WASHINGTON - May 20 - One hundred fifty (150) members of the U.S. House or Senate voted in the public interest at least 80 percent of the time between January 22, 2003 and November 21, 2003, with 23 members scoring 100 percent, on the annual Congressional Scorecard released today by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG). Two hundred nine (209) members of the House or Senate had scores of 10 percent or below, with 75 members scoring 0 percent on major public interest issues. U.S. PIRG and the state PIRGs will distribute the individualized scorecards to households across the country this summer as part of a door-to-door campaign to work with Congress to reduce mercury emissions from polluting power plants and enforce the Clean Air Act.

"At the behest of special interests, Congress has voted to allow clear-cutting in our national forests and weaken consumer protections, and has failed to cut global warming pollution, failed to increase automobile fuel economy, and failed to make polluters pay for toxic waste cleanups," said U.S. PIRG Legislative Director Anna Aurilio. "These scorecards are an important tool to educate the public about the voting records of their elected officials and to help citizens hold those officials accountable."

In addition to tracking such diverse public interest votes as protecting the Clean Air Act; protecting the Arctic Refuge from drilling; preventing future "Enron" fiascos; and increasing access to affordable prescription drugs, the scorecards also list information about campaign contributions, biographical data, past U.S. PIRG scores, and telephone numbers for citizens to contact their elected officials.

"We applaud the 150 members who scored 80 percent or more for consistently voting in the public interest," said U.S. PIRG Executive Director Gene Karpinski. "We are particularly disappointed in the 209 members who consistently voted to put special interests before public health and safety and scored 10 percent or below."

Members who received 100% on the PIRG scorecard were:

Sen. Maria Cantwell (WA)

Sen. Richard Durbin (IL)

Sen. Jack Reed (RI)

Rep. Tammy Baldwin (WI-2)

Rep. Lois Capps (CA-23)

Rep. Lloyd Doggett (TX-10)

Rep. Raul Grijalva (AZ-7)

Rep. Michael Honda (CA-15)

Rep. Jesse Jackson (IL-2)

Rep. James Langevin (RI-2)

Rep. John Lewis (GA-5)

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (CA-16)

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (NY-14)

Rep. James McGovern (MA-3)

Rep. Michael McNulty (NY-21)

Rep. John Olver (MA-1)

Rep. Major Owens (NY-11)

Rep. Tim Ryan (OH-17)

Rep. Bernard Sanders (VT)

Rep. Janice Schakowsky (IL-9)

Rep. Hilda Solis (CA-32)

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (MD-8)

Rep. Melvin Watt (NC-12)

"With a few bright spots like the Senate's rejection of an anti-environment, anti-consumer energy bill, the 108th Congress is continuing the anti-public interest history of recent years," said Aurilio. "The Senate voted to let industries off the hook from paying for their toxic waste clean-up; the House rejected efforts to strengthen consumer protections from electric company price gouging; and the House and Senate voted to increase logging in our forests under the guise of fighting forest fires."

"We urge members of Congress to strengthen our environmental laws—clean up polluting power plants, promote a clean new energy future, preserve our last wild forests, and defend Superfund and America's other environmental protections," concluded Karpinski.

The scorecard and key to the votes scored within can be viewed online at www.uspirg.org.

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