I am getting rather prolific with these posts.
Frank Rich has a column in the New York Times today in which he points out that after the recent election, the number of people in an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll who thought the US was "on the right track" improved a whopping one percentage point, from 31 to 32 percent, suggesting that the election did little to change people's view of the government. He gives passing notice to the problems of the filibuster in the Senate, but his primary explanation of this persistent dissatisfaction is the role of "big money that dominates our political system, regardless of who's in power." At this point he loses me. Money has been a factor in our political system forever, and attempts to erase its influence have been futile. We have tried over the last hundred years with little or no success. Perhaps it is time to consider that money as such is not the locus of the problem.
Rich's comparison of the Great Depression with the present "Great Recession" shows this. He claims that in the Depression there were "major reforms in American government and business", whereas this time there have not been changes. He forgets to mention that in the Great Depression what was different was not the presence or absence of big money; it was the presence of a temporarily effective government, by virtue of the overwhelming partisan Democratic majority.
This relates to the other liberal shibboleth expressed today in a column by David Broder in the Washington Post, the idea that if we only had bipartisan agreements we would be able to do the things we need to do. Unfortunately our President believes in the chimera of bipartisanship. I would suggest that the decline in his popularity is precisely because he has tried so hard to be bipartisan. The people want the government to govern, to get things done. Bipartisanship is at best only a means to that end, and in fact a counterproductive and illusory means.
Both of these liberal positions, that it is money that is at fault, and that we should all be bipartisan, constitute in reality the willful disregard of the real problem, the structure of our government itself. Rich alludes to it, only to ignore it. The structure of our government forces bipartisan politics and the resulting gridlock. We need to eliminate or subordinate the Senate.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Friday, November 26, 2010
The Senate
As my thinking has developed, I have concluded that the essential change that needs to be made in the government is to subordinate the Senate to the House. This may sound like an impossible change, but I do not think so. In fact I find support for the change in the Constitution, of all places. The Constitution specifies, in Article I, Section 7, that "All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives: but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills."
I interpret this to mean that for the Founders the role of the Senate in the legislature was intended to be only to accept bills sent to it from the House, or to suggest amendments to the bills. In fact this was the way the Senate operated at the beginning of the government, until about 1809. It turned out that the Senate actually did not have much to do.
This changed, quite without any reference to the Constitution or the intent of the Founders, when the Senate asserted that it was the equal of the House, just as representative of the people, and just as able to initiate legislation. The Senate "reconstituted" itself between 1809 and 1829, and became the Senate we have today. This change occurred without any legislation, as a result of changes in the internal rules and procedures of the Senate, that the House accepted.
It is my position that the House can just as easily decide to no longer accept the changes the Senate claimed in 1809-1829. It could do so by making it a House rule that it will no longer accept legislation initiated by the Senate. Bills passed by the House would be sent to the Senate for their acceptance or proposed amendments, with a time limit for the response of the Senate.
If the Senate does nothing in that time limit, the House would assume that the Senate approves of the bill. If the Senate suggests amendments, the House would consider and accept or reject the amendments, and then would consider the bill passed as amended, and it would be sent to the President. The Senate would return to being the clearly subordinate part of the legislature, and the House would be in control.
The likelihood of the House making such a move at present is almost nil, but if it were to become a topic of serious discussion, its possibility might increase.
I interpret this to mean that for the Founders the role of the Senate in the legislature was intended to be only to accept bills sent to it from the House, or to suggest amendments to the bills. In fact this was the way the Senate operated at the beginning of the government, until about 1809. It turned out that the Senate actually did not have much to do.
This changed, quite without any reference to the Constitution or the intent of the Founders, when the Senate asserted that it was the equal of the House, just as representative of the people, and just as able to initiate legislation. The Senate "reconstituted" itself between 1809 and 1829, and became the Senate we have today. This change occurred without any legislation, as a result of changes in the internal rules and procedures of the Senate, that the House accepted.
It is my position that the House can just as easily decide to no longer accept the changes the Senate claimed in 1809-1829. It could do so by making it a House rule that it will no longer accept legislation initiated by the Senate. Bills passed by the House would be sent to the Senate for their acceptance or proposed amendments, with a time limit for the response of the Senate.
If the Senate does nothing in that time limit, the House would assume that the Senate approves of the bill. If the Senate suggests amendments, the House would consider and accept or reject the amendments, and then would consider the bill passed as amended, and it would be sent to the President. The Senate would return to being the clearly subordinate part of the legislature, and the House would be in control.
The likelihood of the House making such a move at present is almost nil, but if it were to become a topic of serious discussion, its possibility might increase.
Reforming campaign finance
In response to Phil, it is my feeling that trying to restrict individuals or entities such as business or labor from directing money to the party they support has been counterproductive and futile. The history of campaign finance laws shows that the result is only that lawyers find ways around the laws, just as they do with taxes, and the sources of money only become more opaque. I would get rid of the laws restricting corporate and union contributions to parties entirely. On the other hand I do support restrictions on contributions to individual candidates. I would make it a law that all contributions to political campaigns must be funneled through the party organizations. No individual candidate could solicit or accept direct contributions from anyone. This would be considered bribery. Besides making the laws simpler and easier to enforce, I would expect that the party organizations would be able to buffer the influence of individual contributions. Contributors are always going to want to influence the direction of legislation--this is appropriate and proper--but they should be able to do so only through a party, which has to coordinate the entire range of interests of all the contributors.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Raising the debt limit
Today Paul Krugman wrote a column commenting on former Senator Alan Simpson's comment that there will be blood in the streets next April when the federal debt limit will have to be raised again. Simpson, the co chair of the President's deficit commission, seems to believe that the Republicans will make a fuss over raising the debt, even threatening to shut down the government without concessions from Obama.
My position is that whoever has the majority in the House should be able to do what it wants. My hope is that when the Republicans get to that point in April, they will be responsible and do the right thing. If they are completely irresponsible and bring down the government, though, to me this is because with our present government structure they are allowed to be irresponsible, relying on the rest of the government to correct their childishness. If the majority in the House were clearly in charge, without the Senate and the President to correct their irresponsible behavior, they would not be so childish. It is not something inherent in the members of the House that makes them irresponsible: it is the way our government is set up. Our present structure encourages irresponsible behavior.
Of course I do not agree with the Republican programs, but they are in the majority, and should be able to realize their goals.
My position is that whoever has the majority in the House should be able to do what it wants. My hope is that when the Republicans get to that point in April, they will be responsible and do the right thing. If they are completely irresponsible and bring down the government, though, to me this is because with our present government structure they are allowed to be irresponsible, relying on the rest of the government to correct their childishness. If the majority in the House were clearly in charge, without the Senate and the President to correct their irresponsible behavior, they would not be so childish. It is not something inherent in the members of the House that makes them irresponsible: it is the way our government is set up. Our present structure encourages irresponsible behavior.
Of course I do not agree with the Republican programs, but they are in the majority, and should be able to realize their goals.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Gridlock
Ir is interesting to note that we have been complaining for the last two years about the filibuster or threat of filibuster that has thwarted and delayed legislation desired by the majority in the Senate and the House. With the election of a majority in the House of Republicans, but maintaining the majority in the Senate of Democrats, the situation changes. With the majority in the Senate, the Democrats are in a position to reject and prevent legislation passed by the majority in the House without using the threat of filibuster, and there is nothing the minority in the Senate can do about it. Thus it is likely that there will be much less use of the filibuster for at least the next two years--unless the Senate minority can gain enough votes from Democrats to force the majority to appeal to the filibuster as a way to prevent adoption of the minority position. But again even if the majority is forced to do so, there is little the minority can do to stop it.
This was the situation for much of the later 1800s, with the Republicans in the majority in the Senate, and thus able to prevent legislation coming from the House it did not like, whether it came from their own party or the opposition party. Political paralysis and gridlock does not entirely depend on the use of the filibuster.
This was the situation for much of the later 1800s, with the Republicans in the majority in the Senate, and thus able to prevent legislation coming from the House it did not like, whether it came from their own party or the opposition party. Political paralysis and gridlock does not entirely depend on the use of the filibuster.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Political Parties
If what Hacker and Pierson say in their book is true, then the problem with political parties is not that they are weak, as I had concluded: it is that the Democratic Party is weak. The Republicans are well organized, well disciplined, and have been able to accomplish their goals quite well even when the President is a Democrat. For them politics is a form of war. For the Democrats politics is a process of compromise and gaining consensus. This only allows the Republicans to manipulate the Democrats into doing their bidding. The Democrats have become, because of the demand for money to conduct campaigns, in effect Republican wannabees, trying to please the wealthy. Dick Armey is quoted as saying that his guiding principle in politics is to never offend your base. Unfortunately this is just what the Democrats have done, offend their base of middle class voters. Democrats need to get well enough organized, and make strong connections with their base, middle class voters, to stand on their own without needing to appeal to the enemy, the wealthy.
In the meantime, the structural change needed in the government is to eliminate the obstructive power of the Senate by reinstituting the parliamentary rule that allows members of the Senate to call for the question, thus stopping debate, and forcing a vote on the matter under discussion.
In the meantime, the structural change needed in the government is to eliminate the obstructive power of the Senate by reinstituting the parliamentary rule that allows members of the Senate to call for the question, thus stopping debate, and forcing a vote on the matter under discussion.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Inequality again
I have just finished reading Winner Take All Politics by Hacker and Pierson that I mentioned in a previous post. It is a devastating account of what has allowed the steep increase in inequality in our country. Their analysis is that the extent of inequality in our society is not just an economic phenomena: it is the direct result of the dominance of business, in particular the financial industry, over the government. Their dominance over the last thirty years has allowed business, through active legislation and passive drift, to enrich itself at the cost of stagnation and decline in the incomes of the middle class. I encourage everyone reading this post to immediately get the book and read it.
Unfortunately their account of these thirty years and the dynamics involved make efforts to change the system more difficult, and I am going to have to rethink the rather optimistic suggestions I made about changing the system. It is not just that the political parties in general need to get organized: the Republicans have been doing this quite well. It is rather that the Democratic party, or whatever successor there is to it, has to get organized so that it can function as a counterweight to business, and this will be very difficult, because business is where the money is.
Unfortunately their account of these thirty years and the dynamics involved make efforts to change the system more difficult, and I am going to have to rethink the rather optimistic suggestions I made about changing the system. It is not just that the political parties in general need to get organized: the Republicans have been doing this quite well. It is rather that the Democratic party, or whatever successor there is to it, has to get organized so that it can function as a counterweight to business, and this will be very difficult, because business is where the money is.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Bipartisanship
In this posting I want to respond to two columns and a comment by a listener-follower?-of the blog. I will try to be short and succinct.
The first column, by Jonathan Rauch in the New York Times, is one of those perennial attempts to say that we are better off with divided government, such as we now have after the recent election. His argument is that a unified government succeeds only in producing unhappiness and a loss of popularity for the majority party, whereas a divided government forces both sides to cooperate with each other, letting "meaningful laws stand a likelier chance of passage, because neither side can easily blame the other for whatever is wrong and because any major legislation needs support from both parties to pass." This argument ignores two things.
First, the unpopularity of the majority party in a unified government is not because it is unified, but because in our system the minority in the Senate can prevent the passage of major legislation desired by the majority. The health care reform bill is a good example. It finally got passed, but not until the minority in the Senate was able to force so many compromises and concessions that the end result was that even the majority was not happy with the bill, and the minority was able with some justification say that it is a bad bill. The unpopularity of the majority was because it was unable to do the job for which it was elected, not because of what it did, and the reason it could not accomplish its goals was the system which allows minority obstruction.
Second, in a divided government the likelihood of getting major, "meaningful" legislation passed at all is very small: the more likely prospect is that we will have gridlock where nothing major gets done. In both cases we make excuses by holding up the misguided notion that somehow we should have bipartisan decision making, a covert admission that nothing can get done without caving in to the minority, and allowing them to delay and distort the process and the result.
The second column, also in the New York Times, is by the noted historian David M Kennedy. He points out that the years from 1870 to 1900 were in many ways quite similar to our recent history in that there was divided government for many years, and major shifts in popular sentiment at elections. There were, as there are now, major issues to be dealt with at the time, "Yet the era's political system proved unable to grapple effectively with any of those matters." There was then, perhaps even more than there is now, "abject political paralysis."
Kennedy points out that the so-called Gilded Age ended with the appearance of the Progressive Movement and leaders such as Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, who were able to force the needed changes in our government. Unfortunately, Presidential leadership did not change Congress. It was instead rather like a deus ex machina that swooped in to rescue a floundering system without actually changing anything. The desperate cry for strong Presidential leadership has remained, over the more than 100 years since, the only apparent solution to a dysfunctional Congress, with Imperial Presidents growing stronger and stronger.
Finally, a reader of my blog sent me an email saying that for him and many others, the problem with government is the lack of accountability and effective management of the bureaucracy. He points to the US Postal Service, NASA, the environmental regulatory agencies that failed to prevent the BP oil spill, the overlapping and conflicting regulatory activities of the different agencies, such as those dealing with food production, and so on. First there has always been waste and mismanagement in bureaucracies around the world: it is to some extent just the nature of the beast.
In the case of the Federal bureaucracy, however, there is an additional consideration related to the above dysfunctional Congress. In our system the built in confusion as to who is in charge of the bureaucracy makes effective management very difficult. Is the bureaucracy responsible to the President, who is supposed to execute the laws, or to the House or to the Senate, who make the laws? The poor bureaucrat does not really know, and gets conflicting pressures from all three of these sources, even down to the staffs of individual Senators and Congressmen. It is little wonder that in this situation the bureaucrat, without any clear lines of authority or responsibility, ends up being in the pocket of the industry they are supposed to regulate, and able to get away with poor management. These are not issues separate from the above dysfunctional Congress.
The ultimate conclusion is that we need a new system. Enough.
The first column, by Jonathan Rauch in the New York Times, is one of those perennial attempts to say that we are better off with divided government, such as we now have after the recent election. His argument is that a unified government succeeds only in producing unhappiness and a loss of popularity for the majority party, whereas a divided government forces both sides to cooperate with each other, letting "meaningful laws stand a likelier chance of passage, because neither side can easily blame the other for whatever is wrong and because any major legislation needs support from both parties to pass." This argument ignores two things.
First, the unpopularity of the majority party in a unified government is not because it is unified, but because in our system the minority in the Senate can prevent the passage of major legislation desired by the majority. The health care reform bill is a good example. It finally got passed, but not until the minority in the Senate was able to force so many compromises and concessions that the end result was that even the majority was not happy with the bill, and the minority was able with some justification say that it is a bad bill. The unpopularity of the majority was because it was unable to do the job for which it was elected, not because of what it did, and the reason it could not accomplish its goals was the system which allows minority obstruction.
Second, in a divided government the likelihood of getting major, "meaningful" legislation passed at all is very small: the more likely prospect is that we will have gridlock where nothing major gets done. In both cases we make excuses by holding up the misguided notion that somehow we should have bipartisan decision making, a covert admission that nothing can get done without caving in to the minority, and allowing them to delay and distort the process and the result.
The second column, also in the New York Times, is by the noted historian David M Kennedy. He points out that the years from 1870 to 1900 were in many ways quite similar to our recent history in that there was divided government for many years, and major shifts in popular sentiment at elections. There were, as there are now, major issues to be dealt with at the time, "Yet the era's political system proved unable to grapple effectively with any of those matters." There was then, perhaps even more than there is now, "abject political paralysis."
Kennedy points out that the so-called Gilded Age ended with the appearance of the Progressive Movement and leaders such as Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, who were able to force the needed changes in our government. Unfortunately, Presidential leadership did not change Congress. It was instead rather like a deus ex machina that swooped in to rescue a floundering system without actually changing anything. The desperate cry for strong Presidential leadership has remained, over the more than 100 years since, the only apparent solution to a dysfunctional Congress, with Imperial Presidents growing stronger and stronger.
Finally, a reader of my blog sent me an email saying that for him and many others, the problem with government is the lack of accountability and effective management of the bureaucracy. He points to the US Postal Service, NASA, the environmental regulatory agencies that failed to prevent the BP oil spill, the overlapping and conflicting regulatory activities of the different agencies, such as those dealing with food production, and so on. First there has always been waste and mismanagement in bureaucracies around the world: it is to some extent just the nature of the beast.
In the case of the Federal bureaucracy, however, there is an additional consideration related to the above dysfunctional Congress. In our system the built in confusion as to who is in charge of the bureaucracy makes effective management very difficult. Is the bureaucracy responsible to the President, who is supposed to execute the laws, or to the House or to the Senate, who make the laws? The poor bureaucrat does not really know, and gets conflicting pressures from all three of these sources, even down to the staffs of individual Senators and Congressmen. It is little wonder that in this situation the bureaucrat, without any clear lines of authority or responsibility, ends up being in the pocket of the industry they are supposed to regulate, and able to get away with poor management. These are not issues separate from the above dysfunctional Congress.
The ultimate conclusion is that we need a new system. Enough.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Raising taxes
I do not intend to comment on ongoing political issues that basically accept the way things are now, but I cannot resist doing so in this instance. The Republicans complain loudly that the major issue at present is the deficit, and they intend to cut spending to deal with it. They threaten to slash discretionary spending, and decimate social programs such as education, public health, national parks, research, and what they call unnecessary regulation.
If it is indeed the case that the deficit is the major problem for this country, then Obama unilaterally should announce that he will veto any legislation intended to prevent the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, so that rates will automatically return to what they were under Clinton.
First of all, as President, Obama could get away with this move. It is unlikely that two thirds of both houses would be able to overcome such a veto. Second, Obama and his programs were repudiated in this election, so he owes nothing to the middle class. His goal has to be to do what is good for the entire country. The federal government needs the money to pay for its programs, even if the programs are slashed. If he cannot selectively fiddle with the expiration of the tax cuts, he can do so across the board, just as the Republicans talk about cutting spending across the board. He could argue that it is necessary for everyone to share in the suffering necessary to repair the country's credit. In the short term it may damage the recovery, but over the long term, it would prepare the way for a healthier economy. This may deny Obama a second term, but it is the sort of bold move that Obama needs to make to show that he is serious and able to act decisively. My guess is that the Republicans will find it difficult to argue convincingly against it, since doing so would only expose their hypocrisy. On the other hand, it may precipitate the kind of constitutional crisis that we need in this country.
If it is indeed the case that the deficit is the major problem for this country, then Obama unilaterally should announce that he will veto any legislation intended to prevent the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, so that rates will automatically return to what they were under Clinton.
First of all, as President, Obama could get away with this move. It is unlikely that two thirds of both houses would be able to overcome such a veto. Second, Obama and his programs were repudiated in this election, so he owes nothing to the middle class. His goal has to be to do what is good for the entire country. The federal government needs the money to pay for its programs, even if the programs are slashed. If he cannot selectively fiddle with the expiration of the tax cuts, he can do so across the board, just as the Republicans talk about cutting spending across the board. He could argue that it is necessary for everyone to share in the suffering necessary to repair the country's credit. In the short term it may damage the recovery, but over the long term, it would prepare the way for a healthier economy. This may deny Obama a second term, but it is the sort of bold move that Obama needs to make to show that he is serious and able to act decisively. My guess is that the Republicans will find it difficult to argue convincingly against it, since doing so would only expose their hypocrisy. On the other hand, it may precipitate the kind of constitutional crisis that we need in this country.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Inequality
Bob Herbert wrote a column in the New York Times about a new book that has just come out by Hacker and Pierson, two political scientists entitled, Winner Take All Politics. It is about the growth in inequality in this country over the last thirty years. Their explanation of this growth is that essentially big business has coopted government, and has relaxed and changed the regulations and rules by which business operates so that the rich have become very much richer, to the detriment of the rest of the people, especially the middle class.
To my way of thinking, this is something that the wealthy naturally try to do-it is in their nature to try to make themselves even richer. The problem has been that there is in our government no functioning counterweight to these efforts of the wealthy. For a short period after the depression labor was allowed to develop power and serve as a counterweight, but it has systematically lost power through the efforts of big business. At present there is effectively no counterweight to big business, and so banks get bailed out and the perpetrators of the financial collapse do not suffer, and in fact are making even more money. One can sympathize with the Tea Party movement on this, but why they should ally themselves with the Republicans, the party of big business is mystifying. Their solution, smaller government, would have the result of only letting big business have more freedom to gain more of the wealth. We need big government to be able to stand up effectively to big business.
What is missing in our government is the absence of strong, effective, competitive political parties who will have to respond to the people, not just business, to get elected. We, uniquely in the western world, have a weak party government, and that weakness is what allows business to control government. Business is able to use the "checks and balances", the constraints on majority rule, to prevent effective, party based control of the government in the interests of all the people, not just the wealthy.
Katrina vanden Heuvel in the Washington Post today has a column about the power of the US Chamber of Commerce in the election yesterday. She points out that the Chamber of Commerce is almost totally a tool of big business, not of commerce in general. "Only 249 of 7000 local chambers are now members." I am not going to argue that the US Chamber of Commerce should be stopped from spending its money, or that disclosure is somehow going to change its behavior. The issue for me is not that they spend so much money, but that there is no one else on the other side to compete with them. Given that today labor is weak and ineffective, there has to be some other organization, working perhaps with labor, to counteract the influence of the US Chamber of Commerce and other such organizations.
To have other such organizations, we have to recognize that business is not a monolithic force. Like any other area of life, within business there are differences about how and what to do. Heuvel points out in fact that one such organization, the American Sustainable Business Council, is in fact opposed to much of what the US Chamber of Commerce promotes. We need such organizations to become more active and outspoken about what needs to be done for this country, but without effective party organizations, such groups have nowhere to go.
Strong political parties, even if both represent only factions within the business community, would be better than what we have now, and would give the people a real choice when they vote. If this is class warfare, then so be it.
To my way of thinking, this is something that the wealthy naturally try to do-it is in their nature to try to make themselves even richer. The problem has been that there is in our government no functioning counterweight to these efforts of the wealthy. For a short period after the depression labor was allowed to develop power and serve as a counterweight, but it has systematically lost power through the efforts of big business. At present there is effectively no counterweight to big business, and so banks get bailed out and the perpetrators of the financial collapse do not suffer, and in fact are making even more money. One can sympathize with the Tea Party movement on this, but why they should ally themselves with the Republicans, the party of big business is mystifying. Their solution, smaller government, would have the result of only letting big business have more freedom to gain more of the wealth. We need big government to be able to stand up effectively to big business.
What is missing in our government is the absence of strong, effective, competitive political parties who will have to respond to the people, not just business, to get elected. We, uniquely in the western world, have a weak party government, and that weakness is what allows business to control government. Business is able to use the "checks and balances", the constraints on majority rule, to prevent effective, party based control of the government in the interests of all the people, not just the wealthy.
Katrina vanden Heuvel in the Washington Post today has a column about the power of the US Chamber of Commerce in the election yesterday. She points out that the Chamber of Commerce is almost totally a tool of big business, not of commerce in general. "Only 249 of 7000 local chambers are now members." I am not going to argue that the US Chamber of Commerce should be stopped from spending its money, or that disclosure is somehow going to change its behavior. The issue for me is not that they spend so much money, but that there is no one else on the other side to compete with them. Given that today labor is weak and ineffective, there has to be some other organization, working perhaps with labor, to counteract the influence of the US Chamber of Commerce and other such organizations.
To have other such organizations, we have to recognize that business is not a monolithic force. Like any other area of life, within business there are differences about how and what to do. Heuvel points out in fact that one such organization, the American Sustainable Business Council, is in fact opposed to much of what the US Chamber of Commerce promotes. We need such organizations to become more active and outspoken about what needs to be done for this country, but without effective party organizations, such groups have nowhere to go.
Strong political parties, even if both represent only factions within the business community, would be better than what we have now, and would give the people a real choice when they vote. If this is class warfare, then so be it.
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