Vote Kids, a 501(c)(4) “devoted to making children a political priority, not a political afterthought” has released a 2009 Senate Scorecard based on its interpretation of the voting records of our Senators and how it affects our Nation’s children.

There’s room to differ on the methodology; the ranking breaks fairly cleanly on partisan lines. Of the 33 perfect scores of 100 for instance, all were Democrats and no Republicans. The highest scoring Republicans were relative outliers - Susan Collins and Olympia Snow of my home state of Maine scored 75 and 67 respectively - and Republicans accounted for all of the zeros.

Vote Kids analyzes a set of 12 votes largely as a function of funding - for instance the Economic Stimulus Package - American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is interpreted as a vote for kids due to earmarks for medicaid, education programs, IDEA funding among others. Similarly, a vote for the Equal Pay for Equal Work - Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is interpreted as a vote for kids to the extent that kids have mothers and a law that benefits mothers presumably benefits the kids, particularly in single-mother families. Plausible, but not as direct as the quantification might lead one to believe. In one sense that’s expected of a scorecard of federal legislators; a much larger proportional impact on children comes from state rather than federal law and our federalist system limits the impact federal legislation can have to areas of spending and taxation. In another sense it raises fundamental questions about how to evaluate the impact of legislative choices on children - funding is necessary and there isn’t nearly enough of it - (1) for the sake of the children (2) for the social and economic benefit of society that invests in its next generation.

• Website: Vote Kids

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