according to the Drum Major Institute, if you average their newly released 2007 grades with earlier ones:
- A+
- A
- B
- A
- A+
- C
Obama received a poor grade in 2005 for two votes. First, he voted for H.R. 6, the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The Drum Major Institute commented:
The most startling thing about this legislation is what it does not do. In the first place, the 1,700-page multi-billion dollar bill fails to help middle-class consumers squeezed by high gas and fuel costs. The rollback in public safety protections also puts middle-class families at risk, for example by exempting oil and gas companies from the provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act when these companies inject carcinogenic chemicals into the ground. At the same time, the deregulation of public utilities exposes the middle class to a different kind of risk: stemming from increased consolidation of utilities that could raise electric rates and manipulate energy markets. What the bill does do is provide massive taxpayer subsidies – to the tune of $85.1 billion dollars – for some of the world’s most profitable corporations, so that, among other things, they can drill on public land while paying the public less, ultimately leaving middle-class families to pick up a bigger share of the cost of public services. Finally, although the legislation comes at a time of overwhelming scientific evidence about the dangers of global warming and increased concern about the nation’s dependence on foreign oil, it does very little to address either problem, neglecting to even increase fuel efficiency standards for cars.
The Union of Concerned Scientists commented:
Congress chose to largely follow the path of a 19th century fossil-fueled past instead of crafting an energy bill for the 21st century that would lead us to a clean energy future. The Union of Concerned Scientists opposed the bill because it fails to reduce our dependence on oil, fails to address global warming, fails to reduce home heating and gasoline prices, fails to significantly increase the deployment of renewable energy and actually increases the threat of nuclear terrorism.
Obama also voted for S. 5, the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005. The Drum Major Institute commented:
While moving lawsuits from state to federal courts may seem harmless enough, in effect it will prevent many middle-class Americans injured by defective products, manipulated by deceptive marketing, or discriminated against by unfair employment practices from ever being able to hold corporate wrongdoers accountable. As a result, the threat of lawsuits will be less of a deterrent to corporations that engage in deceptive or discriminatory practices or seek to cut corners by skimping on product safety. Moving state cases to the federal courts is particularly harmful because it is state judges, not the federal judiciary, that are most familiar with the state consumer protection laws under which wrongdoers are sued. As a result, federal judges usually won’t certify cases based on state law, which effectively prevents even the most legitimate cases from ever being heard if they are forced into federal court. That means ordinary citizens have lost an important means of getting recourse to the laws their democratically-elected state legislators passed. To make matters worse, the federal courts are increasingly stacked with judges hostile to consumer and workers’ rights. What’s more, the federal courts are already overburdened, struggling to cope in a timely manner with the caseload already before them. Further clogging the federal system with state cases may slow down everyone’s access to justice. Finally, the “rights” guaranteed to plaintiffs by this Act, such as greater scrutiny for cases in which settlement terms cause plaintiffs to suffer a net loss, don’t actually provide as much new protection as it appears because they primarily duplicate already-existing provisions of the rules of civil procedure. Although provisions reining in low-value coupon settlements are positive, they don’t warrant the bill’s other very harmful provisions.
The Consumer Federation of America commented:
Congress should seek to hold negligent wrongdoers accountable for their actions. Yet this bill does just the opposite: it places obstacles to accountability by providing fewer incentives for companies to keep their products safe and their actions fair and by creating mechanisms to delay and ultimately deny justice to injured consumers.
If the Drum Major Institute examined committee votes then Obama’s grade might have been lower, based on his actions regarding S. 256, the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention And Consumer Protection Act Of 2005. The Harper’s article “Barack Obama Inc.” and an Obama’s friend sum him up:
In one of his earliest votes, Obama joined a bloc of mostly conservative and moderate Senate Democrats who helped pass a G.O.P.-driven class-action “reform” bill. The bill had been long sought by a coalition of business groups and was lobbied for aggressively by financial firms, which constitute Obama’s second biggest single bloc of donors.
Although The Bond Market Association didn’t lobby directly on the legislation, [Mike] Williams [vice president for legislative affairs at The Bond Market Association] took note of Obama’s vote. “He’s a Democrat, and some people thought he’d do whatever the trial lawyers wanted, but he didn’t do that,” he said. “That’s a testament to his character.” Obama has voted on one bill that was of keen interest to Williams’s members: last year’s hotly contested bankruptcy bill, which made filing for bankruptcy more difficult and gives creditors more recourse to recover debts. Obama voted against the bill, but Williams was pleased that he did side with The Bond Market Association position on a number of provisions. Most were minor technical matters, but he also opposed an important amendment, which was defeated, that would have capped credit-card interest rates at 30 percent. “He studied the issue,” Williams said. “Some assumed he would just go along with consumer advocates, but he voted with us on several points. He understood the issue. He wasn’t closed-minded. A lot of people found that very refreshing.”
Not that all this substance will have any effect on some progressives’ “against their interests” love for Obama.
