2024 Scorecard Report: Overview

Background on the National Environmental Scorecard

The nonprofit League of Conservation Voters (LCV) has published a National Environmental Scorecard every Congress since 1970, the year it was founded by leaders of the environmental movement following the first Earth Day. LCV believes our earth is worth fighting for because everyone has a right to clean air, water, lands, and a safe, healthy community.

This edition of the National Environmental Scorecard provides objective, factual information about the most important environmental legislation considered and the corresponding voting records of all members of the second session of the 118th Congress. This Scorecard represents the consensus of experts from more than 20 respected environmental, environmental justice, and conservation organizations who selected the key votes on which members of Congress should be scored.

LCV scores votes on the most important issues of the year that have environmental impacts, including energy, climate change, public health, environmental and racial justice, worker protection, democracy, public lands and wildlife conservation, and spending for environmental programs. The votes included in this Scorecard presented members of Congress with a real choice and help distinguish which legislators are working for environmental protection. Except in rare circumstances, the Scorecard excludes consensus action on the environment and issues on which no recorded votes occurred.

Dedicated environmentalists and national leaders volunteer their time to identify and research crucial votes. We extend special thanks to our Board of Directors, Accountability & Endorsements Committee, and Scorecard Advisory Committee for their valuable input.

Overview of the 2024 National Environmental Scorecard

For two years in a row, House Republican leadership embraced chaos, their polluter allies and most extreme members, resulting in the least productive Congress in recent history – all at the cost of our environment, health, and economic wellbeing.

Throughout 2024, Congress continued the trends of 2023, allowing uncertainty and manufactured crises to grind productivity to a halt. Over and over again, House leadership handed power to the most extreme members of their caucus, whose radical appropriations riders and messaging provisions made must-pass legislation unpalatable to their own caucus. Four times, leadership pulled bills from the House floor because they were too extreme for their own party. Meanwhile, the Senate continued moving strong judicial nominees forward and worked towards bipartisan agreement on government funding.

While Congress failed to act, people across the country faced the worsening impacts of the climate crisis. Throughout 2024, which was the hottest year on record for the second year in a row, communities experienced deadly heat waves, apocalyptic wildfires, record-breaking hurricanes that damaged coastal and inland areas, and catastrophic tornadoes and winter storms. It was another staggeringly expensive year for damages from climate change-fueled extreme weather events, with 27 disasters each costing over a billion dollars – in total, nearly $200 billion. And 2025 commenced with horrific wildfires in Los Angeles, leveling whole sections of the megacity. As a result of climate change-fueled damages, in many parts of the country, homeowners saw insurance prices skyrocket or coverage became unavailable, as insurance companies cut and ran to reduce their climate change-fueled financial risks.

House Republican leadership created turmoil and disarray in basic functions that should have been straightforward, like funding the federal government and providing relief from disasters. Congress narrowly avoided a number of government shutdowns as House Republicans attempted to pass bills so extreme that they splintered their own caucus.

Extreme Republicans pushed for hundreds of amendments that undermined protections for people and the planet, making up 11 of 33 included House votes in the 2024 Scorecard. There were votes to:

• block air pollution limits for cars, trucks and power plants,
• stop support for domestic manufacturing,
• freeze funding for affordable clean energy projects,
• eliminate Endangered Species Act requirements for the military,
• end environmental justice programs,
• block efforts to make voting more accessible, and
• require more damaging, environmental law-exempt border wall construction.

In some instances, they paired inadequate government funding bill text with extreme policy riders and provisions, including those that target people because of their gender, race and other identities — and many of these failed to pass.

As they faced stalemates, House Republican leadership turned to the Congressional Review Act (CRA) as a tool that required less consensus, yet if successful would have permanently repealed environmental, worker, and community protections. We included one House CRA vote, though many of the appropriations bills amendments we included were similar. Senate Republicans used the CRA as well to force votes to undermine similar protections, accounting for three of the eight votes scored last year.

Ultimately, both chambers voted on CRAs that diminished consumer choice and peoples’ protections, which would have given more power and leeway to industry had it not been for President Biden’s veto. The CRA is an extreme and blunt tool that anti-environmental members of Congress have used to permanently strip away protections for our environment, communities, wildlife, and natural heritage. While Congress attempted to block rules limiting tailpipe pollution and targeting government support to domestically-manufactured components, the president vetoed these actions.

Though the Senate did not see a large number of votes in 2024, leadership continued to confirm well-qualified federal judges for lifetime appointments. These judges reflect both a diversity of racial, economic, and identity backgrounds and a variety of professional experiences, particularly in public interest lawyering. The senate approved 235 new judges, more than any other president and Senate in a four year period. These judges will provide long-term value to our country because the laws that protect our environment and democracy need judges with a variety of perspectives and experiences that reflect people in the U.S. and who will uphold and enforce those laws.

The Farm Bill, which is usually a bipartisan priority, was another victim of Republican failure to accomplish normal legislative business. Republicans continued to unsuccessfully attempt to raid climate smart agriculture, conservation, and clean energy funding appropriated by the affordable clean energy plan. Congress extended expiring programs’ authorizations for the second year in a row, through the end of 2025.

Finally, in a year defined by chaos and inaction, Congress did pass a few bipartisan bills, including to reduce oversight of nuclear energy, increase exemptions to environmental review for some drilling for advanced geothermal energy, and reauthorize the Water Resources Development Act and the American Conservation Enhancement Act. Given environmental group’s range of opinions on these bills, as well as the lopsided nature of the approvals of the reauthorizations, we did not include them in this year’s Scorecard.

Looking ahead to the 119th Congress, with a shift in power in the Senate and White House to anti-environmental and anti-democracy leadership, recent progress and bedrock laws will be at risk. We will continue to defend both and hold elected officials accountable to their positions, as we have for over five decades.