The Re-Election Money Machine

Most of the people who get elected to Congress are good, decent, dedicated, smart individuals who are genuinely motivated by a desire to serve our country and serve their constituents.  But when they get to Washington something very strange happens.  They find themselves trapped in the re-election money machine.

 

Most Congresspersons, when they first run for office, don't expect to make Congress their career.  They think, "I'll run for office, serve a couple of terms, accomplish something for the folks back home, and then move back home to Spokane, or Denver, or Wichita Falls and get on with my life."  But when they arrive in Washington, they are smacked in the face with the first dirty little secret of life in the Congress:  Seniority controls everything in the Congress of the United States.  A newly-elected Senator or Representative doesn't even get a good office or parking space.  Only the "senior members" get their pick of committee assignments and only the very senior members become the all-powerful "Chairman" of a major committee.  A new legislator learns real fast that without the blessings of your committee Chairman, you don't even think about drafting some new legislation, no matter how much you want to help out "the folks back home."  And if you do rear up on your hind legs and drop some new bill into the legislative hopper, without the blessing of several of the necessary committee Chairmen, your bill is born dead.  No hearings.  No press coverage.  No C-Span or CNN or MSNBC.  Just another dead bill that never made it out of committee.  Every two years the Congress adjourns, old bills die, and the legislative dance starts all over again.

 

So the astute new legislator accepts that if he or she wants to actually accomplish anything in Congress, he or she needs seniority.  And that means he or she must get re-elected.  And that means MONEY.  Lots and lots and lots of money.  It takes millions of dollars to run a congressional re-election campaign.  So you need the support of big money contributors.  A few dollars from "the folks back home" won't do it.  For Democrats, that traditionally means union money, particularly these days, money from public-employee unions, like the teachers.  For Republicans, the primary source of campaign funding traditionally comes from business-related contributors and business associations like the National Association of Manufacturers.  This is not about ideology.  Liberal or conservative, most members of Congress will take the money wherever they can get it. 

 

What do these traditional big money contributors want in exchange for all these millions of dollars?  Access. 

 

They want to be able to send their lobbyist in to see Senator Blat whenever any legislation comes along that they like, or that they don't like.  If some Senator starts talking about charter schools, she'll be getting a lot of visits from the National Education Association.  If some Congressman thinks that maybe America needs some new regulation of asbestos, the Shipyard Owner's Association or the United Brotherhood of Shipyard Workers will be six-deep in the Senator's reception room.  The price of access?  Campaign contributions.

 

So here is the second little secret: Most legislators are reactive.  They are not self-starters.  They introduce new legislation or kill a pending bill because someone--a rich constituent, a trade association or a union--asks them to introduce (or block) the bill.  And all these constituent groups and associations want the same thing.  Access that allows them to manipulate the legislative process to gain some kind of advantage for their particular point of view.  Timber companies want the national forest opened up to more clear-cutting.  The Sierra Club wants clear-cutting banned.  Senior citizens and their lobby, AARP, want social security and medicare benefits increased.  Taxpayer organizations want those expensive "entitlements" reduced. 

 

The lobbyist with the biggest checkbook usually wins.

 

If you agree that money--campaign contributions and the strings that are attached to each dollar--has a corrosive and corrupting influence on American politics, what do we, as ordinary citizens, do about it?  

In my opinion, the first step is to realize that we, the citizens of this country, are responsible for our own governance.  That is the genius of America, the wonderful model that our Founding Fathers left for us.  We don't have a King and we don't need a self-sustaining political aristocracy.  In America, the people rule.   We are the "shareholders" of the enterprise called America.  If the country is running off the rails, it's our responsibility to fix it.  We, the people, need to get off our collective butt and get involved.  We need to start paying attention and become better informed.  Second, we need to reject those politicians and their media supporters who advance themselves by polarizing our society.  I may strongly disagree with your political views, but as Americans we both have more in common than our political differences.  If we allow an uninformed and disinterested ten percent to decide every election because the other ninety percent of us are so evenly and deeply polarized with no recognition of the common ground between us, we will continue to be ruled by the lowest common denominator of our political process.  The "winners" in a divided America are the incumbent class of career politicians who care more about their own reelection than the good of the country.

If we, as citizens, start paying attention I think most of us, of whatever political stripe, will agree on some combination of the following reforms:

• We need strict term limits more than we need career politicians.  
• We need to insist that the seniority system in Congress be reformed.  I want a smart, effective Senator, not an old one.
• We need a shorter campaign season--say four months for national elections--and a lot less media expense for the candidates.
• And, although personally I hate this idea, I've come to believe that we need public financing of elections.  

Without these reforms, we'll continue to have the best Congress that money can buy.  That's not good enough for America.    

(A brief footnote:  In the 2008 presidential election the Obama campaign capitalized on "new media" and "social networking" (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to raise millions and millions of dollars from non-traditional sources.  Most of the traditional Democratic money was going to Hillary Clinton in the early days of the campaign and Obama worked the new media brilliantly to adapt and overcome.  He mobilized millions of mostly young, tech-savy volunteers and used social networking to vacuum up campaign contributions like an industrial strength Dyson.  This trend will only continue, and no future campaign can succeed without an exceptionally effective social media effort.)

Greg Dahl