Matt McIntosh has an interesting piece up on how even after we throw the current crop of corrupt bums out of office, unless there are some structural changes to Washington, we can simply expect more of the same (maybe not so much in the corruption front, but in the overall spending):
The fact of the matter is that in the grand scheme of things, the character of individual politicians counts for little in comparison to the structure of the institutions they find themselves in. The Founding Fathers of the United States understood this when they designed the U.S. Constitution, which was an early triumph of the kind of institutional thinking we need today more than ever. As things currently stand, the logic of the situation in the federal government encourages and practically necessitates wasteful spending regardless of which party is in power or who is sitting in the seats — as Republicans who favour fiscal responsibility have lately discovered, much to their dismay. Economists have known this since at least the 1960s, when the field of “public choice” economics emerged, using the tools of economics to analyze the incentive structure of government in much the same way they’d already been used to analyze the incentives of markets.
We already have the intellectual tools to understand what needs to be done in order to reform the incentive structure of government; all that’s required is the focus and political will to apply them. We as citizens have to resist the temptation to see the problem in terms of individual politicians or their parties and start viewing it in terms of the institutional logic of collective action. Until we internalize this view, even where grassroots lobbying movements manage to successfully pressure politicians into backing down from a particular measure, the results will be meagre and fleeting. As Chris Sandström’s excellent piece on the incentive structure of tax code reform so aptly illustrates, the only permanent solutions are institutional solutions.
I am all for structural change, but step number one is a purge of the corrupt SOB’s already running things. Changing the structure without first addressing these crooks seems also to be pointless, and nothing more than a dodge. Read the piece and tell me what you think.
Hoodlumman
Term. Limits.
Sorry… now I’ll go read the link.
Edmund Dantes
I know it’s an off hand somewhat snarky comment, but term limits actually have no affect on the problem.
In some ways it can make it worse, look at the guy that was one of the major writers of the Medicare bil. Guess where he was going to go work after he was out of Congress (until it became too obvious how bad it looked)? So term limits could have a negative impact in accelerating the process of Congressional Members writing legislation to get jobs rather than legislation that is best for the country.
There really is no simple answer, but one of the keys is getting Congress to realize its role better. Congress needs to re-assert itself as an equal member of government (in our system), and they need to remember they are supposed to be doing what’s best not what’s politically expedient. ( I won’t be holding my breath on that last one).
ImJohnGalt
To me, this just seems like more “corruption is bipartisan” cover. I’m unconvinced, and here’s why.
McIntosh asserts that the problems with the current system are institutional, and then goes on to use as an example the following:
What is “institutional” or structural about that? If the individual actors would stop doing this, then the practice would stop.
While I’m prepared to stipulate that many politicians engage in this sort of nonsense and legislative blackmail, his assertion (in the first sentence!) that “the character of individual politicians counts for little in comparison to the structure of the institutions they find themselves in” is ludicrous. People of good character should not do this shit. That we’ve seen so much of it recently (bridges to Alaska, anyone?) speaks more to the character of our current politicians than to any fundamental “broken-ness” of the system the founding fathers designed.
And I mean, really,
WTF? How about the wasteful spending that is a result of poor choices by the executive? From payoffs to reporters to report “news”, to a war of choice whose most recent projected bill will be over a trillion dollars, to tax cuts for the rich and irs audits from the poor, how the hell is that an institutional defect that results in wasteful spending?
I’m a fan of one-bill, one issue, and your 72-hour proposal, John, but the system has worked pretty well for 200 years. The increased spending of the last 5 years isn’t a result of the poor “small government” Republicans being forced by the big bad institutional deficiencies to waste all that money on vacations in Crawford, panels with pithy statements such as “Terrorism is bad” to place behind the president when he drools his latest speech and the administrative overhead associated with hand-picking people for townhalls.
That’s on the Republicans.
Nikki
Can we bury this meme now?
DougJ
That’s a good point: we’d better off leaving DeLay et al. in power, because at least they know what they’re doing whereas a new crop of Democratic leaders would be just as corrupt but also incompetent. Better a corrupt partiot than a corrupt cut-and-run coward.
The Republicans have always been the party of fiscal responsibility. But 911 changed everything. In a pre-911 world, they would have been able to balance the budget or perhaps run a surplus. But we learened that oceans cannot protect us. And nothing is more important in the face of war than cutting taxes.
So better to leave DeLay and Ney in power than to turn things over to tax-and-spend, cut-and-run loony lefties, who would likely be just as corrupt anyway.
spike
It’s interesting to see such a classicly liberal idea being used to excuse the actions of Republicans. “Oh, it wasn’t their fault, the system made them do it!!” Perhaps it’s a more convincing argument when discussing poverty and crime than in this instance. How’s this for a thought? Not removing every ounce of accountability in our system, like the Republicans have done over the last 5 to 6 years??
Krista
even after we throw the current crop of corrupt bums out of office, unless there are some structural changes to
WashingtonOttawa, we can simply expect more of the sameI feel your pain…
Pb
I don’t see much reasoning there, that’s more of a “both parties are corrupt, so go vote libertarian” screed. He mentions lobbying by name *once*–and never seems to mention campaign contributions–and as such, doesn’t even touch on any real reasons for corporate welfare, government pork, and corruption. Without some understanding of the problem, you’re just doomed to repeat it.
Also, his ‘solutions’ are laughable–we were doing better in the comments section here. We know (or should know) from bitter experience that term limits don’t work (especially harsh ones), and voting on *every* spending item individually seems incredibly impractical to me. MC had it right with his call for enforcing single-purpose bills over omnibus bills.
ImJohnGalt
Krista, I feel your pain. I voted on Monday, ‘cos I’ll be shredding the snowboarding slopes in Jackson Hole all next week.
What a piss-poor set of choices.
Found this site, which is a fun read:
http://thegallopingbeaver.blogspot.com/
jim
I think it’s true that corruption and deceit are risks inherent in dealing with all politicians.
This has led me to the conclusion that you cannot depend on what any politicians say. You can only go by objective assessments of job performance. What happened in the real world? What turned out to be like it was described? What was accomplished when it was said it would be accomplished?
This is yet another reason why Clinton was and is far superior to Bush and his current crop of retarded vultures. Clinton was effective, and the country was prosperous, saving money for future generations in terms of surplus, and had the worldwide respect of our allies.
Krista
Excellent! Have fun! I agree with you about the piss-poor set of choices. Martin’s just painful to watch now. Harper’s shift to center is just too slick to trust. Layton never tells us where the money’s going to come from for all these miracles he wants to perform. And Duceppe? Yeah, like I’m going to vote for someone who wants to literally tear the country asunder. Oh well, my birthday’s the day after the election, so at least I’ll have a good excuse to drink lots of wine.
I bet the ones who defected over to the Liberal party are now pooping themselves with great vigour.
The Other Steve
Wait a minute.
On one hand I’m supposed to believe that Congress is easily corrupted and we have to change the structure to prevent that. Some kind of checks and balances.
And on the other hand I’m supposed to trust the Bush administration with historically unprecedented levels of power with no checks and balances… because Bush can be trusted?
Right.
baltar
It’s structural (though the current crop in charge does need to go).
Remember 1994? The “Republican Revolution” swept into Congress at least in (large) part because they claimed to want to wield a large broom and push through real structural changes to how Congress (esp. the House) operated. The Contract With America contains (at the beginning) structural reforms that are not laws, but changes to the way Congress does business (does anyone know if they followed through on them?). Congress needs to have more open deliberations (the 72 hour rule is good). It won’t matter if you just throw the present bums out – you need to create an environment that prevents the replacements from becoming bums.
Pb
baltar,
They didn’t. Actually, they sort of did the opposite.
AkaDad
If you take my word for it, I’ve been saying, since I started paying attention to politics 20 years ago, that the way we finance political campaigns is akin to legal bribery.
We need public financing of political campaigns. I don’t believe candidates need millions of dollars just to run a campaign, since every candidate can get a website, and let their voters know where they stand.
The reason it costs so much now is tv ads. I have hundreds of empty cable channels, as I suspect most people do. Use one of those to run political ads 24/7, at no charge, since we the public, allow them to use the public airwaves for free, to make huge profits.
I would also demand politicians hold at least six town hall meetings annually. No more ducking your constituents.
mizerock
I agree, you cannot expect a “non-corrupt” member of Congress to remain untainted by the institution. Nor would I expect the culture of corruption to change, in a vacuum. But if Congress is ever going to be reformed (just back to that baseline level of influence-peddling, I’m thinking, realistically), it is now. If they pass some sort of watered-down bill, THEN we kick the bums out.
D. Mason
Sure there is, get rid of the secret service and capitol hill security, problem solved.
The Other Steve
baltar – You’re right that the Contract on America did talk about structural reforms.
The thing was, after Gingrich got in there he came back and said “Look. I didn’t promise to pass any of this. I just said we’d talk about it.”
As a result, no changes were made. In fact just the opposite occured. It wasn’t that the Republicans wanted to throw the bums out, it was that they saw a source of money they could pocket and wanted to make sure the Democrats weren’t in there to stop them.
Barry
I have to second those who are pointing out that this is a GOP problem. They didn’t get corrupted after taking power; they started out corrupt. Google ‘K Street Project’ for an idea of what they were doing as soon as they took over Congress.
A kudos to ‘The other steve’, who pointed out that we’re supposed to think of Congress as a den of vice, but to revere the President (the GOP president, of course).
A friend who studied Soviet history said that, during Stalin’s purges, people would say ‘if only Stalin knew what his people were doing’.
DougJ
Stalin’s famed Я Street purge did take place without his knowledge. It was all the work of some corrupt lobbyist who gave equally to all the parties in the Soviet Union.
srv
I like Carville’s plan better (h/t ObWi):
Not One Dime
Incumbants cant take nothing. Zero. They can only campaign with treasury payments matched to their oppositions contributions.
McIntosh wants term limits. All that would do is create an institutional culture to steal from us faster.
And as for these NeoLib folks, these are “libertarians” who believe in the public neocon agenda.
DougJ
Term limits are an awful idea. On both sides of the aisle, many of the best Congressmen are the one who have been there the longest. Why would anyone want a system where people like Orrin Hatch and Diane Feinstein were forced to retire?
The Other Steve
In all seriousness… the problem with term limits, as evidenced in California, is that the government falls into the hands of the unelected bureacracy because nobody is there long enough to really understand what is going on.
DougJ
I was being serious. I really like Orrin Hatch and Diane Feinstein.
Jamie Jamison
Actually term limits could help, if they were coupled with a total ban on any lobbying after a member of Congress leaves office. That’s right, a total ban on lobbying and the kind of log rolling that Billy Tauzin and others have done.
I find the argument that term limits would rid Congress of its best members less than persuasive, actually I think it’s crapthink. Look at guys like Ted Stevens, Ted Kennedy or Robert Byrd, what do these guys know about anything outside of Washington D.C.? Absolutely nothing, yeah, being in Congress forever has given them the knowledge and ability to effectively game the system, but is that really what we want and need? I for one think not.
MC
McIntosh is right about institutions, but wrong about the solutions. It is in a legislator’s best interest to be re-elected, a goal best accomplished by obtaining individual benefits for their consistuency (see Mayhew). In a line-item budget, a legislator can still vote swap and if everyone acts in their best interest, there is no added value by adopting a dominant strategy of reversing promises made in vote swaps between legislators. If we use his Prisoner’s Dilemma analogy (which doesn’t fit because legislators can cooperate), if Legislator A promises to vote for Legislator B’s pet project in exchange for support and they both vote in a black box, no matter what strategy Legislator A adopts, there is no way to improve his position based on the decision of Legislator B. McIntosh assumes “jealously” will act as some sort of external control on behavior, but that’s not even consistent with the idea of market transactions. It’s a Pareto suboptimal outcome if A reneges because it makes Legislator B worse off while making Legislator A better off. Markets are designed to move toward Pareto optimality, so vote-swapping will occur as everyone tries to make themselves better off without damaging anyone else’s position. Transactions will occur.
There’s no disincentive to engaging in a transaction; “jealously” won’t do it because it doesn’t improve Legislator A’s position to screw Legislator B, and voters haven’t demonstrated a horizontal control that discourages Leg. A from engaging in this type of behavior, like a threat to re-election if they vote for Legislator B’s projects.
I said this last night too – term limits are the absolute worst thing to encourage behavior that acts against self-interest. Every legislator is interested in being re-elected or life after Congress. Term limits encourage behavior to benefit the legislator after re-election is no longer a consideration. Only long serving legislators from “safe” districts can be trusted to act against their self-interest of re-election because they have so much of a cushion with which to work. Someone who has been sent to the House for 30 years can afford to be hatchet-man for the whole Congress because he’s probably untouchable within his own district. He’s not beholden to the party (thank you 1975 rule changes!) or faced with a prospect of life in the body out of power (thank you 1995 rule changes!)
MC
Oops – I meant “hierarchical control”, not “horizontal control” (too many thoughts at once)
Jamie Jamison
MC wrote:
I said this last night too – term limits are the absolute worst thing to encourage behavior that acts against self-interest. Every legislator is interested in being re-elected or life after Congress. Term limits encourage behavior to benefit the legislator after re-election is no longer a consideration. Only long serving legislators from “safe” districts can be trusted to act against their self-interest of re-election because they have so much of a cushion with which to work. Someone who has been sent to the House for 30 years can afford to be hatchet-man for the whole Congress because he’s probably untouchable within his own district. He’s not beholden to the party (thank you 1975 rule changes!) or faced with a prospect of life in the body out of power (thank you 1995 rule changes!)
I’m not understanding you here, it sounds as if what you’re saying is that we need some members of Congress who are completely unaccountable to anyone to control things. Someone who is untouchable in a safe district through Gerrymandering is effectively unaccountable to the voters and as you point out is also unaccountable to the party. If this is the case then why don’t we just appoint a two dozen or so hatchetmen to the House and let them wreak whatever merry havoc they may?
Your argument also fails when you consider porksuckers such as Don Young (R. Alaska) who as far as I can tell has never shown one bit of restraint in grabbing whatever he can for his constituents. What you end up with in the situation you describe is not congressional hatchetmen but hacks like Jim McDermott (D. Seattle) who treat being in Congress as their own personal ego trips.
Lars Gruber
You are correct in saying we can except more corruption in congress if Republicans replace the existing corrupt Republicans. It’s in their nature to take the money any way they can get it. They don’t see it as bad — until they are caught.
The real problem is that the Republicans have ALREADY reformed lobbying. To translate into low-brow: Letting them reform lobbying once more is to give away the farm.
bok bok Chicken Hawks
Lars Gruber
DougJ Says:
That’s a good point: we’d better off leaving DeLay et al. in power, because at least they know what they’re doing whereas a new crop of Democratic leaders would be just as corrupt but also incompetent. Better a corrupt partiot than a corrupt cut-and-run coward.
Cut and run coward? Like what bush did in Afganistan?
MC
Jamie:
That is a correct characterization of my argument. I adopt the Kenesaw Mountain Landis perspective; he needed absolute power to clean up baseball and could not make the tough decisions if he was beholden to the owners. The same thing goes for Congress.
I make a couple of assumptions. First, legislators are driven by self-interest to get re-elected. Second, re-election is aided by the ability to bring individual benefits, or “pork”, into their own district. Third, chairmenships are coveted positions because they increase the ability to collect “pork” for one’s own district. Fourth, voters in a district will ignore wasteful behavior as long as their individual needs are met. Lastly, failure to acheive individual needs for a district will result in failure to be re-elected.
Start with the 1975 rule change. Under a seniority-only system, legislators had to only be concerned with obtaining benefits for their own district to get the seniority necessary to gain a chairman position. In 1975, chairmen became elected by the party caucus. Now, for a legislator to gain the coveted chair position, they not only had to insure individual benefits for their district, but enough benefits for other legislators in their party’s caucus to get the votes necessary for appointment and maintain those benefits for their tenure in the chair position. Because of the tendency for “sticky” rules, this would create a sort of oligopoly within the House, with a few long-term members scratching each others back for what would essential be a lifetime appointment to a chair position, but rather than be focused on the sole task of individual re-election to maintain seniority, it would also be linked to satisfying the caucus leadership.
In the 1995 rule change, the oligopoly structure was broken as any member could essential compete for a coveted chair position every three-terms (I might be wrong on the limit?). This creates a situation where not only current leadership engages in “pork-swapping” to maintain their positions, but a second-tier of swapping occurs as people jockey for position to obtain a chair position when the term-limits kick in.
I suggest a return to the old rules is beneficial, where under a tacit agreement, a chairperson can enrich themselves but is afforded this benefit only by exerting control on the rest of the body. If the individual fails to exercise an appropriate level of control, the majority of members can withhold individual benefits to the chair by acting in concert, eliminating the power and allure of the chair position and potentially resulting in the member’s loss of seniority due to a failure to be re-elected. This relies on the idea that long-term members assume some sort of institutional identity over the course of time, an identity that places the chair as the “hatchet-man” of the House.
It’s not perfect, but research indicates that this is the way Congress behaved prior to the rules changes since 1975.
Devil's Advocate
“So better to leave DeLay and Ney in power than to turn things over to tax-and-spend, cut-and-run loony lefties, who would likely be just as corrupt anyway.”
“Tax-and-spend”? I guess cutting taxes AND spending is better, hey? Did you check out the fiscal deficit lately?
“Cut-and-run”? Papa Bush saved his scion’s cowardly ass by having him “serve” in the Texas National guard. The brat could not even finish that: he went AWOL.
Cheney got five deferments and said that he had “other priorities” than fighting in Vietnam.
No family member of the clique in power is serving in Iraq.
As for “loonies”, the right-wing radicals display all the symptoms of clinical paranoia.
Phil
How quaint.
“It’s not the individual – it’s the institution.”
There’s a wonderful moral lesson to teach future generations of Americans.
In Scouts, we teach “Character is what you do when nobody is watching you.”
I guess we should be teaching “Character is an impossible goal.”