Everyday Politics Blog

Why Change Is Difficult

In 1964, voters sent a new, young generation of Democrats into Congress. Lyndon Johnson won a landslide election against Barry Goldwater. With Democratic control over both Congress and the White House, Johnson and Congress passes a series of major legislation, including The Civil Rights Act of 1964, Medicare, and Medicaid. Another group of laws were passed aimed at reducing poverty, improving education, and improving life in inner cities.

Regardless of your opinion of the outcome of these laws, there is no question that major change happened in 1964, and it happened quickly. These laws marked a sharp departure from the past. Government bureaucracy, as well as the federal budget, ballooned in size. Lives changed.

When Obama came to office last year with a Democratic majority in both houses of government, many thought it was 1964 all over again. He promised major legislation in health care, education, and infrastructure.

One year later, Congress still has made no progress on health care. Their Democratic majority is slowly eroding, and the public has grown cynical.

Why was Johnson so successful in 1964, and Obama has not yet passed health care reform?

There are many possible answers to this question. Instead of giving you one definitive answer, I'll propose three possible answers to that question and let you debate this matter in class. 

1) Some might point to intervening variables, including the failing economy and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 1964, the economy was booming, and Americans were wealthier than ever before. They were more willing to part with the tax money than Americans are today.

2) Stephen Skowronek, in addition to coming up with this nifty model for classifying presidents, wrote that it has grown increasingly difficult for presidents to make change in the United States, because of the thick layers of bureaucracy that have formed and the customs that have arisen. In the past, when a Reconstruction President came to office, it was easier for him to act as a "battering ram" and create new orders. Now, even strong, talented presidents can only make small, incremental changes.

Skowronek might say that bureaucracies and powerful interest groups have arisen in the past several decades, and they have a strong interest in perpetuating the status quo around health care policy. They drag down the system and prevent change.

3) Others might argue that Obama is having trouble today, because all change is difficult in the United States. 1964 was the outlier or an anomaly. What made 1964 significant wasn't the party composition of Congress, but the mood within the country, which was unusually optimistic and in agreement that change needed to happen. That broad agreement and optimism from within the public was a freakish blip in our nation's history.

That unusual public spirit is the only way that radical change can happen in our country, because our governmental system was designed by James Madison, the master worrier. Madison was terrified of rapid change. He worried that with the increasing the franchise, the unwashed masses might make unreasonable and unwise demands of their government, so he put in all sorts of fail safes into the constitution. There are checks upon checks and a million ways for bill to go off course. Just look at how difficult it has been for the conference committee to find compromise between the Senate and the House versions of the Health Care bill.

Which explanation seems most plausible to you? Do you have a better answer to the question?

Reconciliation?

By David Watkins    

In his State of the Union address yesterday, Barack Obama said the following: "And if the Republican leadership is going to insist that sixty votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town, then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well." This has become all the more true since the election of Republican Scott Brown in a special election to fill out the remainder of Ted Kennedy's term in the Massachusetts. This gives the Republican party the 41st vote necessary to sustain a filibuster in the Senate. The good news, for Obama and the Democrats, is that the Senate already passed a health care reform bill. the bad news is the House hasn't, and many members of the Democratic coalition in the house are unlikely to vote for the Senate's bill. (Prior to Brown's election, the path forward had been for the house to pass its own bill, and go through the reconciliation process to produce a compromise bill. Now, with going back to the Senate no longer a viable option due to a likely Republican filibuster, the House must pass the exact same bill as the Senate to avoid that final step).

If you've been following the news, however, you've probably heard people talk about another option--the house passes the Senate bill, and certain features of the Senate bill objectionable to house members are "fixed" in reconciliation. Reconciliation is the process by which congress "reconciles" (that is, changes, adds, or eliminates) parts of the law in order to conform with the budget. Since a significant portion of the current health care reform legislation has an impact on the budget, this could, in theory, work. Why can't republicans just filibuster the reconciliation changes? Political Scientist Sarah Binder provides the answer in her thorough post on reconciliation:

The Congressional Budget Act limits Senate consideration of reconciliation to 20 hours of debate and to 10 hours of debate on a reconciliation conference report. With a time certain for a vote, that means a minority cannot filibuster the effort to get to a vote. Why did senators create a fast-track for reconciliation in 1974? Chalk this one up to unanticipated consequences. Reconciliation was originally intended as a cleaning up mechanism to make the two congressional budget resolutions consistent with one another. When the Budget Act was revised and the second resolution dropped, reconciliation came to be used more aggressively for securing controversial policy changes.   

Be sure to click through and read the post for more details about the history and details of reconciliation. Is this likely to happen with health care reform? It's very hard to see. It would require, at a minimum, 50 out of 59 Democratic Senators willing to go along with this plan. Why wouldn't they? One reason might not is that they are nervous about setting a precedent--that major legislation can avoid the Senate's 60 vote requirement potentially weakens their power to effect legislation in the future. Some might object because they genuinely value the Senate's unique set of rules. Others might not be willing to go along with the plan because they strongly oppose the changes the House might demand in reconciliation. Whether the Democrats can get 50 votes in the Senate for reconciliation or 218 votes in the house for the Senate bill, will determine whether health care reform succeeds.

As a more general observation, as Scott noted in his most recent post, the current status quo in congress--strong party discipline (especially for the minority party) and polarization, coupled with the routine, everyday use of the filibuster--is not conducive to successful governing. Eventually, it will probably change. That change might come through the routinization of reconciliation, a change to the usage patterns or rules governing the filibuster, or less party polarization and discipline. Until those changes occur, expect Presidents to have an ever harder time enacting their domestic policy agenda.

The Senate's Collison Course

By Scott Lemieux

A political commentator points out an unusual aspect of the health care bill that recently passed in the Senate:

There’s no real precedent for such a major piece of social policy legislation as this health care bill being enacted into law on a party-line vote.

While in the past we might have expected to see some liberal Republicans vote for the health care bill and some conservative Republicans to oppose it, this didn't happen in 2009.   To use V.O. Key's term, "party in government" is probably at its strongest point in American history.   In large measure, this development is a result of the parties becoming more ideologically coherent -- one reason that the health care bill failed to attract the support of any liberal Republicans in the Senate is that there are so few left.    Even so, historically it would have been much more likely that Maine's Republican Senator Olympia Snowe would have voted for the legislation instead of the conservative Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson, but the latter voted for the bill (after extracting some concessions) and the former didn't.

The rise of "party in government" the health care bill reflects, while often decried by political pundits who emphasize the virtues of bipartisanship, is seen as a good thing by many political scientists.   Disciplined parties have a major obvious advantage: they increase the accountability of government.   Ideologically coherent parties provide more information to voters and are easier to hold responsible for successes and failures.    At a minimum, there's no reason to think of increased party discipline and polarization as inherently bad things.

One potential problem, however, is that party discipline may have unusual effects in the American case.   Consider two of Lowi's principles of politics: "institutions routinely solve collective action problems" and "history matters."   The esoteric rules of the Senate, which allow not only minority parties but individual Senators to obstruct the operations of the body, present an obvious collective action problem, in that routinized minority obstruction would in the long run make everyone worse off by preventing any party from enacting a substantial agenda.    One reason that minority obstructions such as filibusters have been relatively rare is that loose party discipline means that Senators in the minority party may need the support of members of the majority party on another issue, so that the consequences of obstructionism manifested themselves much more quickly.    When there's little possibility of attracting support across party lines, conversely, senators will see much short-term loss from being obstructionist, and if they gain politically in the short term may put less weight on long-term consequences.   

So party realignment may put the Senate's rules and its traditions on a collision course.    If party discipline continues to be strong, it seems likely the recent de facto requirement that the 6o votes required to break a filibuster, rather than the 50 (or 51 if the minority party controls the White House) needed to pass legislation, are necessary to move a bill forward will eventually broken by a majority party willing to change the rules.    Until this happens, however, passing major legislation will be enormously difficult.

I'll Bring Home the Bacon. Fry it Up in a Pan.

When I was in college, I signed up for an internship to work in the office of the Mayor of Binghamton, New York. My job was to answer mail from the constituency who complained about potholes in the streets or the drunks who poured out of local bars and puked on their front lawns. The mayor took these letters very seriously, so I put a lot of time into writing sensible and caring responses.

It was a fascinating experience. I learned that politicians must be concerned with keeping their constituency happy, and since then I've never hesitated to write an e-mail to my representative when I disagree with his voting record. These sorts of hands-on experiences are an excellent way to gain insight into politics that can't be gained from a textbook. I hope that you take advantage of such opportunities at your school.

As part of the internship, I had to discuss certain assigned readings with a professor and complete a research paper. My paper was on the governing style of women, since the mayor was a woman. At that time, there were very few women in government, so the paper consisted of mostly case studies and theoretical work. Twenty years later, I'm still pleased that I received an A for that paper.

Since then, more women have leadership positions in government. We have Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, Hilary Clinton, Secretary of State, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotormayor on the Supreme Court. There are 17 women in the Senate and and 75 women in the House of Representatives.

While women still do not comprise 50 percent of Congress, their numbers have increased substantially enabling researchers to gain further insight into their governing style. Recent research finds that women congressional leaders are more likely to sponsor pork-barrel legislation than male congressional leaders. The authors conclude:

We find that congresswomen secure roughly 9 percent more spending from federal discretionary programs than congressmen. This amounts to a premium of about $49 million per year for districts that send a woman to Capitol Hill. Finally, we find that women’s superiority in securing particularistic benefits does not hurt their performance in policymaking: women also sponsor more bills and obtain more cosponsorship support for their legislative initiatives than their male colleagues.

Pork-barrel legislation are laws that contain a benefit that goes directly to one location. It might mean funding to build a bridge in a community or to support a local army base. The people in the community like it, because it provides jobs for locals. Congressional leaders like to pass these bills, because they can go back home and tell the people who vote for them, their constituency, that they took care of them. Their tax money is going to benefit them and not somebody thousands of miles away. 

So, why are women more likely to sponsor pork-barrel legislation? Other research may provide the answer.

One of the authors that I read for that internship so many years ago was David Mayhew. Mayhew argues that all congressmen engage in three activities: credit-claiming, advertising, and position-taking. (My undergraduate mnemonic device for memorizing those activities was CAP.) These activities are necessary to get reelected. 

Some speculate that women have to work harder than men to get re-elected and therefore have to spend more time taking credit for sponsoring legislation with their constituency. They can tell their constituency that they were responsible for that bridge, which they use every day and was built by contractors in the community. Men have to take credit for legislation also, but they just don't have to do it as much as women do.

Is this a positive development? Many people believe that pork-barrel legislation is not the best use of government money. On the other hand, people reward congressional leaders that sponsor this legislation by re-electing them. People like pork-barrel legislation when it means benefits for themselves; they just don't like it when other people get it.

Do you believe that women have a different leadership style than men? Is it important to increase the number of women in Congress? Will women change their governing style if they don't have to work so hard to be re-elected and if there is a larger group of women in Congress?

Hecklers From the Back Benches

Two days ago, President Obama gave a speech on health care reform. At one point in the speech, he said that there were many misconceptions about his plan out there. He said that there would be no "death panels" for old people to determine whether or not they should receive expensive, life-saving procedures. He also said that this plan would not cover illegal aliens. From the audience, Congressman Joe Wilson from South Carolina shouted out "You lie!"

I was watching Obama's speech on CNN's website and I had Twitter up on another window. I use Twitter to follow various political pundits and activists. Their reaction to Wilson's remark was instantaneous. Within seconds, someone had identified who he was. Minutes later, his wikipedia page was changed. One hour later, prominent bloggers had identified who his opponent was in the upcoming election and called for donations to his campaign. Two days later, that opponent has received campaign donations for more than $700,000.

As a scholar of Internet politics, I am fascinated by the dialogue that occurs on the Internet, as well as the speed that information flows and the ability to form rapid responses. Some have said that Twitter has been used most effectively by conservatives. The Joe Wilson incident certainly shows that liberals are also using Twitter effectively.

On a morning news show this morning, one pundit said that Joe Wilson's shout demonstrates that the weakening respect for the presidency, which began in the Clinton administration and has only accelerated. I'm not sure if that's true or not. Nixon and the Watergate scandal was a serious blow to the presidency. No president will ever win the awe and respect of the public and the media as the pre-Nixon presidents.

The Wilson incident also brings up the question of how Congress should behave. Traditionally, the Congress in the United States has always been formal. Congressional representatives refer to each other as the "Fine Senior Senator from New York" and decorum is maintained during discussion periods. Legislative bodies in other countries are much more boisterous. There are shouts, heckles, and cheers from the backbenches during speeches and debates. Here's a sample of a debate in England's Parliament:

As a result of a two word shout from Congressman Wilson, he's going to face a tough fight in November and he's had to apologize to the president for his behavior. It was shocking by American standards, but it's commonplace elsewhere.

Do you think that Wilson's comments were disrespectful and disruptive of intellectual debate? Do you think he should receive censure from Congress? Or do you think that Congress should start behaving more like Parliament? Is there something very democratic about those shouts from the backbenches and the questioning of presidents and prime ministers?

Republican Strategy

by David Watkins

A journalism student here at Seattle University recently interviewed me about the Republican party's political strategy as a political minority in era of Obama. She, like many of my students, were surprised that despite Obama's efforts, virtually all Republicans in congress voted against his economic stimulus bill. She was particularly interested in why Republicans would take a such an oppositional stance against Obama's core policy initiatives, at a time when Republicans have suffered substantial electoral losses and Obama is quite popular. (On Obama's popularity see here. Obama's approval rating is more than twice as high as Bush's was throughout the last several years of his presidency. Perhaps even more astonishingly, Obama has a higher approval rating among self-idenfified Republicans than Bush had overall!)

What does the GOP have to gain from not compromising in a bipartisan manner?

Political scientists have repeatedly demonstrated that one of the most accurate indicators of voting behavior is economic performance. While the current economic catastrophe is probably not a "normal" recession and is difficult to project in terms of length and intensity, there is a very good chance we will still be in recession, or recovering weakly and slowly, in time for the 2010 midterm election. If the Republican party opposes Obama/Democratic efforts to protect/create jobs and turn the economy around, and the economy still looks and feels pretty bad to voters in 2010 (and/or 2012), they can put forth the following claim: "Obama/Democratic leadership pursued a failed strategy, we knew it was doomed to fail and that's why we opposed it, now give us a chance and we'll do something that works." However fair this is, it's a message that might work.

However: this is far from guaranteed to be successful. The GOP model, from a strategic perspective must be 1994 (Senate, House), when they made substantial gains and won back the House and Senate from Democratic control. They did so after two years of blocking and opposing Clinton's attempted legislation, including Health Care reform. The nightmare scenario finds a historical example in the midterm election of 1934 (Senate, House) in which the already-dominant Democrats gained nine seats in each house.

So which of these is 2010 more likely to resemble? One important similarity with 1934 is the economy, but also, at least for now, the impression that the Republican party is out of their depth on economic matters. Of course, 1994 is much more recent history and Heath Care reform may be on the agenda again. But: Obama is a much more popular president, who had a much larger share of the national vote than Clinton (because of the 3rd party candidacy of Ross Perot, Clinton won in 1992 with only 43% of the popular vote to Obama's 53%). And if Health Care reform is on the agenda, it is unlikely it will be as useful an issue for the Republican leadership as it was in 1994; health care costs have continued to grow and Democratic solutions are more popular now then they were in the past. Here's a good summary of public opinion on health care issues today.

A final thought on this question: It presumes that the Republican party is pursuing a long term, coordinated political strategy by opposing Obama. But there's another, perhaps simpler explanation. Many Republicans elected from moderate districts have lost their seats in the last two elections, leaving the remaining republicans overwhelmingly from "deep red" districts. As they became a small minority party, they became more conservative. It's quite possible they're opposing Obama's agenda in good faith.

Either way, the Republicans have their work cut out for them if they are to be electorally competitive. Here's the detailed version of  a recent New York Times poll. I'm particularly interested in questions 48 and 49. When asked if Obama should stick to his policies of work in a bipartisan way with Republicans, his policies won 56-39. When the same question was asked about Republicans, 79% said they should work in a bipartisan way with Obama, and only 17% said stick with policies. It's possible that frustration with the economy will push people back towards the Republicans, but they've got a long way to be pushed. 

Special elections and incumbency advantage

By David Watkins

Always check your facts. Two days ago, in post about Senate vacancies, I wrote:

Setting aside the ethics and the law for a moment, Blagojevich is certainly correct about one thing--the senate seat he has the power to appoint is a valuable commodity indeed. It's just for two years, initially, but as all students of American politics know, incumbency advantage is a powerful thing, and his appointee, as a Democrat, would have a particularly strong advantage in Illinois, an overwhelmingly Democratic state.

I think two central claims here are accurate. First, the Democratic candidate in a 2010 election will hold an advantage in Illinois, and second, that the power to appoint a senator for two years is indeed a powerful thing. But it turns out the statement in bold, while generally accurate in American politics, may be somewhat misleading in this context. Nate Silver, who runs an excellent blog about politics and elections called fivethirtyeight.com, took a look at the last 49 Senators appointed by Governors to a vacated seat. Here is what he found:

Of those 49 senators, only 19 -- fewer than 40 percent -- won their subsequent special election. Meanwhile:

* 13 of the 49 (27%) ran for office, but were defeated in the general election;
* 7 of the 49 (14%) ran for office, but were defeated in the primary;
* 10 of the 49 (20%) chose not to seek a permanent term (including one who was prohibited by state law from doing so).

At first glance, incumbency advantage isn't apparent here at all--only 19/39, less than half, who sought reelection, managed to win. How might we explain this? Nate Silver has some further thoughts on this that are worth reading. Two (interrelated) reasons seem worth highlighting. First, many of the appointed Senators have been appointed due to their personal connections--they have wives, children, and college roommates of other powerful politicians. They got there for reasons that have little to do with the preferences of that state's electorate. Secondly, we have to think conceptually about incumbent advantage. One reason incumbents have an advantage is that they're good at winning. How do we know? They've already done it at least once in this constituency. We don't know if appointed Senators know how to win in a statewide race or not.

Senate Vacancies

By David Watkins

The big news in American Politics today is obviously the arrest and charging of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich on a host of corruption charges. Blagojevich has been under federal investigation for some time. Amongst other charges, Blagojevich is accused of threatening to withhold state assistance for the sale of Wrigley stadium by the owners of the stadium, The Chicago Tribune company, unless some members of the editorial board critical of the governor were fired. Obviously, this kind of abuse of power is a big deal, and a direct threat to the ideal of a free and independent press.

This part of the story, important as it is, is almost certainly going to be overlooked in light of the charges that Blagojevich was attempting to, in essence, sell a Senate seat. Barack Obama's six year Senate term has two years remaining. Blagojevich, as Illinois governor, has the right to appoint someone to fill that seat for the remainder of the term. The full text of the criminal complaint is available here. One this subject, the colorful Blagojevich is reported to have said:

“unless I get something real good for [Senate Candidate 1], s**t, I’ll just send myself, you know what I’m saying....And if I don’t get what I want and I’m not satisfied with it, then I’ll just take the Senate seat myself.”  Later, ROD BLAGOJEVICH stated that the Senate seat “is a f**king valuable thing, you just don’t give it away for nothing.”

Later in the conversation, ROD BLAGOJEVICH said he knows that the President-elect wants Senate Candidate 1 for the open seat but "they're not willing to give me anything except appreciation. F**k them."

Setting aside the ethics and the law for a moment, Blagojevich is certainly correct about one thing--the senate seat he has the power to appoint is a valuable commodity indeed. It's just for two years, initially, but as all students of American politics know, incumbency advantage is a powerful thing, and his appointee, as a Democrat, would have a particularly strong advantage in Illinois, an overwhelmingly Democratic state. Under normal circumstances, it takes the most talented and popular politicians millions of dollars and a fair amount of luck to win a seat in the US Senate.

If you find it odd that we'd give this kind of power to a single person, you're not alone. In both the United States and Democratic countries around the world, the norm is to hold special elections to fill mid-term vacancies in legislative bodies. The House of Representatives follows this norm. In the US Senate, however, things are different. The 17th Amendment to the US Constitution governs Senate Vacancies:

When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of each State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.

State legislatures have responded in a variety of different ways. Oregon and Wisconsin do not empower the governor to fill vacancies: they require special elections to fill the seat. Other states place restrictions on who the governor can appoint to fill the seat--by requiring them to fill the seat with someone of the same party as the departing senator (Hawaii, Alaska, Arizona) or by allowing the Governor to choose between three individuals put forth by the state legislature (Utah, Wyoming). More about the different ways states approach this issue can be found here. Dick Durbin, the sole Senator from Illinois, suggested this morning that the Illinois legislature "enact a law as quickly as possible calling for a special election to fill the Senate vacancy of Barack Obama."

What explains this unusual state of affairs? The 17th amendment, ratified in 1913, is mostly known for mandating the direct election of Senators. Previously, the selection of Senators was governed by Article one, section 3 of the Constitution, which granted the power to appoint Senators to the state legislatures. In essence, the current patchwork of policies governing interim appointments are a holdover from an era in which the Senate was not meant to be a democratic body. Today, the idea that the Senate should be selected through democratic process is widely accepted (although some conservative proponents of "states rights," notably former Georgia Senator Zell Miller, argue for its repeal), but many undemocratic features of the Senate remain. The Blagojevich corruption scandal reminds us of the potential costs to the alternatives of democratic decision-making.

In my "Citizenship and US Politics" course this term, we spent some time debating the case for abolishing the US Senate. Of course, this is a profoundly unrealistic goal, as it's very difficult to imagine a supermajority of US Senators, let alone the small states that benefit from overrepresentation in the US Senate, agreeing to this idea. Nevertheless, it's an interesting exercise to try to defend the Senate on principled grounds. The students who were assigned to argue for keeping the Senate found it more difficult than they had anticipated.