Analysis

What is the Scorecard?

As a result of the recession, 40 million Americans now live in the State of Poverty, the largest state in the nation. This is an increase of 2.6 million people in the past year, a year in which household income gains of a whole decade were wiped out.

We at the Shriver Center believe that this devastating trend will be reversed only if our nation’s political leadership — the President and Congress — take aggressive action to address the many complex structural causes of poverty by adopting the right priorities, enacting needed laws, and adequately funding essential programs.

The Shriver Center’s 2009 Congressional Poverty Scorecard grades the performance of each member of the United States Senate and House of Representatives on the most important poverty-related issues that came to a vote in 2009. The Scorecard’s purpose is to hold our Senators and Representatives accountable – every single one of them – for their efforts to fight poverty, or lack thereof.

With the help of national anti-poverty experts in 20 different fields, the Shriver Center has identified the 18 House votes and 14 Senate votes over the past year that were the most significant in fighting poverty. Each member is assigned a letter grade, A though F, based on their overall voting performance. Members with a perfect voting record earned an A+ and members who voted against reducing poverty every single time got an F-. Members who did not vote on enough bills were not graded. In total, we graded 431 of 435 Representatives and 97 of 100 Senators.

The Scorecard includes a summary of each vote we scored and covers a wide range of subject areas including affordable housing and homelessness; climate change; consumer protection; economic recovery; employment discrimination; food and nutrition; health care; higher education; immigrants; and voting rights.

The Scorecard is solely an assessment of Congress’ performance and does not attempt to evaluate the President.

Distribution of Grades for Senators and Representatives

Overall Success of Bills that Fought Poverty

Despite the fact that more than half of all Senators had a perfect A+ or an A voting record, as did more than half of all Representatives, only 7 of 17 bills that fought poverty became law in 2009. Of the other 10 bills, 1 is in conference, 1 was considered in the Senate only, and 8 were considered in the House only.

Presumably many if not all of these 8 bills were not considered in the Senate because of the Senate’s filibuster rule, which prevents legislation from moving forward in the Senate unless there is a super-majority of 60 percent voting in favor of “cloture” (ending debate). The House does not have a comparable rule. The Senate filibuster rule prevented as many as half of all bills that fight poverty from being considered. The Senate should eliminate the profoundly undemocratic filibuster rule and allow legislation to be voted on and approved by a simple majority.

Congressional Delegations with Poor Voting Records

We compared each state’s poverty ranking with the average voting rank of its congressional delegation. We found 10 states with high poverty rates that had Congressional delegations with poor records in voting to fight poverty. This is more states with a mismatch between their poverty rate and their representatives’ voting record than ever before.

Congressional Delegations with Good Voting Records

In contrast, Congressional delegations in several states around the country with higher than average poverty rates had good records in voting to fight poverty.

Even states with comparatively low poverty rates have a lot of poor residents. The Congressional delegations in four states with relatively low poverty rates had especially good records in voting to fight poverty.