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January 9, 2006
A Piece of the Action
There has been considerable debate, in the wake of the Abramoff scandal (actually, that's bad metaphor: how about "in the first surging of the bow wave of the Abramoff scandal(s)"), on how to keep corruption out of politics, or at least minimize it. The proximate cause of this post is Dave Schuler's What a Good Fisherman Knows, while Dave was inspired by Thomas Sowell and James Joyner. All of them miss the fundamental point.
If I may summarize far too briefly, and thus possibly unfairly:
- Sowell argues that our representatives are underpaid and thus use public money to buy their re-elections, and handing out this public money draws corruption;
- Joyner argues that we need to tighten up and enforce ethics rules, require lobbyists to itemize their "gift giving", "promote a culture of ethics" and raise congressional salaries, the last to attract better people to Congress, which Joyner apparently sees as underperforming due to poor quality of members;
- Schuler notes that attracting members to Congress by paying them more simply gives more incentives to those who are more passionate about money, and thus presumably more easily bribed.
Schuler is closest to the truth, but all of these ideas miss the reason why corruption happens, and Sowell misses it by so wide a margin that it is stunning, particularly given his normally very powerful capacity of reason. Corruption exists for one reason and one reason alone: the Federal government disposes of something like a third of the national economy directly, and virtually all of the national economy and most non-economic matters indirectly.
When that amount of money and power is in play under the control of an entity which alone has the power to use force without legal sanction, no one sleeps easy in their beds at night. When people don't sleep easy in their beds at night because of the government's possible actions — or just hope to get a bit of the action, as it were, for themselves — they petition the government for redress of their grievances, prevention of future grievances, or perhaps a nice tidy lump sum, as allowed by the Constitution in respect of centuries of Anglo-Saxon tradition.
Now, I can go down to the city council, and as one of a few dozen people there and one of a score of thousands represented, make a reasoned argument, and have some chance of swaying the direction of the council. I can go to my representatives to the state government in Austin, and probably get heard directly by them (though not by those who don't represent me), but the odds of me alone effecting change are slim to none. I can go to my representatives at the Federal government, and sit in their offices, and talk to a powerless, well-meaning staffer, and have essentially no impact on even my own representative, never mind the policy actions of the Federal government.
Or, I can get a lot of like-minded people on a particular issue together, and we can each contribute less money that it would take us to travel to Austin or Washington, D.C. and stay for a few days. We can then use that money to hire an agent, who will go to that place for us (and in fact, likely already lives there), and will take the money that is not his pay, and will use that money to get entrance to the offices not only of my representatives, but of all representatives. That agent, let's go ahead and start calling him a lobbyist, will be able to get that hearing, and make those points, because he has the ability to contribute significant amounts of money to that politician's re-election fund. Nothing else separates me from my agent but the aggregation of funds and, the representative will undoubtedly conclude, votes. Well, and one other thing, but it's a minor factor in corruption: a lobbyist on a particular issue will already have position papers, briefings, and probably even legislation already drafted, which makes a representative's staffer's job far, far easier when such items are needed.
Now, once there are lobbyists for me, and there are lobbyists for others, the question becomes: how does my lobbyist ensure that he has a better chance of getting my preferences enacted than does his competitor who has my opponent's interests at heart? Say that I want to get the Congress to make health insurance tax deductions an individual, rather than corporate, benefit. Then my lobbyist has to have either more votes or more money or more public opinion on his side than the lobbyists for the large corporations that benefit from this provision. Since public opinion is volatile, it is nearly meaningless as currency; and since votes may or may not materialize, they are less valuable than cash. Cash has the benefits of being fungible and nearly irrevocable: there's little question of whether cash has value, while a promised vote may or may not be meaningful.
Does anyone seriously believe that the Abramoff scandal would have happened had Congress not had the power to give massive benefits to Indian-operated casinos?
Without that, the Indians would not have hired Abramoff, and Abramoff would not have had that money to throw around. (Contra Sowell, representatives who are paid ten times what current representatives are paid would still bribe voters with other people's money rather than their own. Not only are the amounts larger, but there's the benefit (to the representative) of not having to use his own money, which still applies no matter what he is paid.) And Abramoff threw a lot of money, at representatives from both parties, and they took it, because they are rational human beings who want to get reelected and know money helps them do that. And now they are trying to say they weren't bought, because they are rational human beings who know scandals reduce their future chances of reelection, and because they hope that we are not rational beings and will therefore not realize that all politicians, all people, are corruptible, at least when the corruption accords with their own personal desires. If you were offered thousands of dollars, legally, to do what you already wanted to do, would you take it? If you answered no, you're a saint or a liar. I haven't met any saints, but I've met a lot of liars.
So there are only a few possible ways to minimize or eliminate government corruption. The first way is to remove the ability of the representatives to buy votes with public money; the second is to remove the requirement that politicians be elected.
The first way was the choice of our Founders. They prohibited direct taxation (which effectively makes all taxes avoidable, at least in theory), and they strictly limited the powers of the Federal government. In addition, the Founders set up a system where Congress itself represented multiple interests; the House represented the people from a small locale, and the Senate represented the States themselves, as distinct from the population of the States. The 16th and 17th Amendments removed, respectively, the financial and political limits on the powers of the Congress.
As far as money goes, you read about Teapot Dome, but that was peanuts compared to what is an everyday occurrence now: the oil fields in question at Teapot Dome were government owned, but now the government can regulate who can make money, and how much, from oil fields the government doesn't own. With the current effectively unlimited ability of the Federal government to tax and regulate, there is essentially no limit to their power and thus no monetary limit to the corruption. With both Representatives and Senators being elected by, and thus responsible to and needing the votes of, the people at large, and with less than half of the population paying essentially the whole cost of government, there is no political limit to the corruption, either.
The second method, limiting the ability of politicians to be reelected, is not essentially bad, but does have some serious problems. The first serious problem is that good representatives, when they are found, do not stay for long, because they cannot be reelected. The second serious problem is that just when they begin to get real experience on the issues government faces, the representatives are out of office (and this may actually increase the need for lobbyists by the representatives and their staffers). I would argue that having the Congress reelectable without limit and the President reelectable only once is likely the worst of both worlds.
Anything besides prohibiting reelection or limiting the powers or reach of the Congress is, frankly, just window dressing.
If I were writing the Constitution from scratch, I would likely have a tricameral Congress, with one chamber consisting of whomever shows up that day and to which of course you could appoint an agent (but having very, very limited powers), another consisting of people elected to represent particular parties (party slate tickets, essentially) and a third elected based on the tax burdens of its electors. Thus you would have one chamber that is very, very representative of popular will; another that is explicitly representative of popular ideologies; and the third that is representative of the individual burden shouldered by its electors. The first would have the power to propose legislation to the other houses, to set tax rates within limited bounds, and to impeach sitting officials; the second would have the power to pass legislation proposed by the first, subject to veto by the President or the third chamber, to override the vetoes by supermajority, and to allocated collected funds; the third would have the power to strike any legislation that had been active for at least a year, to veto any legislation passed by the second chamber, to try impeachments, and to consent to treaties or Presidential appointments. A declaration of war would require the affirmation of all three chambers and would be required before committing US troops to offensive action overseas. I would not have any limits on reelection or campaign finance, except for disclosure of receipts. Instead, I would count on the manifestly different interests to balance each other out.
Of course, I would also make a requirement that no Constitution could be kept in place for more than 75 years without having a Constitutional Convention. This is, among other reasons, why it is unlikely anyone would ever let me write a Constitution.
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Comments
You're writing the second part of my post (the part where I propose some workable alternatives). My answer to why we have corruption: human nature. Since the Abramoff story broke I've been preaching a simple gospel: you can't get money out of politics unless you're willing to get politics out of money.
We aren't so we won't.
Mr. Joyner is a technocrat and takes it as religious dogma that you can get better X by paying X's more. That's simultaneously Panglossian and post hoc propter hoc.
Congressional representatives are elected. Unless someone can prove that we're electing the smartest, most capable candidates (I dare you), it seems to me that there's no reasonable assurance that the smartest, most capable candidates will be getting that extra money. Mencken certainly didn't think so; look up his stuff on “boobocracy”.
Posted by: Dave Schuler ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.caerdroia.org/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
at January 9, 2006 7:18 PM
Power corrupts.
Absolute power is kinda neat.
Posted by: Dave at January 9, 2006 9:37 PM
I propose an even simpler solution to the problem. Criminalize as many forms of corruption as practical and then prosecute the corrupt whenever they raise their filthy heads above the crowd. Further, make the punishments for corruption as severe as reason allows. People are less likely to steal from the cookie jar if the penalty for getting caught with ones hand in said jar is sure enough and severe enough. Unfortunately, given the tendency of bureaucracies to begat more bureaucracy, making this work would probably require a specialized enforcement agency. Since the agency would itself most likely become corrupt, the problem then becomes "Who watches the watcher?" Of course, we could just enforce the law on the rich and powerful in the same way that we enforce it on everyone else, but maybe that's just crazy talk……… Speaking of crazy talk, where does Ted Kennedy get off running his mouth about ethics?
Posted by: Dan at January 10, 2006 1:42 AM
I've learned a lot about human nature by having four kids. One of the things I've learned is that if you want to get less of a behavior, there are only two ways to do it: reduce the rewards or increase the odds of getting caught. Increasing the penalties for being caught has less effect than you might think: it reduces the incidence, but only at the margins.
Now, if I were to put a jar of chocolate chips on the counter and tell the boys not to touch it, would they get eaten or not? If a boy were to eat one, it would likely not be noticed. Moreover, if it were noticed, it would not be apparent which boy had eaten the chip. Unless the child was caught with his hand in the jar, or chewing the chip, he gets away with it. The motivation to take a chocolate chip is high, and the odds of getting the penalty — no matter what the penalty is — are so low as to make the perceived danger essentially zero: at least one boy is likely to take at least one chip.
If I move the chocolate chips to a high shelf, I somewhat lessen their loss, because the cost to obtain them is higher. If I replace the chocolate chips with a lesser quality chip that the kids don't like, that also lessens or stops the loss. I could also use a jar that makes a loud sound when opened. But simply leaving everything else the same and setting the penalty at a grounding instead of a stern talking to is not going to noticeably alter the situation.
Corruption becomes less not because of higher penalties, but because the perpetrator is likely to get caught (unlikely in politics, except on big cases, because the politicians are themselves the rule makers and enforcers) or because the gain from corruption is not worth the cost and effort of being corrupt.
Posted by: Jeff Medcalf at January 10, 2006 9:29 AM