The Rap Sheet on Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Self-Proclaimed “Godfather of Green”

2008 Member of the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) Dirty Dozen

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has spent his political career standing in the way of vital conservation legislation and putting the interests of polluters ahead of the health and well-being of Kentucky’s families. For the dozen years in which he failed to cast a single pro-conservation vote, LCV’s members have voted Mitch McConnell into the Dirty Dozen.

Earlier this year, McConnell sought to obscure his conservation record with a TV ad that refers to the Senator as the “Godfather of Green.” This document highlights the irony of that nickname.

McConnell’s lifetime LCV score of 7% is among the worst in Washington. In the last 14 years, McConnell has cast only two pro-conservation votes. Since becoming his party’s Leader in the Senate, McConnell has served as the chief enforcer for Big Oil and other corporate polluters, leading efforts to derail and weaken legislation that would protect our families and keep America’s land, air and water clean.

McConnell’s Lifetime LCV Scores (visit lcv.org/scorecard for more information)

1985-86: 25%
1987-88: 30%
1989: 30%
1990: 17%
1991: 13%
1992: 17%
1993: 6%
1994: 0%
1995: 0%
1996: 0%
1997: 0%
1998: 0%
1999: 0%
2000: 0%
2001: 0%
2002: 6%
2003: 0%
2004: 0%
2005: 0%
2006: 0%
2007: 7%
Lifetime Average: 7%

The Godfather’s Greatest Hits:

1. Like Hurricane Katrina, last week’s flooding in Kentucky and across the country highlighted the danger posed to life and property by increasingly intense weather patterns linked to global warming. Months before mothers in South Livingston started rowing their children to school and Louisville’s streets were under water, McConnell voted to prevent the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from taking into account the effects of global warming when planning water projects. His vote sought to prevent the men and women who build our dams and levees to ignore serious threats to those vital pieces of infrastructure (HR 1495, vote 166, 05/15/07).

2. Flooding poses additional dangers to our drinking water due to the heavy metals and petroleum products that wash from roadways into the Ohio River and other natural waterways during a storm. McConnell voted to kill a program that would have helped Kentucky communities manage floods and prevent those toxins from reaching our waterways. (HR 3, vote 113, 04/28/05)

3. The Environmental Protection Agency lists 144 contaminated sites in Kentucky, 14 on the National Priorities List (Superfund) of the most hazardous sites in the country. The Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant and the Distler Farm site outside of Louisville continue to threaten the well-being of Kentucky families. The Superfund was created in 1980 with the simple idea that polluters, should have to pay to clean up their own messes instead of making taxpayers do it. Unfortunately, the number of sites continues to grow, the trust fund almost empty, and taxpayers are now shouldering more than 80% of the costs. In 2004, McConnell sided with polluters over taxpayers and voted against a bill to make polluters pay their fair share of cleanup costs, putting the cleanup of these sites in Kentucky and thousands around the country at risk. (S. Con. Res. 95, vote 45, 03/11/04)

4. In 2005 and 2006, McConnell twice voted against amendments to help low-income families pay the rising heating costs and to insulate and weatherize their homes. Thankfully, the 2006 amendment passed without McConnell’s vote, and helped thousands of families reduce their gas bills and keep their families warm during the winter. (Senate Budget Amd. 2194, vote 270, 10/26/05; Sen. Amd, vote 34, 03/07/06)

5. In 2007, McConnell led the fight against HR6, a comprehensive energy bill, which increased fuel efficiency standards, reduced America’s dependence on foreign oil, and saved drivers more than $26 billion at the pump. Filibusters orchestrated by McConnell failed to derail the bill, but blocked the transfer of more than $18 billion in tax incentives from Big Oil companies to clean, renewable energy. McConnell voted against clean, renewable, American energy four times on this single bill. This at a time when Kentucky citizens are paying record prices at the pump and oil companies are reporting record profits on Wall St. (HR 6, Senate votes 225, 226, 416, 425)

6. Those 2007 votes were part of a larger pattern. In 2005, McConnell voted against similar legislation to repeal tax breaks for Big Oil and to increase fuel economy (CAFE) standards. (S. Amd 925, vote 156, 06/23/05; S. Amd 902, vote 157, 06/23/05; S 2020, vote 332, 11/17/05)

7. In 2005, McConnell followed the oil company line and denied the threat of global warming. He voted for a motion to kill a “Sense of the Senate” bill that sought only to acknowledge the problem. (Senate Amd 866, vote 149, 06/22/05)

   The Godfather of Greenbacks:  

   • Senator McConnell has accepted more than $580,000 in donations from the oil and gas industry, more than $142,000 this election cycle alone - the same cycle in which he fought to maintain more than $18 billion in tax breaks for the oil industry despite record industry profits. (See #5)
     
     
   • Senator McConnell has accepted more than $300,000 from electric utilities, almost half of that sum, $146,000, during this cycle – the same cycle in which he filibustered in order to remove a common sense renewable electricity standard from the Energy bill. (See #5)

   • Senator McConnell has accepted more than $507,000 from the mining industry, an industry responsible for a large percentage of this country’s Superfund sites. Senator McConnell has resisted all efforts to reform the archaic General Mining Law of 1872 as it continues to give corporate miners free reign to pollute public lands and not pay a single cent in royalties, passing the burden on to the taxpayer. (See #3)

Donation figures provided by the Center for Responsive Politics: Opensecrets.org