***********************************************
WORLDWIDE
FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
Environmentalists
Rate U.S. Congress Worst Ever
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Forest
Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises
2/14/96
OVERVIEW
& SOURCE
Reuters
reports on the League of Conservation voters recent tally
of U.S.
Congressal representatives environmental vote record.
They
found that of the current Congress, 25% "cast an anti-
environmental
vote on each issue it tracked, earning the lawmakers
a
"zero" rating in its annual scorecard."
g.b.
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RELAYED
TEXT STARTS HERE:
Subject:
Environmentalists Rate Congress Worst Ever
Date:
Wed, 14 Feb 1996
Copyright
1996 by Reuters
WASHINGTON
(Reuter) - The 1995 Congress had the worst
environmental
record since the League of Conservation voters
started
keeping track 25 years ago, the league said Wednesday.
The
league, a political arm of environmental groups, said a record
high
135 members of Congress -- or 25 percent -- cast an anti-
environmental
vote on each issue it tracked, earning the lawmakers
a
"zero" rating in its annual scorecard.
Twenty-four
senators and 111 representatives, all Republicans,
scored
zero in the tabulation of votes on wilderness and wildlife
issues,
pollution and public health, energy and mining, and world
environment
and population.
The
report said Congress did not consider any significant
favourable
environmental legislation, with pro-environmental votes
mostly
defensive measures.
"In
our 25 years, the league has never witnessed such an egregious
attack
on our environmental laws," Deb Callahan, president of the
group,
told a news conference on the report.
The
Senate averaged an overall 47 percent pro-environment vote
rating
and the House of Representatives averaged 43 percent.
Senate
Democrats averaged 89 percent pro-environment votes, while
their
Republican counterparts averaged 11 percent. In the House,
Democrats
averaged 76 percent pro-environment votes and
Republicans
averaged 15 percent.
The
report showed the biggest disparity ever in the environmental
records
of Democrats and Republicans, Callahan said. Pro-business
Republicans
say environmental regulations slow economic growth and
current
rules are too restrictive on industries and property
owners.
Representative
Don Young, an Alaska Republican who chairs the
House
Resources Committee, blasted the scorecard in a statement as
"nothing
more than a political distortion designed to benefit the
Democratic
Party." The report scored Young at zero.
Many of
the votes were on issues stemming from House Republicans'
Contract
with America, measures Callahan called "the most
destructive
to environmental quality and environmental protection
this
country has ever seen."
Most of
this legislation stalled in the Senate or was vetoed by
President
Bill Clinton.
But Callahan
said the tide of public opinion was against this kind
of
legislation and she expected moderate Republicans increasingly
to
break from the party leadership. She said the 1995 votes
revealed
a core of 31 moderate Republicans who broke party ranks
and she
expected that group to grow.
But she
added, "It's going to be a battle every step of the way as
long as
the membership remains the same."
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