Category: Spring 2006 Newswire
Shays, Meehan Lead Push for Congressional Ethics Reform
By Adam Kredo
WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 – In 1994 Rep. Christopher Shays, R-4, took a bold bipartisan stand when he and Rep. Marty Meehan, D-Mass., proposed sweeping campaign finance reform legislation in Congress. In 2002, their joint effort to restrict unregulated “soft money” contributions became law.
Now, Shays and Meehan are again uniting to press for an overhaul of Congress’s ethics rules and practices.
Last week, they filed legislation that would reform the congressional ethics process by establishing an independent Office of Public Integrity that would oversee ethics concerns for both the House and the Senate.
“The American people need to be able to trust that our government is run ethically,” Shays said in a press release. “Recent scandals have eroded that trust, and creating an Office of Public Integrity is an important step to regain it.”
The new office would consolidate several responsibilities currently handled by the House and Senate Ethics Committees, but it would not eliminate the need for the committees. Instead, the office would act as a prosecutor for the two committees and as “a clearing house for allegations” against members and lobbyists, Shays’ office said.
The committees would continue to be the judges, making decisions about members’ ethics practices
“Really, what Congress should do is not do the investigating and the prosecuting, if necessary, but should be the judge,” Shays said in an interview Wednesday. “It should just have to decide whether the information provided by the professional staff merits action and, if so, what kind of action.”
If his proposal is adopted, he said, “the system will work better. It’ll be more honest. I think it will be more responsive, actions will be taken more quickly and people can feel comfortable that legitimate claims will be investigated.”
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has proposed a similar version of the bill in the Senate.
Fred Wertheimer, president and CEO of Democracy 21, a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocate of congressional campaign and ethics reform, said in an interview that “the process for overseeing and enforcing ethics rules in Congress is completely broken.” He said this is particularly true in the House, saying that the House Ethics Committee (formally, the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct) did not function at all during 2005.
“This is a tough issue because members of Congress don’t like to investigate each other,” Wertheimer said. He added that one of the biggest problems for the ethics process is getting an inquiry started. For him, this “is one of the great advantages” of the proposed office.
The Office of Public Integrity would allow anybody to initiate the investigative process by filing a complaint, according to the bill. The director of the office would then present evidence to the Ethics Committee, allowing its members to determine whether a case is credible and worthy of further investigation.
” If you don’t fix the enforcement system, then the new rules are liable to end up just the way the old rules did-being ignored by too many people,” Wertheimer said.
Shays, in the interview, said he agreed. One of the merits of the proposal, he said, is that “the public can hear the finding and judge for themselves. They can feel comfortable that it’s been taken outside the jurisdiction of the Republican and Democratic party.”???
Leading the office would be “a publicly credible, professionally experienced individual selected jointly by the Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress,” according to the Shays press release.
In the interview, Shays said the leaders should look for someone with “judicial skills, investigative skills, and someone who basically is not looking to have a further job in government, so that they’re not in any way inhibited by what they do in any way.”
The legislation includes several safeguards against potential partisan abuse of the system. After an investigation, if the director determines an allegation to be frivolous, he or she may prevent the complainant from ever filing again, according to a report by Shays’ office.
In addition, the Ethics Committee in each house could stop an investigation by a two-thirds vote. It would then have to issue a public report explaining why the investigation was stopped.
Aside from its prosecutorial duties, the office would provide guidance and information to members and their staffs on the permissibility of certain actions under House rules. This could include such gray areas as accepting gifts from constituents who are pleased with their representatives’ work.
The office would create an internet database in which lobbyist reports would be available for public viewing.
Massachusetts Delegates Score Big with the Environment
WASHINGTON, Feb. 21 - The Massachusetts congressional delegation ranked second in the nation in an environmental scorecard released Tuesday by the League of Conservation Voters. The delegation from Rhode Island was the only one to score higher.
The 2005 National Environmental Scorecard rates members of Congress on key votes involving issues such as energy, biodiversity, public health and environmental spending.
Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) both scored 95 percent on the league's scorecard.
Rep. Marty Meehan (D-Lowell) scored 94 percent while Reps. John F. Tierney (D- Salem), James P. McGovern (D-Worcester) and Edward J. Markey (D-Medford) all scored 100 percent. The national average score for all members of the House was 45 percent, which was also the average score for all senators.
"I am honored by the League of Conservation Voters' high marks for my voting record," Meehan said in a statement. "One of the most enduring gifts we can give to our children and grandchildren is cleaner water and air and the conservation of precious parks and lands. We must safeguard these environmental treasures for future generations."
Lora Wondolowski, executive director of the Massachusetts League of Environmental Voters, said Meehan has always been a leader on environmental issues.
"Meehan makes the blueprint for doing the right thing by helping to pass bills that greatly affect the Massachusetts environment. We urge him to continue on this path because the work he does at the federal level draws support at the state level," said Wondolowski.
The league uses the scorecard to give the public information on how their officials voted on key environmental issues.
"In a year when elected officials in Washington were given numerous opportunities to cast votes on issues vital to our energy future as well as clean air, clean water and key conservation initiatives, the 2005 National Environmental Scorecard offers a clear-eyed look at just where our members of Congress stand," Tiernan Sittenfeld, the league's legislative director, said in a statement.
##
N.H. Delegation Receives Praise from League of Conservation Voters
WASHINGTON, Feb. 21 - Although the League of Conservation Voters gave New Hampshire's congressional delegation the lowest ratings on key environmental votes among the New England states, many members were praised for their environmental work.
The league's 2005 National Environmental Scorecard, released on Tuesday, gives the state's all-Republican delegation an average score of 37 percent. Rep. Jeb Bradley received the highest score, 44 percent, and Sen. Judd Gregg had the lowest score, 30 percent. Sen. John Sununu received a score of 40 percent and Rep. Charles Bass scored 33 percent.
But the delegation's 37 percent was significantly above what their party scored in both the House and the Senate. On average, House Republicans scored 11.46 percent and Senate Republicans 15.18 percent. The national average for all members was 45 percent in each chamber.
The league's legislative director praised much of the delegation's environmental work. "Congressman Bass and Congressman Bradley both played a real leadership role in protecting the Arctic refuge from drilling, and we give them a lot of credit," Tiernan Sittenfeld said at a press conference on Tuesday.
Both "had a significant role in getting the House leadership to take Arctic drilling out of the budget reconciliation" legislation, Sittenfeld said, adding that the league "would love to continue to work with both House members of New Hampshire on protecting the Arctic as well as other wild places."
He said that the league hoped the delegation would score higher in the next year but that it was worth noting that Sununu had also taken positive environmental positions. "Sen. Sununu was a co-sponsor of an amendment to stop taxpayer subsidies from building logging roads near the Tongass. . So we applaud him for that," Sittenfeld said.
Jack Savage, vice President of communications/Outreach for the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests disagreed with the league's scores. "We don't issue scorecards, but if we did we'd score them differently-and on the work that we and our 10,000 members urge them to do, they're doing pretty well," he said.
According to Savage, the delegation's full support helped protect the 171,000 acres of the Connecticut River Headwaters project. "There's been substantial land and critical habitat protected around Great Bay in recent years that only could have happened with their help," he said. "Moose Mountains, one of the Forest Society's newest (and third-largest) forest reservations, the largest contiguous privately-held block of unprotected forestland in southeast New Hampshire, was made possible through Judd Gregg and Jeb Bradley in particular, and the full delegation in general."
The League of Conservation Voters has released a scorecard for each Congress since 1970. The scorecard is based on the percentage of what the league considers to be pro-environmental votes. Last year, there were 18 such votes in the House and 20 in the Senate.
Many of the votes in 2005 focused on issues of energy, global warming, fuel economy and drilling in the Arctic refuge. The league is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that calls itself the "political voice of the national environmental and conservation community," and aims to run campaigns against candidates it considers to be anti-environmental.
Tony Massaro, the league's senior vice president for political affairs and public education, said he thought it would be helpful if New Hampshire residents contacted their members when their votes are not in agreement with the residents' own views on environmental issues.
"We encourage everybody to go to the scorecard, go to the Web site, look up their members, look at the votes, find the votes where their viewpoint was not reflected by any members and communicate that concern," he said. He added that residents should thank members when their votes were consistent with their own views.
Massaro also said that state residents need to let their members know their viewpoints before votes occur by going to town hall meetings with members.
"We think that as members hear more and more about these kinds of issues from the citizens, that their votes tend to move closer in line with the citizens," he said.
###
Massachusetts Ranks Second in the Nation on Environmental Scorecard
WASHINGTON, Feb. 21- The Massachusetts congressional delegation scored second in the nation on an environmental scorecard released by the League of Conservation Voters Tuesday.
According to the 2005 National Environmental Scorecard, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) scored 95 percent, up three points from the previous year. Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) also scored 95 percent, up from 44 percent in 2003-04 when he missed key votes because he was campaigning for President.
Members of the House and the Senate are rated on whether they vote on key environmental issues for what the league considers to be in favor of environmental action.
"I applaud the work that [the league] has done in compiling this scorecard," Kerry said in a statement. "It's important that the American public know exactly how their elected officials voted on key issues affecting the environment as well as their health, pocketbooks, and quality of life."
U.S. Rep. James P. McGovern (D-Worcester) scored 100 percent, along with Reps. John F. Tierney (D-Salem) and Edward J. Markey (D-Medford).
Tiernan Sittenfeld, the league's legislative director, commended Tierney, McGovern and Markey "for their perfect voting records of representing the health and safety of Massachusetts citizens."
"We also commend Sens. Kennedy and Kerry for their efforts to oppose the damaging energy bill and attempts to drill in the Arctic Refuge," Sittenfeld said in a statement. "The entire delegation can be proud of the way they represented the interests of those they are elected to serve."
McGovern has consistently scored 100 percent since he was first elected. Rep. John W. Olver (D-Amherst) scored 94 percent and Rep. William Delahunt (D-Hyannis) dropped 16 points to 78 percent.
"It's no secret to anyone that I consider myself a strong environmentalist and I'm proud of that fact," Mr. McGovern said in a telephone interview. "I think it's important as a member of Congress to vote in a way that protects and preserves our environment. I take each issue as it comes and I vote the way I believe is the right way to vote."
Deb Cary, director of the Massachusetts Audubon Society's Broad Meadow Conservation Center and Wildlife Sanctuary, said that Mr. McGovern has been "a very strong advocate since day one."
Ms. Cary said that one of the first projects Mr. McGovern took on was restoring financial support to the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which provides money to preserving trails and waterways.
"Until Jim McGovern was in Washington, those funds had completely dried up," Ms. Cary said. "He's really been a strong environmental advocate for all the lead environmental laws."
Ms. Cary added Mr. McGovern has also been a leader locally on the Blackstone River and all the efforts from Massachusetts and Rhode Island to bring back the river.
U.S. Rep. John W. Olver's score of 94 percent was a drop of 6 points. Mr. Olver accused the Bush Administration of "doing the bidding of special interests" in terms of environmental legislation but said that he was proud to have scored so well with the League.
"My voting record on environmental issues reflects my strong commitment to protecting the health of our environment and the beauty of our natural resources," said Mr. Olver. "Almost every day, the Bush Administration takes another step - often not seen by the public - to undermine our environmental laws and regulations."
###
Connecticut Delegation Ranks High on Environment
By Sara Hatch
WASHINGTON, Feb. 21 - The Connecticut delegation scored in the top five percent of all members of Congress on an environmental scorecard released Tuesday by the League of Conservation Voters. Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., with a score of 90 percent, tied for the third-highest score in the Senate on key environmental votes during 2005.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., scored 70 percent, a 14-point increase from his combined score for 2003-04. Both senators were well above the national average of 45 percent for both the House and Senate.
The scorecard evaluates important environmental votes in the past year and whether members made what the league considers environmentally friendly votes.
"The entire delegation deserves praise for their record of bipartisan support for protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling and protecting public lands," Tiernan Sittenfeld, the league's legislative director, said in a press release.
The delegation's high ranking among the states on environmental issues was confirmed by Mark Sokolove, the league's press secretary.
Rep. Rob Simmons, R-Conn., who voted against Arctic drilling, scored 61 percent. This was much higher than the average 11 percent score for Republicans in the House.
Curt Johnson, the senior attorney and program director for the Connecticut
Fund for the Environment, said the Republican Party "as a whole has turned its back almost entirely on the environmental agenda."
A statement issued by Dodd's office said he "believes that protecting our environment should be a top priority. But sadly, there are too many in Washington that fail to realize that. Sen. Dodd intends to continue to work to support initiatives that can make our environment cleaner for both the current and future generations."
Lieberman's communications director, Casey Aden-Wansbury, said that "throughout his career, he "has won high scores" from the league, and that his relatively low score in 2003-04 was because of "several votes he was forced to miss for family reasons." On only two votes did he differ from the league's position, Aden-Wansbury said, on the final vote on last year's energy bill and on a farm appropriations amendment.
The scorecard "casts an unbiased eye" on the House and Senate, said Tony Massaro, the league's senior vice president for political affairs and public education, at a press conference Tuesday.
Massaro said 2005 had been a year with "major legislative attacks on our government." He criticized the energy bill as one of the worst environmental bills to come out of Washington and said that "in the end, many members chose the powerful over the people."
The league addressed the larger energy issue in its scorecard, with almost half of the key votes in each chamber concerning energy policy.
"Everybody in the delegation understands that we need serious changes in energy policy," Dennis Schain, spokesman for the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, said in a telephone interview.
"I think everybody understands that we need to find a new direction with energy policy," he said..
Connecticut, he said, faces energy problems at the pump and at home, including increases in the price of natural gas.
####
The Maine Delegation Gets Environmental Report Card
WASHINGTON, Feb. 21-Maine's congressional delegation ranked third in the nation on the League of Conservation Voters' annual National Environmental Scorecard. The four legislators averaged scores of 84 percent on key votes in 2005.
"As a whole, Maine residents can be proud that they have sent a delegation to Washington, D.C., that represents their interests - not those of big oil and other polluting industries," Tiernan Sittenfeld, the league's legislative director, said in a statement.
Rep. Michael Michaud scored a perfect 100 percent, voting the way the league liked on 18 votes last year. Rep. Tom Allen scored 94 percent, voting against an amendment to the Water Resources Development Act that the league supported.
"I originally decided to seek public office out of concern for the environment, and what my own paper mill was doing to the Penobscot River near my house," Michaud said in a statement. "The river was badly polluted, and I wanted to do something about it. People deserve clean water and an environment that doesn't harm their health."
Mark Sullivan, a spokesman for Allen, said that "as a member of the House Budget and Energy and Commerce Committees, Tom fought hard on behalf of LCV priorities like protecting the Artic National Wildlife Refuge and securing funds for environmental protection and land conservation."
Maine's two senators fared a little lower than the representatives with each getting 70 percent. That score was enough, however, to put Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins among the highest Senate Republicans, with only Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island doing better, with 90 percent. The average of all Senate Republicans was 15 percent. The league has endorsed Snowe in her bid for reelection this year.
"I have always cared very deeply about our environment," Collins said in a statement. "Sound environmental stewardship is so important in Maine, and Maine's environment is just so beautiful, that I think it is difficult to grow up here without feeling a sense of environmental responsibility. A clean and healthy environment is critical not only for the health and well-being of the people of Maine, but also for our economy. Our natural resource-based industries, our tourist industry, and indeed the State's very image depend upon the quality of our environment."
Clean air and clean water are among the most important environmental issues Maine faces, according to Matt Prindiville, the federal policy advocate for the Natural Resources Council of Maine. With Maine "at the end of the nation's tailpipe," with pollutants from other states blowing into the state and polluting pristine lakes and the air, he said, it was important for current regulations to be maintained. Prindiville said he had nothing but praise for Maine's delegation.
The League of Conservation Voters has "cast an unbiased eye" on elected officials since 1970 with these reports, according to Tony Massaro, the group's vice president for political affairs and public education. The group works with policy experts to identify votes that will have an effect on the environment. The league hand-delivers letters just before a vote notifying members that the vote will be taken into account in the annual scorecard.
For 2005, the league looked at 20 votes in the Senate and 18 in the House, and compiled the percentages based on lawmakers' records on these votes. Because the league is for government regulation of the environment, it generally scores Democrats much higher than Republicans.
The league focused on such legislation as the energy conference report on energy policy, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, human pesticide testing, authorization of the Central American Free Trade Agreement and the Senate's approval of Janice Brown to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Snowe voted for the energy conference report, which the league opposed. But her spokesman said that while it was not a perfect bill, it included $1.3 billion in conservation and energy-efficiency tax credits and $2.7 billion in alternative energy production tax credits.
"This legislation is not perfect," Snowe said in a statement when the vote was taken, "but I believe it is an improvement over the status quo. I would have written a more ambitious bill that would have more aggressively reduced our dependence on foreign oil."
After the league unveiled its scorecard Tuesday, Snowe said in a statement: "The League of Conservation Voters works tirelessly to preserve the environment and serve as an information resource for its members and the public. I appreciate their recognizing my support for conservation and sensible environmental policy. Mainers understand that protecting the environment is essential to maintaining our quality of life, our health and the large sector of Maine's economy that is driven by outdoor recreation and tourism. There is broad consensus in Maine on the need to address issues from mercury pollution to keeping our coastline healthy, and my votes in the Senate are a reflection of this awareness and my own personal beliefs."
###
There Ain’t Much Down East Flavah on Maine Avenue
WASHINGTON, Feb. 21-You might think that the juicy crab cake sandwich you were taking a bite out of was made at the Cod End fish market in Tenants Harbor if it were not for the noisy rushing of cars on the overpass, the lack of salt smell in the air and the occasional buzzing of the President's Marine One helicopter flying overhead.
Instead of being on the Maine coast, you are at the Maine Avenue Fish Market in the nation's capital.
Captain White's Seafood City, where that crab cake sandwich was fried up for you, has been on Maine Avenue for a long time. Jesse White started the business with his father more than 30 years ago; he has worked there since he was a teenager. White's, one of a half-dozen vendors at the seafood market, gets a lot of its goods from the Chesapeake Bay, but it also gets lobsters and mussels from Maine. It takes less than a day for a lobster brought into port in Maine to be flown down to Washington and arrive at White's.
Maine, like every other state in the union, has a street named after it in Washington. There is Pennsylvania Avenue, with the Commander in Chief in residence at 1600, and Connecticut Avenue, which is one of the main thoroughfares in town, and Massachusetts Avenue, home to a lot of embassies. All this is according to city planner Pierre L'Enfant's original design.
Maine Avenue is in the southwest quadrant of the city and runs along the Washington Channel and the Tidal Basin, which are separated from the Potomac River by an island park. Across the Potomac is Virginia.
According to Captain Eric Slaughter of Capital Yacht Charters at the Washington Marina, foreign heads of state were meant to arrive in the city on the avenue after coming up the Potomac on their royal yachts.
"The Southwest became Washington's official port soon after the Washington Channel was completed," Slaughter said. "But the city plans as they had been developed over the life of the city have all included various wharfs and plans and public access for the Southwest Washington Waterfront because that was Washington's Waterfront."
The seafood market is usually busy around the lunchtime hour. One local customer, 65-year-old George Imes, regularly visits the market. He gets "a little bit of everything," from shrimp to crab to Maine lobsters. When asked about Maine, Imes said his first thought was "lobsters, of course."
In addition to selling raw seafood, Captain White's offers many cooked-food options. You can get a steamed lobster or fried trout or a crab cake sandwich, which is full of fresh crab fried to cakey perfection. It comes on a cheap bun, which you could buy an eight-pack of for 99 cents at Hannaford's in Bangor, and do-it-yourself ketchup and tartar sauce. Eating it on a bench along the Potomac waterway might make you think you're sitting at a seafood shack in Stoneham.
But looming across the street is the cavernous Mandarin Oriental Hotel. A footbridge gives hotel guests access to the waterfront and the Tidal Basin, with its famous Japanese cherry trees. A spokeswoman for the hotel, which opened in March 2004, said it has 400 guest rooms, two restaurants, a bar and thousands of square feet of ballroom and meeting room space. Weekday room rates range from $395 to $8,000 a night. But there will be special deals during the Cherry Blossom Festival at the end of March, the spokeswoman said.
Workers trot across four-lane Maine Avenue, dodging BMWs and delivery trucks, from the Oriental to the Washington Marina. The marina, which Slaughter said was started in 1939 under an order from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, rents out boats, including the Celebrity Yacht
After the seafood wharf, Maine Avenue leaves the water's side and is replaced with Water Street. Along Water Street are a few seafood restaurants and more marinas, including the Capital Yacht Club, the oldest marina in Washington, and the Gangplank Marina. Both serve super yachts that come up the Potomac to visit town.
About 100 people also call these marinas home. There are two-story house boats painted gray that moor alongside 50-foot sailing vessels and motorized pleasure ships.
Along with the boats, there is fishing in the waters along Maine Avenue, although there are no smelt fishing shacks because there is no ice. Signs warn not to eat any catfish, carp or eels from these waters. There is also even some wildlife: the ubiquitous gray squirrels are frequent visitors, and even cranes sometimes fly above these waters.
I f you wa lk further west on Maine Avenue you'll pass under the Route 1 overpass that occasionally provides shelter for homeless people. The Washington Monument, the Bureau of Printing and Engraving and the Jefferson Memorial are past the overpass.
The avenue crosses 14th and 15th streets, where you might see an official limousine accompanied by the standard SUV full of guys with machine guns.
At the west end of Maine Avenue is the Tidal Basin ringed with the famous cherry trees. The snowstorm in mid February blanketed the city with half a foot of snow, which led to the erection of snowmen that looked back at Thomas Jefferson in his memorial across the basin.
A few days later, the snowmen were a fraction of their former glory. Their stick arms sat lifeless in the mud and dead leaves. These snowmen sat at one end of Maine Avenue, until they met their final melt
At the other end of Maine Avenue, just before it flows into M Street, lies the State of Maine's most visible imprint on its namesake avenue. The Lobsterman Statue looks out over the Potomac toward East Potomac Park.
According to Jane Radcliffe of the Maine State Museum (which has the original plaster cast in its collection), the statue is an exact match of one that kneels near Congress Square in Portland and one on Bailey Island in Casco Bay as well. The Washington copy was put up in 1983 thanks to the efforts of the Cundys Harbor Campfire Girls. The original lobsterman statue is modeled after Elroy Johnson of Bailey Island and was made by the artist Victor Kahill for the Maine State Pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair.
The statue is of a simple working man, crouching on a coil of rope. His thigh-high fisherman's boots are bent in half and don't come above his knees. He is wearing a thick collared shirt that is rolled up close to the elbows so he can work with the un-banded lobster that he is grasping with his right hand. His eyes glance down his prominent and shapely nose, with a look that either glories in the efforts of his labor or is worried about getting pinched by that left claw.
####
Connecticut Delegation Scores in Top 5 Percent for Environmental Votes
By Adam Kredo
WASHINGTON, Feb. 21 - In a report released Tuesday by the League of Conservation Voters, the Connecticut congressional delegation received an average score of 78 percent for votes on environmental legislation in 2005, placing the delegation in the top five percent overall.
The 2005 National Environmental Scorecard rates members of Congress based on votes on 20 environmental bills in the Senate and 18 in the House.
Rep. Christopher Shays, R-4, scored 78 percent, down from his 2003-04 score of 87 percent, while Democratic Sens. Christopher Dodd and Joseph Lieberman scored 90 percent and 70 percent respectively.
"I believe we will not have a world to live in if we continue our neglectful ways," Shays said in a statement after reviewing his score. "This belief has driven me to advocate and vote for legislation that focuses on conservation rather than consumption." Although Shays' score declined overall, it was well above the average for all House Republicans, which was 11 percent.
The league praised Shays for his solid voting record "on behalf of the environment, health and quality of life of Connecticut families."
"In particular, we appreciate his leadership on clean, forward-looking energy solutions, including his recently introduced bill which helps reduce our dependence on oil and protect consumers," said Tiernan Sittenfeld, the league's legislative director.
Of the 18 House bills the league used to rate the members, Shays was absent from two votes and voted twice in a manner the league deemed negative for the environment, according to the report. The two missed votes also counted negatively toward his score. Dodd, in a statement from his office, said that he "believes that protecting our environment should be a top priority" but that "sadly there are too many in Washington that fail to realize that." Lieberman, who scored higher than his 2003-04 score of 56 percent, also was penalized for not voting. Casey Aden-Wansburry, Lieberman's communications director, said in a written statement that Lieberman's " 2005 score was lower than usual because of several votes he was forced to miss for family reasons. " Lieberman is still a "leader" when it comes to the environment, said Patty Pendergast of the Connecticut Forest and Park Association.
Tony Massaro, the league's senior vice president for political affairs, said the group "cast an unbiased eye" on every member of Congress after a congressional session "in which many of our core environmental laws were under attack."
One of the league's main concerns is preventing drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and Sittenfeld, in a press release, commended Lieberman for his "tireless leadership in successfully fighting multiple efforts to drill in the Arctic Refuge."
Moreover, the league heavily criticized Congress for the passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, a bill that sets guidelines for policies than can help determine energy prices in America. The league, in a press release, called the legislation the "most anti-environmental bill signed into law in recent memory," saying it "fails to protect consumers in any way from rising energy prices."
Agreeing with the league, Curt Johnson, the senior attorney and program director for the Connecticut Fund for the Environment, said in a telephone interview that the Republican Party "as a whole has turned its back almost entirely on the environmental agenda." While he noted the great amount of progress the federal government has made over the past 30 years, Johnson said that there is still a great amount that needs to be accomplished.
Rice Stirs Skepticism in Budget Committee Hearing
WASHINGTON, Feb. 16-- "You can mark me down as a skeptic," said Senator Ken Conrad, D-N.D., to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as she testified at a Senate Budget Committee hearing on Thursday morning.
Conrad, who was extremely critical of Rice's argument that there has been progress in Iraq, said that $30 billion of "American taxpayer money has already been dedicated to the task, so the American people have been very generous already."
Senator Judd Gregg, R-N.H., the chairman of the committee, was the only other senator present for most of the hearing. Gregg did not echo Conrad's skepticism but instead asked if Rice believed that the amount of money budgeted was enough.
"You're one of the few secretaries that comes before this committee who's had significant increases in your budget," Gregg said. He asked if Rice could explain how the department was going to use the money and whether the significant increase was enough.
Rice said that the State Department would do its part to make sure that the dollars are well spent. However, she said, the United States was not meeting diplomatic needs and there were more positions that were needed in many of the Latin American, Chinese and Indian posts.
"I promise you we're going to be looking to squeeze out every dollar that we can, but right now the demand outstrips the supply of even significant increases that we've had because I think we've recognized the challenges before us," the secretary said.
Conrad said: "I'm very concerned that we're going to be asked for boatloads of additional funding. There's an enormous challenge in the Middle East, we also face big challenges in our own Midwest ,and I say to you that this. doesn't look good to me."
U.S. taxpayer dollars have been put toward modernizing the infrastructure of Iraq, Rice said, citing the increased capacity in that country for water and sewerage
"We can improve capacity, that's great," Conrad said, but at the end of the day what people cared about was having actual water and sewerage facilities.
"We don't want our foreign assistance program to be a kind of permanent dependency for countries," Rice said. "We really want them to be able to take on their own problems."
"I think the secretary made a very strong case for what they were doing," Gregg said in an interview after the hearing. The senator said Rice made a legitimate point, and if the United States were able to produce a functioning market-oriented democracy in Iraq, that "will undermine the Islamic fundamentalist movement throughout the region."
Gregg said countries like Iran who are running governments that counter democracy "will find themselves under a lot of pressure from their own people to pursue the same course as Iraq has pursued, with liberties and democracies and women getting freedom and having the vote."
"We need to be successful in Iraq and produce a successful democracy there, and we're well down the road to accomplishing that," Gregg said.
###
Johnson, Other Moderate House Republicans Assert Their Agenda
By Sara Hatch
WASHINGTON, Feb. 16-Rep. Nancy Johnson, R-Conn., called Thursday for turning the health care industry from an "illness treatment system" to a "health preventive system."
Johnson, who chairs the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, proposed greater implementation of technology in health care and stressed that new advances go hand in hand with lowering costs.
"If we can manage disease more effectively, we can keep people out of hospitals and emergency rooms, which are the high-cost venues, and we can, using far fewer resources, enable people to have healthier lives," Johnson said.
Johnson spoke at a press conference called by the Republican Main Street Partnership, a group of more than 60 centrist Republican Senate and House members and governors to discuss its 2006 legislative agenda.
Johnson stressed that new technology can help physicians to better understand patient medical histories and thus provide better treatment.
Other issues on the Main Street Partnership agenda were education, ethics, high technology and innovation, and fiscal policy.
The group, in a statement, called for greater initiatives to bring math and science graduates back into the classroom as teachers, echoing a theme of President Bush's Jan. 31 State of the Union speech.
Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., a member of the partnership's board, said this year's agenda would also include continued work with stem cell research. In 2005, House Main Street Republicans helped overturn restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. The legislation allows for funding for research on frozen embryos donated by couples who no longer need them for fertility treatments.
Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., the partnership president, responded to a question on the vulnerability of moderates in their districts, saying that because there are generally large numbers of Democrats among their constituents, "we sort of run scared all the time."
###
