Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science pdfdrive com
Cut the politicians a break
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Naked Economics Undressing the Dismal Science ( PDFDrive )
Cut the politicians a break. In the fall of 2000, a promising political career was
launched. I was elected president of the Seminary Townhouse Association. (Perhaps “elected” is too strong a word; the outgoing president asked if I would do it, and I was too naive to say no.) At about that time, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) announced plans to expand an elevated train station very close to our homes. The proposed expansion would bring the station into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act and allow the CTA to accommodate more riders. It would also move the elevated train tracks (and all the accompanying noise) thirty feet closer to our homes. In short, this plan was good for Chicago public transportation and bad for our townhouse association. Under my excellent leadership, we wrote letters, we held meetings, we consulted architects, we presented alternative plans (some of which would have required condemning and demolishing homes elsewhere in the neighborhood). Fullerton Avenue eventually got a new elevated train station, but not before we did everything in our power to disrupt the project. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we are the special interests. All of us. You may not raise Angora goats (the source of mohair); you may not grow corn (the source of ethanol). But you are part of some group—probably many of them— that has unique interests: a profession, an ethnic group, a demographic group, a neighborhood, an industry, a part of the country. As the old saying puts it, “Where you stand depends on where you sit.” It is facile to declare that politicians should just do the right thing. The hoary old cliché about tough decisions is true. Doing the right thing—making a decision that generates more benefits for the nation than costs—will not cause people to stand up and cheer. It is far more likely that the many people you have made better off will hardly notice while the small group you have harmed will pelt your car with tomatoes. In 2008, my political career got more interesting (but not necessarily any more promising). President Obama appointed Congressman Rahm Emanuel to be his chief of staff, which left an opening in the Illinois Fifth Congressional District. That’s my congressional district, and I, along with more than twenty other candidates, decided to run in the special election to fill the seat. (Our race should not be confused with the vacant Illinois Senate seat that former Governor Rod Blagojevich tried to sell.) I figured that if I was going to write books like this one that criticized public policies, then I ought to be willing to step into the ring, rather than just cast rocks from the outside. (For the record, I opposed the ring, rather than just cast rocks from the outside. (For the record, I opposed the ethanol subsidy—a relatively meaningless position given that the Fifth Congressional District is entirely urban and has not a single corn farmer.) The punch line of this chapter can be encapsulated in a single experience from that campaign. At the first candidates’ forum, the moderator, a political columnist for a Chicago newspaper, asked each candidate to comment on his or her view of federal earmarks. Earmarks are the mechanism by which members of Congress insert pork into bills; an earmark directs federal money to a specific project in a member’s district and is therefore insulated from any formal review as to whether the project makes sense or not. For example, an earmark in a transportation bill, such as the notorious “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska, allocates money for the bridge even if the Department of Transportation never would have funded it. The subject of earmarks had come up because the first spending bill signed by President Obama had nearly nine thousand earmarks. (No, that is not an exaggeration.) One by one, each candidate excoriated both the concept of earmarks and the politicians who support them. One candidate even proposed arresting members of Congress who cut such deals. But the earmark question was a trap, and a clever one at that. The moderator asked a follow-up question, something like, “So each of you would oppose an earmark to support Children’s Memorial Hospital?” As you may have inferred, this particular children’s hospital is in the Fifth Congressional District, about 300 yards from where we were sitting. The answers to the follow-up question were less emphatic than the original assault on earmarks and included comments like, “Of course, a hospital is different” and “That particular earmark involves children” and “I will do everything I can as a congressman to support Children’s Memorial Hospital” and so on. No one suggested that politicians who support an earmark for the hospital should go to prison. Everyone despises earmarks, except for their own. A member of Congress who secures special funding to expand Children’s Memorial Hospital is a success. A ribbon-cutting ceremony will celebrate the project, with cupcakes and juice and speeches lauding this politician’s hard work in Congress. How did the funding come to pass? Not because this one politician gave a speech on the floor of the House that was so emotional and inspiring that the other 534 members decided to lavish funds on a children’s hospital in Illinois. He did it by supporting a bill with nine thousand earmarks, one of which was his. Such is the political reality in a democratic system: We love our congressman who finds funding for the hospital; what we hate are politicians who support earmarks. Would campaign finance reform change anything? At the margins, if that. Money is certainly one tool for grabbing a politician’s attention, but there are others. If the dairy farmers (who benefit from federal price supports) can’t give money, they will hire lobbyists, ring doorbells, hold meetings, write letters, threaten hunger strikes, and vote as a bloc. Campaign finance reform does not change the fact that the dairy farmers care deeply about their subsidy while the people who pay for it don’t care much at all. The democratic process will always favor small, well-organized groups at the expense of large, diffuse groups. It’s not just how many people care one way or the other; it’s how much they care. Two percent who care deeply about something are a more potent political force than the 98 percent who feel the opposite but aren’t motivated enough to do anything about it. Bob Kerrey, former Democratic senator from Nebraska, has said that he doesn’t think campaign finance reform would lead to much change at all. “The most important corruption that happens in politics doesn’t go away even if you had full public financing of campaigns,” he told The New Yorker. “And that is: I don’t want to tell you something that’s going to make you not like me. If I had a choice between getting a round of applause by delivering a twenty-six-second applause line and getting a round of boos by telling you the truth, I’d rather get the round of applause.” 10 So, if I were asked again why our growing knowledge of public policy does not always translate into a perfect world, this chapter would be my more complete answer. |
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