Progress Illinois

In February, the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law released a congressional scorecard grading federal legislators on their support of anti-poverty policies in 2008. While plenty of Illinois Democrats scored well (eight earned an A+), their Republican colleagues fared far worse.

This month, the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy issued its own progress report on issues affecting the middle class, examining a wide variety of votes from the previous year -- including the G.I. Bill, the automaker and Wall Street bailouts, SCHIP expansion, the Bush administration's initial stimulus bill, and several others. Not surprisingly, the Illinois GOP scored poorly on this front as well (last year's grades appear in parentheses):

Mark Kirk: C (C)
Don Manzullo: C (F)
Judy Biggert: D (F)
Tim Johnson: C (C)
Peter Roskam: D (F)
John Shimkus: C (F)

The Democrats held their own, with five legislators scoring A's.

Melissa Bean: B (C)
Jerry Costello: A+ (A+)
Bill Foster: B
Jesse Jackson Jr.: A (A+)
Bobby Rush: B (A+)
Danny Davis: B (A+)
Luis Gutierrez: B (A+)
Phil Hare: A (A+)
Dan Lipinski: A+ (A+)
Jan Schakowsky: A (A+)

So what set Costello and Lipinski above the other "A grade" recipients in DMI's eyes?  They voted against the original Troubled Asset Relief Program bill, which DMI criticized as a "top-down bailout" and "not the action middle class families need."