LCV Scores For 2016 House: GOP Pro-Environment 5% Of Votes, Dems 94% Of Votes
House Republicans cast pro-environmental votes just 5 percent of the time in 2016, while their Democratic colleagues tallied a 94 percent voting record, according to the League of Conservation Voters. That makes the 114th Congress the most politically polarized in the 46-year history of LCV's Scorecard, the new numbers released Thursday show.
In the Senate, the average GOP member was voting pro-environment 14 percent of the time, while the Democrats' average was 96 percent. The gap of 85 points between the Republican and Democratic average scores in 2016 was only slightly smaller than the record 87-point divide in 2015. As a whole, Congress was more divided than ever in the two years before the most recent election.
Many "pro-environment" votes in 2016 were to stop GOP efforts to roll back protections, noted Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), ranking member of the Senate Environment Committee. Carper's LCV score was 94 percent. "We're at a point now where we'll be judged by our success in the bad things we keep keep from getting done," he said. Although he saw some opportunities for bipartisanship on environmental issues—most notably on President Trump's stated goal of infrastructure investment—he anticipated more partisan fights ahead. "For a while, we'll be battling it out."
The gulf between the parties on Capitol Hill also coincides with a trend in support lawmakers receive on the campaign trail: In the 2016 election cycle, 88 percent of the $31.3 million that the fossil fuel industry donated in Congressional races went to Republicans; 12 percent to Democrats, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. In comparison, as recently as 2008, political contributions from the oil, gas, and coal industries favored the GOP over the Democrats by a 75-25 percent split. In 1990, the Republicans' edge was 56-44 percent.
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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23022017/congress-environmental-climate-change-league-conservation-voters
