energy to land and wildlife conservation.

This year, 31 senators earned a perfect 100 percent score, while in the House 24 members earned a perfect 100 percent score.  Rep. Doggett notched the highest score in the Texas delegation with 97 percent.  Rep. Cuellar earned the lowest score among the Texas Democratic delegation with 51 percent.  The average Texas House Republican score was 7 percent.

In the Senate, 13 senators earned an appalling 0 percent score, while in the House four members earned a 0 percent score. The Texas Senate delegation rounded out the bottom of the barrel among Senate delegations by state with an abysmal 9 percent score; only four other states’ Senate delegation scored lower.

For over 40 years, the National Environmental Scorecard issued by LCV has been the nationally accepted yardstick used to rate members of Congress on environmental, public health and energy issues. The full 2011 National Environmental Scorecard can be found at www.lcv.org/scorecard.

The Texas League of Conservation Voters issues its own scorecard on state lawmakers. Its 2011 scorecard can be found online at www.tlcv.org/scorecards.

The scorecard itself can be found here. In fairness to Rep. Cuellar, his 2011 score was an 88, though his lifetime mark of 57 is the lowest among the Democrats from Texas. It must also be noted that 20 of the 23 Texas Republicans in Congress scored lower than 10. The great irony is that one of the three Congressional Rs to score above 10% was none other than Smokey Joe Barton. He, along with Reps. Kay Granger and Bill Flores, achieved the lofty score of 11% by voting correctly on four of the 35 bills the LCV tracked. I never thought I’d see the day when Smokey Joe would be the greenest Republican in Texas. Anyway, go read the report to see what the bills of interest were and who did what. Forrest Wilder has more.

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