Arizona earns another low rating when it comes to protecting children

This time, it's the state's Congressional delegation that has let children down.

The Children's Defense Fund Action Council has released its 2007 Congressional scorecard. The scoring was based on 10 key votes each in the House and Senate (the list of votes was slightly different for each chamber.)

Arizona's delegation ended up tied for 44th with Louisiana's.

Hey - at least we beat Nebraska, South Carolina, Idaho, Oklahoma, and Wyoming.

On the other hand, Georgia, Texas and Mississippi beat us, and that's not exactly something to brag about.

By comparison, my old home state of Massachusetts ranked 3rd, with an average score of 97%; the only negative marks were due to absences, not bad votes.


As could be expected, the Arizona delegation split along party lines -

In the House, Democrats Ed Pastor and Raul Grijalva each scored 100%, Gabrielle Giffords 80%, and Harry Mitchell 60%.

On the Republican side, Rick Renzi scored 60%, Trent Franks and John Shadegg scored 10%, and the ever-reliable Jeff Flake earned a big ol' goose egg (he's like Mikey from the Life cereal commercial - he hates *everything.*)

It seems that John Shadegg's 'expertise' on health care doesn't extend to healthy children, only healthy corporate bottom lines. As for Trent Franks, apparently his concern for children stops once they are born.

As for Renzi's 60%, well, you knew that there had to be a real reason that a Republican U.S. Attorney pursued an indictment of a Republican Congressman - I mean, there was no way a Bush appointee would go after a Republican for simple extortion and fraud, right?

:))

And as for Harry Mitchell's 60%, I supposed he can take heart in the high-wattage company he's keeping - Nancy Pelosi was also at 60%, Joe Biden was at 50%, Barack Obama 60%, Hillary Clinton 70%.

Over in the Senate, Jon Kyl scored at 30% and John McCain earned a 10%.

Of course, given that McCain missed 8 of the 10 key votes, maybe his grade should be 'Incomplete.' However, according to the 2006 Scorecard, he made all of the 10 key votes that year, and scored a resounding

10%.

Come November, that's something that parents all over the state might want to think about before they cast a 'favorite son' vote in the general election.

Later!