Analysis

2011 Scorecard Analysis

With the number of people in poverty rising to unparalleled levels, the response of the United States Congress in 2011 was to accomplish virtually nothing. Only one bill that will reduce poverty – the VOW to Hire Heroes Act expanding job opportunities and training for veterans — passed the Senate and House and was signed into law by the President.

In past years, almost every vote important to people in poverty concerned a legislative initiative that would fight poverty. In contrast, most of the votes in 2011 that were of the greatest significance to people in poverty were votes against legislation that would have made poverty even worse.

Several votes would have eliminated programs that people in poverty rely on, including the Affordable Care Act national health reform, the Legal Services Corporation, school-based health centers, the McGovern-Dole international food program, and three important foreclosure relief and neighborhood stabilization programs.

Other votes were on sweeping proposals that affected a wide array of anti-poverty programs. These included proposals to dismantle the Medicare program, undermine the structure of Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs (formerly Food Stamps), enshrine a balanced budget requirement and other ruinous fiscal principles in the U.S. Constitution, and substantially cut funding for Pell Grants for higher education, employment and training programs, the WIC nutrition program for pregnant women and young children, and mental health and substance abuse programs.

In addition to making poverty worse, some of the proposals would have exacerbated the 30-year trend of growing income inequality in the United States. In particular, the Ryan budget proposal approved in the House but rejected in the Senate would have made massive cuts in federal programs, most of which would have fallen on the poor, with all of the resulting savings used to provide additional tax breaks for the wealthy.

The Shriver Center identified the 18 House votes and 11 Senate votes that were the most significant votes to people in poverty in 2011. Once again we consulted with national anti-poverty experts in 20 different fields to identify the most significant votes. The 2011 Congressional Poverty Scorecard includes a thorough summary of each vote we scored that describes the measure that was voted on and why it was important in fighting poverty.

Each Senator and House member is assigned a letter grade, A+ through F-, based on their overall voting performance. Members who did not vote on enough bills were not graded. In total, we graded 431 of 435 Representatives and all 100 Senators.

Distribution of Grades for Senators and Representatives

Congressional Delegations with Poor Voting Records

We compared each state’s poverty ranking with the average voting rank of its congressional delegation. As in past years, we often found a negative correlation between a state’s poverty rate and the voting record of its members, i.e., the states with the highest poverty rates often had delegations with the lowest average score in voting to fight poverty.

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 five states with relatively low poverty rates had especially good records in voting to fight poverty.