The Good, Mediocre and Ugly of the Black Caucus

The second biannual Congressional Black Caucus Monitor Report Card shows that a handful of “derelicts” in the CBC remain far outside of the African American political consensus – worthless to the Black constituents that voted them into office.

Yet 81 percent of the 42 African American House members (34) scored 80 percent or higher on the watchdog group’s index of “bright line” issues, evidence that the corporate-financed rot that became dramatically manifest in 2005 has not infected most of a caucus that has long claimed to be “the conscience of the congress.”

“CBC Monitor is a challenge both to the CBC themselves but also Black America to get more active in making the American political system function in its benefit,” said Jared Ball, a founder of the CBC Monitor. “Our report cards are just that: scheduled, timely assessments meant to criticize and reward performance.”

View CBC Report Card Chart

‘Somebody’s watching you…’

At the top of the Honor Society, with perfect scores in both the first and second halves of the 109th Congress, were: John Conyers (MI), Barbara Lee (CA), John Lewis (GA), Cynthia McKinney (GA), Eleanor Holmes Norton (DC), Charles Rangel (NY), Robert Scott (VA), and Maxine Waters (CA). They are the most brightly shining lights of progressivism in the CBC.

Fourteen other members registered an “A” on the CBC Monitor scale, with scores of 90 to 95: Donna Christian-Christensen (VI), Chaka Fattah (PA), Eddie Bernice Johnson (TX), Major Owens (NY), Stephanie Tubbs-Jones (OH), Diane Watson (CA), Melvin Watt (NC), Emanuel Cleaver (MO), Al Green (TX), Julia Carson (IN), William “Lacy” Clay (MO), James Clyburn (SC), and Carolyn Kilpatrick (MI).

However, despite their 95% combined Spring-Fall scores, Reps. Cleaver and Green were denied Honor Society status because of their votes for the GOP’s infamous Bankruptcy bill, in the Spring of 2005 – a cardinal sin, by the CBC Monitor’s reckoning (and BC‘s, too).

Grouped like dregs at the bottom of the Caucus barrel are five members whose conduct reveals them as tools for parties outside the Black community: Albert Wynn (MD) 55%, Artur Davis (AL) 40%, David Scott (GA) 35%, Sanford Bishop (GA) 32.5%, and Harold Ford Jr. (TN) 32.5. Ford was also the lowest rated congressperson in the CBC Monitor’s September, 2005 Report Card (at 5%). However, perhaps looking over his shoulder at his base as he runs for the U.S. Senate this year, Ford improved his Fall score by 55 points over his abysmal Spring tally. But he remains a “Derelict” of the worst order.

All five “Derelicts” are members of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and/or Blue Dog Democrats.

The hapless three members rated “Underachievers” by the CBC Monitor, are: G.K. Butterfield (NC) 75% “C”, William Jefferson (LA) 70% “C”, and Gregory Meeks (NY) 65% “D.” Meeks and Jefferson climbed out of their earlier “Derelict” status in the second half of the session, but Butterfield managed to slime his way downward from a previous “A” – the worst showing of any newcomer to the CBC.

(U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) was not included in the second CBC Monitor Report Card, because no corresponding “bright line” issues came up in his chamber of Congress in the latter part of the year. He retains his earlier grade of “C” – an “Underachiever.”)

‘Every step you take, every move you make…’

“Many if not most of the Caucus never expected a group of African Americans to call them on their own performances,” said the CBC Monitor’s Leutisha Stills. Among those who might be most surprised by their “B” scores (80-89%) may be 5 of the 12 congresspersons who lost points for voting in favor of a bill that would bar non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from using public housing project offices for voter registration activities.

The 39 CBC members who cast votes on the Federal Housing Reform Act split, 27 to 12, over a provision prohibiting participation by non-profit housing agencies in voter registration and other non-partisan electoral activities. Unlike most points of contention in the Caucus, support for this provision of an otherwise popular bill cut across ideological lines. All three members of the usually progressive Black Chicago delegation (Danny Davis, Bobby Rush, and Jesse Jackson Jr.) voted to keep non-profit voter registration activists out of public housing project offices, as did Bennie Thompson (MS), Elijah Cummings (MD), Gwen Moore (WI), Corrine Brown (FL), the underachieving William Jefferson (LA) and G.K. Butterfield (NC), and derelicts Artur Davis (AL), Albert Wynn (MD), and Harold Ford Jr. Sanford Bishop (GA), a derelict, failed to vote, which the CBC Monitor counted as amounting to a vote in favor of the successful GOP-led provision.

It seems apparent that some CBC members’ decisions on public housing voter registration activity were based on local exigencies – who was organizing against whom – in their districts. However, the CBC Monitor explained to The Black Commentator that it considers access to the vote a “bright line” item, and the more the better. It should also be noted that none of the “Honor Society” CBC members voted to exclude NGOs from public housing offices. (At the same time, a number of B-rated legislators would have been ranked among the “Honor Society” had they voted differently on the public housing measure.)

Nevertheless, the CBC Monitor is open to argument from congresspersons who believe they have gotten a raw deal, or that the motivation for their vote was misunderstood.

“Where furthering our issues in congress is challenging for the Caucus, we hope that our work will encourage our representatives to express any challenges being faced to their constituents, to dialogue and garner grassroots support there in order to raise their voices in Congress,” said Suzette Gardner, a CBC Monitor founder. “Representing our interest in Congress is not a one-man/woman show and that is the point of our efforts here at CBC Monitor.”

In mid-January the CBC Monitor sent e-mails to each member of the Caucus, their legislative aides and communications directors, asking that they inform the Monitor of any CBC legislative initiatives that were bottled up in Republican-controlled committees. The CBC Monitor is well aware that an array of bills never see the light of day, flushed down the GOP toilet. But the CBC Monitor seeks to give credit to those congresspersons who submit legislation, year after year, in the face of unremitting racist and rightwing hostility.

To date, only U.S. Virgin Islands Delegate Donna Christian-Christiansen (Honor Society, “A”) has responded in detail to CBC Monitor’s queries about bills their offices were attempting to push through committee.

Eyeballing Our Representatives

The CBC Monitor was created in the wake of a disastrous performance by more than a third of the Congressional Black Caucus in the first half of 2005. In what less than a decade ago would have been unthinkable, 15 members – 37 percent of the Caucus – voted for one or more GOP bills on Bankruptcy, the Estate Tax, and Energy, with vastly harmful effects on the Black community. As BC wrote in our April 28, 2005 Cover Story:

“A crack has opened in the historical Black continuum. 2005 will be recorded as the year that the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) came apart at the seams, the victim of an unprecedented rightwing money and media offensive in Black America, rank treachery by a hardcore handful of Caucus members, and the indiscipline and gross irresponsibility of many more.

“The CBC’s collective failure to stand for its constituents and the struggle-birthed legacy of African Americans is also, ironically, a product of historical Black political practice and instinct: the imperative toward unity, which has up to now been the salvation and defining characteristic of the African American polity. Black progressives, seeking unity above all else, have allowed the Congressional Black Caucus (and other Black institutions) to be neutered by the machinations of a small and unrepresentative group of corporate collaborators who are paid specifically to create the illusion of vast new fractures in African American public opinion.”