IS AMERICA REALLY A DEMOCRACY?

Is America Really a Democracy?

Many Americans think of the United States as one of the world’s leading democracies.  In theory, here the people rule.  But in reality, the American constitution was designed in part to prevent majority rule from trampling minority rights.  So the Founders added to the Constitution a series of checks on the popular will, including the Supreme Court, the Senate, the presidential veto, and the Electoral College.  But today, these same institutions prevent the majority will from operating far more often than was originally intended.

The Supreme Court’s tenure is a good example.  Justices are appointed for life.   The longer justices live, the fewer opportunities presidents have to choose new justices, who might alter the Court’s direction.  In 1787, there were competing ideas about justices’ tenure.  Some people thought that justices should serve for twenty-five years, others that they should serve for life.  But there wasn’t much difference then, because life expectancies were far shorter than today.  If a justice was appointed in 1789 in his mid-40s, and had a twenty-five year term, the odds were relatively good that he would die before it ended, so it didn’t make much difference whether his term was twenty-five years or life.  Today, differing terms would have far different effects.  If a justice is appointed in his early 40s, it is reasonable to expect that he or she might well serve at least 40 years.   So the Supreme Court today is far less amenable to popular input than many citizens probably wanted in 1787 or now.  At the same time, in cases such as Bush v. Gore (which decided the 2000 presidential election), the Supreme Court has arrogated to itself decisions the Constitution intended Congress to make.[1]

Another example is the presidential veto.  When it was created, it would typically have taken the votes of congressmen and Senators representing about two-thirds of the American population to override a veto.  Today, political scientists think that there may be times when it would require the votes of Senators representing seventy-five percent, or even a considerably higher percentage, of the population to override a veto. Only a very small fraction of vetoes are successfully overridden.  This means that the presidential veto is now far closer to the monarchical absolute veto advocated by a few Founders rather than a substantial check on the popular will.  Yet we still elect these more powerful presidents even when they fail to receive a popular vote majority because we elect them using the Electoral College.  It becomes more anti-democratic and dangerous with every passing day (for reasons to be explored in a series of subsequent posts).[2]

Congress’ broad lawmaking powers were originally seen as the principal means of expressing the popular will.  Other government branches were given their powers primarily as a means of restraining it.   But since the mid-twentieth century, at least, Congress has increasingly abdicated its authority on issues such as military intervention abroad and control of national defense and foreign policy.  In addition, since World War II, Congress has repeatedly delegated what practically amounts to lawmaking authority to the executive branch without agreeing on clear guidelines for its use.  These developments have substantially decreased Congress’ ability to represent the popular will.  Presidential power has been expanding for decades through regulatory action to fill the vacuum left by Congress’ chronic inability to reach meaningful agreements on legislation. We have moved from congressional government toward government through an imperial presidency.

There is one Congressional institution that is more responsible than any other for Congress’ failure to govern–the Senate “filibuster rule.”  Without getting into details, the effect of the filibuster rule is that ordinary legislation cannot pass the Senate unless at least sixty Senators agree to it.  This means that legislation cannot pass unless it is watered down to make it acceptable to a significant number of Senators in the minority on a legislative issue.  On any issue where the major parties are sharply divided, this means that legislation will not move forward unless the majority permits the minority to exercise a veto on its content.  The filibuster rule can only be defended on the grounds that it is necessary to ensure that minorities are reasonably consulted on legislation.  But why should minorities be able to hamstring progress when the issue is one of legislative policy rather than one that affects fundamental rights (which can be protected in court)?  Isn’t the purpose of electing majorities to give them the authority to govern?  If they choose to do so without addressing minority interests and voters are unhappy about this, they can retaliate at the polls by making a minority into a majority. [3]

The fact that neither Democrats nor Republicans are willing to end the filibuster rule–even though both have at times had the power to do so–shows that it is more important to both parties to continue to have a stranglehold on the entire Congressional legislative process than it is to them to actually govern by passing legislation.   This means that ensuring that they have the ability to protect the status quo–to prevent change–is actually their paramount objective. This means that needless gridlock will persist.  It also means that presidents become more powerful, and so presidential elections become the focus of politics.

America was not intended to be a pure democracy, or even a pure republic.  But it was surely intended by the Founders to be more republican than it is today.  Today, on many important issues, where sixty–or seventy–or even eighty percent of the population clearly wants change to occur, the government does not respond, or responds only when a crisis forces action.  It should come as no surprise that as a result popular support for government institutions has sharply declined over the past several decades.  It is high time for our antiquated constitution to change.[4]

[1] On this, see the brilliant dissent of Mr. Justice Breyer in Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000).

[2]  A very small percentage of presidential vetos have historically been overridden (about 7 percent as of 2004).  Of course, the coalitions that would sustain a veto will depend on the nature of the issue, and on whether the president is willing to trade votes for support or opposition on other legislation.  But today the Senate consists of states so disproportionate in size that if Senators from the top fifteen or so states in population, which together have about two-thirds of the nation’s population, all voted to override a veto, they would not have nearly enough votes to override it, even if their only opponents were the Senators from the seventeen smallest states, which have much less than twenty percent of the population.  Similarly, the populous states would also lose whenever they were opposed by Senators representing only twenty-five percent of the population.  For more information and background on veto procedure, see http://www.archives.gov/legislative/resources/education/veto/background.pdf (accessed 11/30/2014) and Elizabeth Rybicki, “Veto Override Procedure in the House  Senate,” Congressional Research Service report, July 19, 2010.

[3] For the history of the filibuster rule and details of its operation, see Charles Tiefer, Congressional Practice and Procedure:  A Reference, Research and Legislative Guide (Greenwood, 1989).

[4] A number of the points made in this post are discussed in broader context in Sanford Levinson’s perceptive book, Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (And How We the People Can Correct It) (Oxford University Press, 2006), which also considers various reforms.  For another thought-provoking analysis of various possible constitutional changes, see Larry J. Sabato, A More Perfect Constitution: Why the Constitution must be revised:  Ideas to inspire a new generation  (Walker Publishing, New York, 2008).  Note:  Reference here to these books is not intended as an endorsement of their proposed reforms.

WHY SHOULD STATES HAVE EQUAL VOTING POWER IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE?

The United States Constitution provides that the Senate shall be composed of two Senators from each state. This composition was agreed on as a compromise in 1787 between large and small states. Large states wanted Congressional representation to be based either on population or wealth (or some combination). Small states wanted equal representation in Congress. The Philadelphia Convention agreed that states would receive their seats in the House of Representatives based on relative population, but that states would be equal in the Senate. The result was that as of 1790, states with 19 percent of the American population had 46 percent of the votes in the Senate. [Note 1]

Many Founders knew when they agreed to the 1787 compromise on state voting power in the Senate that it was flatly inconsistent with the republican principle of majority rule that was the basis of government legitimacy under the new Constitution. For that reason, leading delegates such as James Madison and James Wilson originally strongly opposed it. They realized after a bitter fight that they had no choice but to accept this distortion of the popular will to get enough states to agree peacefully to the Constitution. Unfortunately, the limited distortion they accepted has now been transformed into a far larger distortion than they intended as the nation has grown.

In 1787, the largest state was about 12 times as large as the smallest state. As of 2000, California was about 50 times larger than North Dakota. But California’s two Senators, who represented about 34 million people in 2000, still had the same number of votes as the Senators from North Dakota, who represented 2 percent as many people. This sharply increased distortion of the popular will has major effects on national policy. Senators from small rural states often do not vote the same way on national issues as Senators who represent major cities such as New York and Los Angeles. Here’s a way to see the negative effects this serious failure to follow popular will creates.

Suppose we did an experiment in which we reconfigured the current (“Old”) Senate to make a “New” Senate that more directly reflects the popular will. Then let’s look at a series of actual Senate votes over about twenty years from the late 1960s to the 1980s and see the likely results if the New Senate had voted on them instead. (See Note 2 for details). On a number of issues, national policy would have changed under the New Senate, often reaching the opposite result from the Old Senate.

For example, the New Senate would have adopted national “no fault” auto insurance standards to cut consumer insurance costs. (Voting Study, 4). And it would have refused to provide a federal loan guarantee to bail out defense contractor Lockheed Corporation. (Voting Study, 4). The New Senate would also have adopted fundamentally different positions on several major foreign policy and environmental issues than the Old Senate did. The New Senate might well have supported a constitutional amendment for direct election of the President in 1970 (Voting Study, 6-7). In short, the New Senate experiment shows that national policy is strongly affected by state voting strength in the Senate, often in unfortunate ways that do not represent the national popular will.

Here’s an example from the Voting Study: Federal No Fault Auto Insurance (Senate vote, May 31, 1976). On motion to recommit and thus kill bill to establish federal standards for no-fault motor vehicle insurance, results: Old Senate: Yeas: 49 Nays: 45. Motion adopted; bill killed. New Senate: Yeas: 68 Nays: 75. Motion failed. Bill would have been adopted.

Should Americans today accept the very large distortion of popular will that results from the Constitution’s two hundred year-old compromise on Senate voting? Should we do so even though it adversely affects national policy and badly weakens the democratic legitimacy of the entire Congress? Or is it time to create a New Senate that will actually make decisions in the national interest? Such a reform would sharply dilute the power of special interest groups (or “factions”) by balancing their interests against many others in the larger states and by lessening the power of smaller states where their influence might be strong enough to be politically dominant.

Notes

Note 1. For an excellent account of the struggle over representation at the 1787 Convention, see Richard Beeman, Plain Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution (New York: Random House, 2009). For additional discussion of the consequences of this compromise, see George William Van Cleve, A Slaveholders’ Union: Slavery, Politics and the Constitution in the Early American Republic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 119-121.

Note 2. First, the old Senate would be expanded somewhat. Then the formula for allocating Senate votes for states would be changed. In the “New” Senate, each state’s number of votes would be increased so that it was mid-way between the Old Senate and a full population system like that used for the existing House of Representatives. The New Senate Voting Study (pdf attached
to this post) shows how this would work (pages 1-2). In our experiment, the actual Old Senate votes are adjusted to show the likely results if the New Senate had voted on them instead; the results are shown in the Voting Study.

NOTE: THE TEXT OF THE NEW SENATE VOTING STUDY IS CONTAINED IN THE PDF DOCUMENT BELOW:   

state voting power in senate

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It’s High Time for Congress to Represent the Nation: Political Corruption in America (Part 3)

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.

“Money is the Mother’s Milk of Politics”: Political Corruption in America (Part 2)

“MONEY IS THE MOTHER’S MILK OF POLITICS”: POLITICAL CORRUPTION IN AMERICA, PART 2

As the powerful California politician Jesse Unruh once said, “money is the mother’s milk of politics.” Unruh’s well-informed statement understandably leads many people to think that the solution to soft corruption is “getting money out of politics.” But there is more than one kind of money in politics. Most proposals to control soft corruption only seek to control or eliminate one kind of money. This essay explains why that hasn’t worked so far, and why it unfortunately won’t work in the future. The next post (Part 3) argues that there’s a far better approach–changing our outmoded congressional representation system–that will effectively control soft corruption and make Congress much better at legislating in the national interest at the same time.

Popular proposals for taking money out of politics include tougher campaign finance laws restricting contributions by the wealthy or by corporations, public campaign financing, and so on. To simplify things, let’s assume that there are no constitutional barriers to such proposals. Let’s also ignore the argument that “big money” in politics makes little difference to election outcomes. [Note 1] Finally, there is a lot to be said for forcing timely public disclosure of all political contributions, no matter who makes them, and no matter to whom they are made or for what purpose they are made. Let’s assume that compelled disclosure is constitutional and should be broadly defined and required. Nevertheless, there are several reasons why the popular “take the money out” approaches (beyond forcing full disclosure) are not ever going to be a workable solution to the soft corruption problem.

First, it’s extremely difficult if not impossible to actually take money out of politics. Contrary to conventional wisdom, this is not because of Supreme Court obstructionism or the influence of big money operating in back rooms. It is because trying to take money out of politics is just like negotiating disarmament treaties to get rid of nuclear weapons. History shows us that countries will only agree to even limited nuclear disarmament if it is mutual and verifiable, and even then only if it does not put them at a military disadvantage. After forty years of negotiations, no nuclear power on the planet has agreed to give up all of its nuclear weapsons, and Judgment Day is likely to come before any of them does. Similarly, incumbent politicians of both parties have shown that they will only agree to limit campaign contributions if they think that their own interests are “adequately” protected. In practice, what that really means is that the rules for limiting contributions should be stacked against their current opponents, their future opponents, or both.

This anti-disarmament mentality influences any supposed “reform” regarding money in politics. [Note 2] The usual result has been that Congress makes toothless compromises to pass campaign finance laws. The laws may look useful on paper, but they aren’t, because Congress creates useless agencies like the Federal Election Commission (“FEC”) to enforce them. By law, the FEC’s six commissioners must come equally from both parties. [Note 3] As a result of this bipartisan stalemate mandated by law, the FEC never actually does anything of importance. Alternatively, Congress passes campaign finance laws that can easily be evaded, as both major parties have shown by their fundraising behavior over the past several decades.

In 2008, for example, when one presidential candidate (Senator John McCain) accepted public financing and the other (then Senator Barack Obama) did not, Senator Obama outspent Senator McCain by a 4-1 ratio in the final three months of the campaign. [Note 4] Based on the 2008 election, both 2012 presidential campaigns knew that they would lose the campaign spending arms race if they accepted public funds. Under the law, neither could be forced to do so, and neither did. Each candidate raised more than $1 billion in private money for the campaign. [Note 5] Public funds for 2012 general election spending would instead have been limited to about $100 million each. [Note 6] Our experience of the past forty years, exemplified by these campaigns, shows us that if new laws are passed that supposedly take “billionaires out of politics” or “corporate (or union) spending out of politics,” they will also be toothless or readily evaded–or they will not pass in the first place.

For many people, providing mandatory public financing for campaigns and prohibiting all private contributions is the solution. [Note 7] Adopting pure public funding would make it necessary for government officials to decide both who is eligible to receive funding in the first place and whether or not various campaign expenditures are legally permitted, putting them in a position seriously to influence elections. More importantly, it is highly unlikely either major party will agree to tie the hands of its future presidential candidates that way. Its theoretically “level playing field” will be seen as disarmament by politicians who believe they will be disadvantaged by having to accept public funding and limit spending.

Finally, it will be extremely difficult to prevent such a compulsory system from being designed or manipulated to protect the existing Democratic and Republican parties (and political incumbents). Of the roughly $1.5 billion in federal public presidential campaign financing spent to date, about 4 percent has gone to third party and independent candidates. [Note 8] Yet nothing could be clearer than that our political system needs all the new blood it can get. Ultimately, significant campaign finance reform quite likely won’t happen and certainly won’t be effective even if it does.

Fortunately, there is a better way to lessen significantly the influence of money in politics that will also help leaders make far better decisions in the national interest. Our current system of congressional representation is essentially another and much more corruptive kind of money in politics. We need to change it fundamentally to control soft corruption–an issue discussed in the next post.

Notes

1. For an important study which concludes that “campaign spending has an extremely small impact on” congressional election outcomes, see Steven D. Levitt, “Using Repeat Challengers to Estimate the Effect of Campaign Spending on Election Outcomes in the U.S. House,” The Journal of Political Economy, Volume 102, Issue 4 (Aug. 1994), 777-798. See also the broader commentary and views in http://freakonomics.com/2012/01/17/how-much-does-campaign-spending-influence-the-election-a-freakonomics-quorum (accessed 9/26/2014).
2. Experienced campaign advisers themselves use the term “disarmament” to describe what is happening when one candidate voluntarily accepts a contribution limit not applicable to his or her opponent. See comments by Robert Shrum in http://freakonomics.com/2012/01/17/how-much-does-campaign-spending-influence-the-election-a-freakonomics-quorum/comment-page-2/ (accessed 9/26/2014).
3. According to the FEC website, “the Commission is made up of six members, who are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Each member serves a six-year term, and two seats are subject to appointment every two years. By law, no more than three Commissioners can be members of the same political party, and at least four votes are required for any official Commission action. This structure was created to encourage nonpartisan decisions. The Chairmanship of the Commission rotates among the members each year, with no member serving as Chairman more than once during his or her term.” http://www.fec.gov/about.shtml (accessed 9/28/2014).
4. Bloomberg News, December 26, 2008.
5. This is more than ten times as much as Richard Nixon and John Kennedy spent in the 1960 campaign, adjusted for inflation through 2012. See http://www.theawl.com/2012/11/presidential-fundraising-adjusted-for-inflation (accessed 9/26/2014), an article that also contains interesting background on campaign finance laws’ history.
6. According to the Congressional Research Service: “candidates who accept general election grants
must agree not to engage in additional private fundraising for their campaigns, and not to spend funds other than the general election grant.” R. Sam Garrett, “Proposals to eliminate public funding in presidential campaigns,” Congressional Research Service report, January 8, 2014. For the 2012 totals raised, see Kenneth P. Vogel et al., “Barack Obama, Mitt Romney both topped $1 billion in 2012,” Politico, December 7, 2012.
7. Again, we’re assuming just for discussion that this would be constitutional.
8. CRS Report, note 6 above, at 4.

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“To Get Along, Go Along”: Political Corruption in America, Part 1

“To Get Along, Go Along”:
Political Corruption in America
(Part 1)

Many Americans think that today’s politics is corrupt. In their view, politicians often make decisions for selfish, cowardly, parochial, or partisan reasons, or because they have been bought by some special interest. They do not believe that public officials govern in the public interest. But this doesn’t mean Americans always agree about what corruption is or what to do about it. This essay discusses different kinds of political corruption and possible remedies. In this part, I explain why corruption occurs. The next part considers possible solutions.

Various kinds of “hard” or direct political corruption traditionally have been treated as crimes. For example, if a public official agrees to award a contract to someone, in return for receiving money, this is bribery. If we want to control hard corruption, we usually need tougher law enforcement, not new laws. But what should we do about “soft” or indirect corruption, which is often legal?

For example, suppose a company or organization pays $100,000 or more to a former government official who is a potential presidential candidate for a single speech. Isn’t this sort of payment often really intended to gain access or influence? What about the acceptance of campaign contributions from organizations interested in legislation pending before a committee on which the Congresswoman who receives the contribution sits? This looks a lot like vote-buying to many people. What about acceptance of a Washington job that pays hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by a retired member of Congress, who is paid largely for political contacts and knowledge? This kind of “revolving door” is common, and many people believe it corrupts public officials.

Soft corruption is not a partisan issue–it’s used to influence members of Congress from both major parties. Companies and even nonprofit organizations that pay for soft corruption are usually nonpartisan in passing out its benefits. They are trying to advance their interests by influencing politics. For businesses, politics usually involves either “rent seeking” to gain legally-sanctioned competitive advantages or efforts to escape taxation or regulation. Soft corruption aids their efforts, so it is a good investment. It is widespread, but our system effectively ignores much of it. What has happened as a result?

Soft corruption has become an important part of doing business in the Washington, DC area, which has expanded rapidly as the public demanded greater government services over most of the past century. In 1940, the Washington DC area had about 800,000 people. In 2010, it had 4.7 million people–an increase of nearly 500 percent. By comparison, the U.S. population grew by 133 percent during the same period. Washington’s expansion occurred in both Democratic and Republican administrations, and under Democratic- and Republican-controlled Congresses. All in all, it is fair to describe Washington’s phenomenal growth as a largely bipartisan effort. As the government has grown, soft corruption has grown with it.

But the Washington area hasn’t just expanded–many of its residents, including retired politicians, have become wealthy in the process. As of 2012, six of the eleven U.S. counties with the highest median household income were in the DC metro area. This included three of the top five: Virginia’s Loudon, Fairfax, and Arlington counties—where median household income exceeded $100,000 per year.[note 1] This is twice the national median household income. A 2013 article noted that “the region’s wealth really is at the expense of the rest of the country, since it’s fueled by tax revenue and deficit spending.”[note 2] Washington’s wealth is principally a result of government spending for goods and services. But the scale of its wealth suggests that many of these goods and services are being provided in ways that create a large “wealth dividend” for Washington area residents. Soft corruption aids private efforts to obtain a share of that wealth and to avoid government-imposed costs such as taxes by influencing public policy.

Washington has therefore become a place many politicians never want to leave, because life there is very good to them. Members of Congress have high salaries, large personal and committee staffs, and health and pension benefits far better than most American workers. Their pay of more than $170,000 per year puts them in roughly the top 5 percent of Americans in income.[note 3] Even better, they are unlikely to be defeated once they are elected–they have what are effectively lifetime appointments. “Since World War II, on average 93.3 percent of all incumbent representatives and 81.5 percent of all incumbent senators running for reelection have been returned for office.” [note 4] And because they can benefit from various forms of soft corruption, they do not need to leave, even in the unlikely event that they are defeated for re-election. Today, the average net worth of members of Congress is about $7.5 million–nearly 100 times the American average. Washington can afford to support them permanently in the style to which they have become accustomed while in office because their bipartisan efforts help to make sure the government economy continues to flourish. How did that happen?

We’ve created a permanently wealthy capital by asking our representatives to do a safe, narrowly-defined job that involves little real political responsibility in return for a high salary and a chance to benefit from soft corruption. Here’s what I mean. Imagine a politician from a state somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. It is said to be politically very “blue.” But it has many military bases, and one of its biggest employers is a major defense contractor. Will any Congressman or Senator, no matter how liberal on other issues, vote against military appropriations while they represent this state? Not if they want to remain in office. If enough Congressmen and Congresswomen have similar constituencies, even if they are as “red” or “blue” as they get, the Pentagon (and indirectly the DC area) will do well in peace or war. Or imagine another western state where cows vastly outnumber people. If a Congressman from there is asked to support limits on cattle grazing that damages public lands which are used at low cost by many ranchers, is that likely to happen? Suppose a Congresswoman represents a district where the major industry is textile production. Will this Congresswoman be likely to support unionization of the factories or free trade in textiles, if voters in the district or factory owners are convinced that either of those things will cost them jobs or profits?

The key lesson here is that each member of Congress must support the core economic and political interests of his or her district constituents, or lose their job. But what is really important for understanding soft corruption is that that is all they have to do to stay in office. Since political scientists estimate that the market value of a single seat in Congress is about $4 million (2014 dollars), going against their constituents on core issues is usually way too much to ask of its members.[note 5] As a result, most members of Congress can hardly be expected to support the national interest on any occasion when it conflicts with the primary interests of their constituents. But the flip side of this arrangement is that as long as they support those interests and make sure constituents get their Social Security checks on time, they are exceptionally unlikely to lose their very lucrative jobs and post-Congressional employment prospects. As the very high postwar Congressional re-election rates show, this is just what our “leaders” have been doing.

This narrow congressional “job description”–where they are really just “district advocates”–is also exactly what makes it possible for them to accept soft corruption covering a broad range of issues that their constituents don’t care about really deeply. They know that their constituents are highly unlikely to be motivated enough and organized enough to punish them for accepting soft corruption when it doesn’t directly affect the constituency’s core interests. And to accept it without facing partisan retribution, they must permit others to accept it as well. To get along, politicians go along, following former long-time U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Sam Rayburn’s advice. Soft corruption is the political path of least resistance.

Notes

1. Median income data from American Community Survey, US Census Bureau, updating data in New Republic article by Nate Cohn, “Washington Is Not the Wealthiest Area in America,” New Republic, March 8, 2013. Cohn’s article acknowledged that median income was commonly used as a measure of wealth, but argued that: “….[M]edian income doesn’t tell the whole story….Despite Washington’s high median incomes, its per capita income is comparable to other large, affluent, coastal regions. Among large metropolitan areas, San Francisco-Oakland leads the country with a per capita income of $61,395, followed by San Jose ($61,028), Washington ($59,345), Boston ($57,893), and New York ($56,770). The author continued: “But one could argue, if so inclined, that the region is still too rich. Why should a metro area largely supported by federal tax dollars possess wealth comparable to more productive cities like New York and San Francisco? It’s a fair question.” Indeed.
2. Nate Cohn, “Washington Is Not the Wealthiest Area in America”, New Republic, March 8, 2013.
3. Craig K. Elwell, “The Distribution of Household Income and the Middle Class,” Congressional Research
Service Report (RS20811), March 10, 2014, 2.
4. Roger H. Davidson, Walter J. Oleszek, Frances E. Lee, Eric Schickler, Congress and its Members, 14th ed. (CQ Press, 2013), 60.
5. Tim Groseclose and Jeff Milyo, “Buying the Bums Out: What’s the Dollar Value of a Seat in Congress?”
Research Paper No. 1601, Stanford Graduate School of Business, 1999. The authors conclude that because seats are quite valuable, it is much cheaper for interest groups to influence Congressmen and women by making large campaign contributions than it is to try to buy them out. Ibid., 2-3.

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