Saturday, March 3, 2018

Congress has been a serious ally for Trump’s anti-environment agenda

https://thinkprogress.org/congressional-republicans-environmental-scorecard-2017-dba844da6fb9/
"The Trump administration’s first year was marked by a barrage of environmental rollbacks, from announcing the United States’ intention to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement to the repeal of the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which would have set the nation’s first-ever emissions limits on carbon emissions from power plants. But on Capitol Hill, the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda has found eager allies in Congressional Republicans. According to a new scorecard of environmental votes released today by the League of Conversation Voters, Congressional Republicans have done little to stand in the way of the administration’s anti-environmental policies. The League of Conversation Voters’ annual scorecard tracks how each member of Congress votes on key environmental legislation. As this year’s report shows, a majority of both Senate Republicans and House Republicans received an annual score of zero percent, meaning they voted against every piece of environmental legislation or nomination tracked by the scorecard. In the Senate, 46 Republicans received a score of zero, bringing the overall Republican Senate average to a historic low of just 1 percent. In the House, 124 representatives received a score of zero, bringing the overall Republican House average to just 5 percent. The overall average for both the House and the Senate in 2017 was 45 percent — a marked decline from 2009, when the scorecard tallied a record-high 60 percent for the House and 63 percent for the Senate. “When you’ve got 46 Republican Senators with a score of 0 percent … you very clearly show a party that has been completely captured by the polluting industries,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said on a press call announcing the scorecard’s release. “Unfortunately, we’ve seen that happen in the administration as well, with political appointees. Clearly, the polluters are now in charge at EPA"."