It’s High Time for Congress to Represent the Nation: Political Corruption in America (Part 3).
Our system of congressional representation makes it possible for members of Congress to accept most “soft corruption” benefits without losing their jobs (see discussion in Part 1).[1] The popular solutions for controlling soft corruption, such as increased regulation of campaign finances, etc., will not work (see discussion in Part 2). A successful attack on political corruption must get to the root of the problem–the representation system. We need to give our congressmen and women new, broader interests to represent. Here’s why.
Leading founder James Madison was right: there will always be factions (today often called “special interest groups”) in politics.[2] They cannot be legislated out of existence. Madison saw that as a result, factions have to be balanced against each other by the political system to protect freedom and ensure good national policies. But our representation system does not require individual Congressmen and women to balance factions, particularly ones based on economic or geographic conflicts of interest. They need only to represent the core economic and political interests of their districts–which are an important kind of faction–to remain in office indefinitely. These local factions are another fundamentally important kind of money in politics. That is the kind of money in politics we need to control, but we can only do that by changing representation.
To simplify discussion, let’s assume that the Constitution would permit us to change representation in any way the majority of Americans thought would be desirable without amendments.
Under modern circumstances, Madison’s views on factions suggest that representation changes are strongly desirable. The current representation system has costs that clearly outweigh its benefits.[3] The first of these is that it enables Congress to be bought through soft corruption (see Part 1). But surprisingly, that is its least important cost. The most important cost is that national policy loses out to factionalism. Here are some examples.
Members of Congress continue to support, often blindly, the world’s largest military-industrial establishment.[4] That establishment in turn encourages American involvement in politically costly and economically unaffordable wars. It receives support because it is championed by Congressmen whose districts have as their core interests jobs of defense workers, military base spending, and profits of defense contractors. [5] We have a remarkably expensive and inefficient healthcare system compared to other major countries because Congressmen want to protect the interests of their important constituents or contributors in the healthcare and insurance industries.[6] Members of Congress often oppose environmental reforms needed to prevent toxic pesticide water pollution because farmers or agribusiness companies in their districts think reform would hurt their profits. These types of self-interested, parochial policies are all results of our current representation system.[7]
One of the reasons why most Americans pay their closest attention to presidential races is that the president is chosen by the nation to serve and protect its interests as a whole. Why not have Senators and House of Representatives members who have similarly broad responsibilities? The main reasons why Congressional districts were originally geographically compact and represented small numbers of people–travel and communications difficulties–are irrelevant now. Modern technology and transportation make nearly any desirable representation change entirely feasible. Here are some suggestions for change consistent with Madison’s views.
What if we were to expand the Senate by doubling the total number of Senators? We could then elect some Senators from regions rather than from individual states, and elect many others from the United States as a whole. This would give the Senate as a whole a far more national perspective than its members currently have, and result in decisions that are far more likely to be in the national interest rather than having each Senator elected simply to protect local interests.
We could expand the House of Representatives for similar reasons. We could create congressional districts that represent a far broader range of interests than they do now. Some House members could represent parts of more than one state or region (for example, a watershed), some of them could represent both urban and rural areas, some could represent both poor and wealthy communities, and some of them could represent entire states. These new districts would require Congressmen to balance factions against each other far more often, which would serve the national interest. It would also cut down on their ability to accept soft corruption money without risking their jobs.
Representation reform would dilute the influence of individual states in Congress somewhat. But like it or not, the modern era is fundamentally different from the world in 1789. Then America was protected from European wars and foreign competition by vast oceans that took months to cross. Today, the oceans provide very limited protection from either. Americans live in a global economy, and we increasingly face global challenges such as the rise of China. If we want our country to survive and prosper in a dangerous world, it is imperative that we base future American policies on our national interests, not on parochial state or local interests.
We can only expect politicians to make decisions in the national interest when they are elected to represent it–and lose their jobs if they don’t. Changing representation will require constitutional amendments. Amending the Constitution is quite difficult. But that simply means we have to choose our path forward carefully. We could struggle for years to change it in a futile effort to “take money out of politics” through campaign finance amendments. Or we could work to change representation to control soft corruption and at the same time make Congress serve the national interest. Our existing representation system played a fundamental part in creating an effective national government in 1789. Unfortunately, it no longer works well. It is high time we changed it. [8]
Notes
[1] “Soft corruption” means various legally permissible financial benefits made available to government officials to influence their behavior, such as targeted campaign contributions, post-employment agreements, speaking fees, etc.
[2] See The Federalist Nos. 10 and 51. (The Federalist is available in various editions; a superb one is J.R. Pole, ed., The Federalist (Hackett Publishing Company, 2005). In Federalist No. 10, Madison says: “By a faction I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” (ibid., p. 48).
[3] Under our current representation system there are two Senators per state, each of whom has one equal vote. As of 2010, Wyoming Senators represented about 550,000 people; California Senators represented about 36 million. See https://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/ranks/rank01.html (data as of July 2009) (accessed 10/01/2014). Each of 435 House members now represents roughly 700,000 people. When the House was last expanded, each member represented about 200,000 people. For a very interesting discussion of the history of the size of the House and the reasons for it, see http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/22/1203840/-Why-do-we-have-a-435-member-House (accessed 10/1/2014).
[4] Only about twenty percent of members of Congress are veterans today, a far lower percentage than fifty years ago. The fact that so many members of Congress have no military experience may well account at least in part for the fact that Congress in recent years so often abdicates to the White House and the Pentagon on military and foreign policy. Of course, this is not suggest that members of Congress need to be veterans–but it is certainly to suggest that veterans often have a much better idea of what wars are really like, and what they really cost us in both financial and human terms, than most nonveterans do. For the relevant data, see http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/11/11/the-long-decline-of-veterans-in-congress-in-4-charts/ (accessed 10/1/2014).
[5] Following is a link to President Dwight Eisenhower’s powerful 1960 speech warning of the danger that the military-industrial complex would harm American politics: http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html (accessed 10/01/2014). In real dollar terms (that is, taking inflation into account), defense spending has gone up more than 50 percent since Eisenhower spoke (as of about 2012). See http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/historicals (Table 4.1, adjusted for inflation). As of 2007, Rebecca Thorpe wrote, “defense contracting constitutes a multi-billion dollar industry—in excess of $150 billion in the 2006 fiscal year. The immense size of the defense industry and its impact on GDP and employment suggests that the commercial defense sector exerts an even more substantial impact over Congress members’ priorities than military personnel. Defense procurement and R&D contribute an estimated 3.6 million U.S. jobs in the private sector.” Rebecca U. Thorpe, “The Role of Economic Reliance in Defense Procurement Contracting,” (2007) at 7, http://www.gvpt.umd.edu/apworkshop/thorpe2007.pdf (accessed 10/01/2014). For the final published version of Thorpe’s article, see ibid., “The Role of Economic Reliance in Defense Procurement Contracting,” American Politics Research , July 2010, vol. 38 no. 4, 636-675. Professor Thorpe has also a new book on this topic, see Rebecca U. Thorpe, The American Warfare State: The Domestic Politics of Military Spending (University of Chicago Press, 2014).
[6] For comparisons of the cost and performance of United States healthcare system with that in the major European companies and Japan, see http://www.oecd.org/unitedstates/49084355.pdf ; http://www.commonwealthfund.org/~/media/Files/Publications/Issue%20Brief/2011/Jul/1532_Squires_US_hlt_sys_comparison_12_nations_intl_brief_v2.pdf. (accessed 10/1/2014); and http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/health-costs-how-the-us-compares-with-other-countries/ (accessed 10/1/2014).
[7] A subsequent post will provide extensive data from a study of the Senate that proves this point.
[8] With thanks to Mary Van Cleve for thoughtful comments on Parts 1-3 of this essay.
Modern Politics and Society 