By analyzing data obtained from OpenSecrets in August, the Action Fund found that 193 House Members (all Republicans) and 39 Senators should be noted as “Dirty Air Villains” because of their votes against clean air protections. Of those 232 voting against clean air, 73 of them represent citizens living in some of the 25 most polluted metro areas in the U.S. On the flip side, 99 members of the House and 43 in the Senate are “Clean Air Heroes” for their support of clean air issues. Put simply, those members who consistently voted against clean air are designated as villains while those who voted for it are heroes.

As for why certain members of Congress would vote against clean air and other for it, just by looking at where some campaign donations come from it’s not too hard to difficult to deduct the reason.

Analysis of the data from OpenSecrets found that House members who have taken more than $100,000 in career campaign contributions from polluters are nearly twice as likely to vote against clean air laws than those who took less than $100,000. In the Senate, those members who took more than $500,000 in career campaign contributions from polluters were up to three times as likely to vote against clean air laws. And while everyone knows money talks in Washington, it’s good to know just how much influence it can have over something so important to our nation’s health as clean air.

“Our analysis reveals the full extent of Big Polluters’ reach into Congress, where some members, especially in the Tea party-influenced House, do not miss a single opportunity to side with the dirty industry, leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves,” said Heather Taylor, director of the NRDC Action Fund.

To see if your representative in Congress is voting in favor of you breathing clean air or not, click on over to the “Who Votes Dirty?” report.

[via Huffington Post and NRDC]

Image Credit: Who Votes Dirty?

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According to a new poll by the Natural Resources Defense Council, three out of four Americans would prefer not to drive if they had public transportation capable of taking them where they needed to go. (Mitt Romney may want to rethink that plan to end federal support for Amtrak.)

Two out of three people polled want the government to improve and expand public transport, with the majority preferring those funds to support new modes of public transit – light rail, buses and trains – instead of highways.

Conducted by a bipartisan team of pollsters from Republican and Democratic backgrounds, the group asked 800 Americans about the current state of American transportation.

“Americans hate traffic and love transit,” said Peter Lehner, the NRDC’s executive director. “Investing in public transportation eases congestion but for too long most federal funding has limited people’s choices, leaving them sitting in traffic.”

As much as the car was once emblematic of so much that is American, many people these days would prefer to take the bus, if only there was a bus to take. Fifty-five percent of Americans want to drive less, but 74 percent say they have no other choice to get from point A to point B. And despite our national loathing for traffic jams, 63 percent would rather address the problem with better public transportation instead of building new roads.

The crucial question is: Are we willing to pay for it? Apparently, yes. In fact, many are willing to overpay for better public transport. Those polled guessed that their states spend an average of 16 percent of their transportation budget on public transport, and want to nearly double that number by bringing the percentage up to 28 percent. In truth, however, over the past three years, the average portion of transportation budgets spent on public transit was just 6.55 percent per state.

Main photo credit: Shutterstock

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