2005 Congressional Scorecard

7/1/2005

Executive Summary

For more than three decades, Americans have shown overwhelming support for a clean, healthy environment and strong consumer protections. Americans have worked together to protect our air, land, and water by convincing Congress to pass cornerstone environmental laws such as the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act. Consumers demanded that Congress tighten corporate fiscal accountability, limit bank holds on consumers’ checks, require toy manufacturers to label toys for potential choke hazards, and criminalize identity theft. Most Americans stand united behind strong environmental and consumer protections. Yet Congress and the Bush administration are helping the oil, timber, banking and a number of other industries roll back protections that Americans have come to expect.

Recent Congressional Attacks
In the 108th Congress and the first months of the 109th Congress, the House and Senate have continued efforts to weaken key environmental laws and take away consumer protections.

- The House and Senate passed energy bills that include billions of dollars of subsidies for the oil, gas, coal, and nuclear industries and weaken environmental and consumer protections.

- The Congress failed to pass legislation to increase the fuel efficiency of vehicles and curb global warming pollution. America’s dependence on oil has repercussions for the environment, for consumers and for our national security.

- The administration and Congress backed sweeping proposals to eviscerate consumer rights under state laws by moving most class action lawsuits from state courts to federal courts.

- New legislation signed into law permanently limits a state’s authority to enact tough credit reporting and identity theft legislation.

Behind the Closed Doors of the White House
In his second term, President Bush and his appointees are still allowing big corporations to weaken our environmental laws so they can pollute our air and poison our water, cut down our national forests and make taxpayers, rather than polluters, pay to clean up toxic waste. Recent anti-environmental actions include:

- Forty-three states now have fish consumption advisories in effect because of mercury pollution in local waterways. While the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Food and Drug Administration warned women and children to limit their consumption of tuna because of mercury contamination, EPA finalized a new plan to weaken and delay efforts to clean up mercury emissions from the nation’s power plants.

- The coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is one of America’s last wild places. Even though the amount of oil in the Arctic Refuge couldn’t support us for one year, Congress and the administration are determined to open the area to oil and gas drilling.

- This year, America's taxpayers will pay almost $1.3 billion to clean up abandoned toxic waste sites, more than four times the amount they paid in 1995, the year Superfund's “polluter pays” fees expired. The Bush administration has failed to support reinstating the “polluter pays” fees that help fund cleanup of abandoned toxic waste sites, slowed the pace of cleanups, and forced taxpayers to pick up more of the bill for the cleanups that are happening.

U.S. PIRG: Keeping Watch
The Bush administration and Congress should reverse their present course—keep our air, land and water clean and protect the last remaining wild places for future generations. U.S. PIRG will continue to be in the halls of Congress and in front of the Bush administration fighting for consumers and the environment.