What Broke Congress? More Power for Special Interests

Bruce Bartlett, Matt Yglesias, Kevin Drum, and Jonathan Bernstein offered different dissents from Erick Erickson’s to my column on how the post 1970s emphasis on “transparency” has weakened Congress’ ability to “get things done.”

Bartlett and Yglesias suggested that the real change was the fading of the power of conservative Southern Democrats after 1970, aligning the party divide closer to an ideological divide.

Kevin Drum thinks that liberals should blame themselves for their own failure to persuade. (Always a good idea!)

And Bernstein thinks the whole argument misplaced: it’s the filibuster in the Senate, not the lack of effective leadership in the House that is the real problem.

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Bartlett & Yglesias: yes, something to that, clearly. Yet there remained many conservative Southern Democrats in Congress well into the 1980s, and even if the reality of a new multiracial electorate pushed the group somewhat to the left, they continued to share at least as much with their Republican counterparts as with their more liberal fellow Democrats. Yet the 1980s are the period where Congress seriously begins to fail at its first responsibility: balancing the budget, aligning ends with means.

More to the point: the reforms of the 1970s in themselves intensified the partisan divide.

By bringing the work of the committees into fuller public view, the 1970s reforms enabled interest groups – including ideological and partisan activists – to track the work of Congress more closely. With their work in committee more closely monitored, members of Congress came under greater pressure to heed the wishes of the pressure groups to whom they looked for finance as the old parties receded. You might be a conservative Southern Democrat – you might be willing to cut a quiet deal with your Republican colleagues to restrain spending growth and balance the budget – but AARP was looking over your shoulder the whole time.

As I said to Erick Erickson the other day, it’s way too glib to equate the new power of these organized groups with “the people.” “The people” – the 122 million person electorate – does not care much about specific decisions of Congress. They want prosperity, employment, and security, and if they get them, don’t ask too many questions about this vote or that. But the ACLU and the ACU and the others do care a great deal, and transparency inserts them right into the middle of the room.

More to come…