The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

After three years of negotiations, an agricultural reform bill has finally passed in Congress, and presumably will soon become law.  Some of it involved eliminating outrageous subsidies that go mainly to big corporations.  That’s good.  Stiffer environmental regulations on farms that the bill includes are good, too.  It requires a label showing country of origin on meat.  That’s a good idea in itself, though critics complain it will add costs to the consumer for the sorting of animals at stock yards and may set off trade wars with other countries.  That’s bad.  But the ugly part of the bill is that of the $16 billion in projected savings, over half, $8.6 billion comes from cuts in the food stamp program.  But that was done to avoid a House conservative alternative proposal to cut 5 times as much from the proposal.  The bill is classic compromise legislation, and good, bad or ugly, it’s the face of democracy.

One question that arises is whether in this complicated 21^st century, we can any longer afford such compromise.   Fifty years ago in political science, it was popular to talk about “iron triangles.”  The concept was that isolated special interest areas like agriculture are composed of a triangle of interests consisting of a congressional committee (the Agriculture Committees in the House and Senate, a lobbying group (farmers and ranchers) and a bureaucracy (the Agriculture Department).  All decisions are worked out by members of the triangle, and other areas did not intrude.  That’s how subsidies arise and continue like the annual payment to home owners whose house sits on land formerly part of a rice field which encountered hurricane damage.  That was indeed how it worked back then.  But the plight of those in poverty in the cities, environmental issues, international trade agreements, an internet-based world in which everyone knows and is concerned with the business of other, and dozens of other things have turned the triangles into unrecognizable multi-faceted configurations.  Previously, relatively small groups of Congressional leaders cut deals to get things done quickly. Sometimes the results, like the subsidies, were self-interested and against the public interest, but often great things were done.  The Civil Rights Act was passed with the efforts of a relatively small group of Congressional leaders pushed hard by Lyndon Johnson.  Even Johnson couldn’t get it done today.  The face of democracy begins to resemble something done by Picasso, and it’s getting uglier by the year..

Now, the consequences of decisions have widespread impacts no longer ignorable by others.  The particular form food stamp cuts took affects well over a million people in 850,000 households in about a third of the states.  Taking over half the savings out of the incomes of the poor may work as a political compromise, but it ravages the lives of people.  International treaties currently being negotiated will be affected.  Pollution levels are tied in.   Good enough in compromised legislation may no longer be good enough.

Beyond that, many of our problems arise quickly and must be solved quickly.  The long-term unemployment issue is a case in point.  Climate change legislation is another.  Three years topass an inadequate solution no longer suffices.  And beyond that, the results of time-consuming legislation get locked in.  Thirty years ago, Congress in the early days of the Reagan era hastily passed an elimination of the Social Security minimum benefit.  The public outcry caused them just as hastily to repeal what they had done.  When agricultural legislation takes three years to negotiate all the angles, the prospect of changing it is slim.

Congress’s latest success shows just how much Congress is broken.  Some of the causes are obvious.  It’s far too large these days.  435 members in the House generally cannot even agree on an agenda, much less significant legislation.  Its internal procedures are antiquated.  Procedures that made sense in 1814 no longer do.  It’s composed of far too many gerrymandered extremists, etc., etc.  Such a Congress can no longer adequately manage the complexities of today’s society.  None of these problems are at the Constitutional level.  The Constitution does not specify 435 members in the House or 60 votes to invoke cloture in the Senate.  But reform requires willingness of the Congress to address its own structural problems and of states to reduce gerrymandering and it can’t be done entirely from within Congress.  That’s as hard as changing the Constitution.

Congress’s fundamental problem is that it is the victim of culture lag, and that lag includes unwillingness to recognize the problem.  We are relying on a horse-and-buggy congress in a supersonic age, and our Congressional representatives in general don’t even see the problem.  It’s the kind of problem that can only be corrected at the ballot box.  It will require a long, hard push.  It’s time we began.