WHAT CONGRESS TALKS ABOUT
WHEN THEY TALK ABOUT
POVERTY
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WHAT'S THAT YOU SAY?
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"Poverty in America--poverty--I'm saying the word on the floor of the House: poverty, poverty, poverty. Poverty in America seems to be a word that people get nervous about."
- Nancy Pelosi Democrat (CA-12)
House Minority Leader
In 2013 when members of the House of Representatives spoke about poverty in Congress - how were they talking about it? This project examined the Congressional Record for mentions of the term 'poverty'.
This first section looks at what were the most common WORDS said by each party when addressing an issue in correlation to poverty.
The size of the circle represents the number of statements in which this issue was mentioned. The size of the words is how many times they were said in the statement text.
FOOD
REPUBLICANS
DEMOCRATS
HEALTH
EDUCATION/CHILDREN
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
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THANKS Sunlight Foundations!
LET'S TAKE IT A STEP FURTHER
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What causes poverty? How do you fix it?
These next visualizations show each parties most common TOPICS mentioned in regards to poverty.
REPUBLICANS
The size of the boxes
corresponds with the number
of statements made about
that topic
DEMOCRATS
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WHO IS DOING THE TALKING?
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Even though poverty is a huge national issue not every Representative is talking about it.
Something I noticed was that members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) were the ones doing a lot of the talking
REPUBLICANS made
61 speeches/mentions in the Congressional Record about poverty
DEMOCRATS made
183 speeches/mentions in the Congressional Record about poverty
The CONGRESSIONAL BLACK CAUCUS made 78 of those speeches
REPUBLICANS have 232 seats in the House of Representatives 41 made statements about poverty
DEMOCRATS have 200 seats in the House of Representatives 65 made statements about poverty. The CONGRESSIONAL BLACK CAUCUS were 43 of those Democracts who spoke out about poverty.
Eventhough the Congressional Black Caucus makes up only 9% of the House they made 1/3 of all the speeches about poverty