Andrea Batista Schlesinger

Bringing Home Report Cards: What As, Bs, and Cs Say About Congress

Sometimes it seems like change in Washington is something that crawls along, moving onward at a turtle-like pace. Legislation gets stuck in committees, and it can take months or even years to turn into a bill that both chambers of Congress and the President can agree on. Some members of Congress have been in office for decades -- Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Rep. John Dingell of Michigan are leading the pack, with about a half century of Congressional service each.

But, as the recently-released grades on DMI's middle class scorecard show, change does happen in Washington. Two legislators, for example, managed to move from the bottom of the class to the top. Both Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia and Rep. Colin Peterson of Minnesota received an F in 2005 and an A+ in 2007 for their support of middle-class issues. And although Rahall and Peterson exhibited the most dramatic change, they weren't the only ones bringing home better grades. Republican Frank LoBiondo of New Jersey went from an F to an A, Senators Barack Obama and Debbie Stabenow moved from a C to an A+, and Senator Bill Nelson pulled up his grade from an C to a A.

The grades were assigned to every member of Congress based on their votes on legislation that would have a significant impact on the current and aspiring middle class. Each member of Congress received a letter grade. Taken as a whole, these 535 grades lead to some interesting -- and sometimes surprising -- conclusions.

Moving up. Both parties in both chambers of Congress improved their grades since the last middle-class scorecard, which covered the 2005 legislative session. More than three times more Senate Democrats received As this year compared to 2005. And whereas in 2005 nearly every House Republican earned a failing grade, approximately one in five House Republicans received a C or better in 2007.

Reversing the bell-curve. Grades were clustered at the high and low end of the scale. Nearly half of the House and a third of the Senate received a grade of either A (90%) or A+ (a perfect score). Yet beyond that point grades dropped off quickly: few legislators earned Bs, Cs, or Ds, while a third of the House and 39% of the Senate failed completely.

Elections matter. When seats changed hands, middle-class constituents saw dramatically different performance from their new senators. For example, Senator Mike DeWine, who received an F in 2005, was replaced by Sherrod Brown, who received an A+ in 2007. A similar story played out in Pennsylvania, where Rick Santorum, who received an F in 2005 was replaced by Robert Casey, who brought home an A.

Voting wrong on trade. Overall, the Democrats were looking good until it came to a trade bill on Peru, where Senate Democrats earned a failing grade and House Democrats narrowly pulled a C. The bill itself was the product of negotiation between Congressional leadership and the White House, which resulted in some reforms meant to reduce the legislation’s negative impact on the middle class. While this tinkering was apparently enough to win the votes for passage, it was not sufficient to redeem a deal which, like NAFTA and CAFTA before it, creates incentives to move U.S. jobs overseas and puts downward pressure on the wages of American workers. In this case, the legislators who bucked the party leadership to oppose the bill deserve credit for championing the interests of the current and aspiring middle class.

On the whole, Congress squeaked by with a passing grade in 2007, but there is considerable room for improvement. Just 62% of Representatives and 56% of Senators received a C or better. While this middle-class record is far better than the first term of the 109th Congress, the millions of Americans striving to attain—or hold onto—a middle-class standard of living deserve more from their elected representatives. Overall, all these As, Bs, and Cs show that while change is possible in our nation's capital, Congress still has a ways to go.

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Posted at 6:55 AM, Mar 18, 2008 in TheMiddleClass.org
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