A voter in Wyoming -- population 533,000 -- has about 70 times more ability to influence the Senate's direction than one in California -- population 36.8 million.
This is no surprise to those of us who remember high-school history because it was a major point for those who argued for the New Jersey Plan ("Small State Plan") over the Virginia Plan ("Large State Plan") when delegates were debating the Constitution: "Small States" could make up for lack of representation in the House, due to their smaller populations, by gaining equal representation in the Senate, or Upper House. However today, after 200+ years of the supposed "democratization" of our constitutional system, it looks---because it is!----strikingly unbalanced and anachronistic. Silver's article drives this home by illustrating how much more power "Small States" have when legislation---like health care----gets down to the committee level. Hopefully, you've taken the requisite amount of anti-depression drugs to swallow this.
The Table for Six, headed by Max Baucus, "is made up of members who collectively represent about 6.5 million people, or around one-fiftieth of the country's population," and yet their decisions will disproportionately influence the rest of us (the other 98%). That worry (the subject of the last post) that some of us feel about the gap between what The People overwhelmingly want in a health care reform bill (a public option to compete with the private plans), and what our legislators will most likely give us (a watered-down, pro-private insurance bill) is well justified. This is because "there is a correlation between the size of a state and how Democratic it tends to vote in elections for national office," though, of course, there are a few exceptions. And guess whose at the Table for Six? All small-state senators. But the most compelling point that Silver makes about this "structural problem" is in "the ways that small-state senators raise funds, and in turn, whose interests they are beholden to."
The Center for Responsive Politics has a chart illustrating "the highest percentage of their [senators'] campaign contributions since 2003 from corporate PACs." And who tops the list? Who are the top 10? All Republicans, except two (#7 and #8) with percentages ranging from 76.5% to 43.4%. But all of the Top 20 "come from states with below-median populations." Obviously, it's easier to get more campaign contributions from individuals in large states, so small-state senators do have a disadvantage in fundraising more non-PAC money. But PACs can----and indeed do----get a good deal on their money by targeting senators of smaller states. Silver draws some important conclusions from this structural deficiency:
What this means is that senators from small states tend to be relatively more dependant on special-interest money -- it makes up a larger share of their overall take. Senators from the ten smallest states have received, on average, 28.4 percent of their campaign funds from corporate PACs, versus 13.7 for those in the ten largest...senators from small states in fact have more incentive to placate special interests.
And how about those, like Baucus, at the Table for Six?
the six senators on Baucus's mini-committee are especially egregious in this regard. They rank #1 (Mike Enzi), #6 (Chuck Grassley), #11 (Kent Conrad), #13 (Baucus), #14 (Jeff Bingaman) and #20 (Olympia Snowe) in the share of contributions received from corporate PACs (an average of 47.5 percent of their funds overall).
Silver offers a couple suggestions to remedy the problem: restricting corporations from donating PAC money, unless they operate in the state; and, making the Internet a main instrument for donations to more populist-minded candidates. He also says that this small-state structural problem in the Senate helps explain why it "tends to be more protective than the House of corporate interests." He offers tax breaks and the second bank bailout as evidence of this (74% Senate, 60% of House approved the last bailout).
Structural problems indeed! And yet, our Madisonian constitutional system was set up to do just that: protect private, monied interests against the will of the majority---in Madison's day, the landless. Today, it is that clamorous "faction"---the majority, or the public---who wish to unseat the minority----or those private hands that have control not just over 94% of health care markets and the system as a whole, but even the individual, medical decisions about what kind of care is necessary and will be covered:
if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of the landed proprietors would be insecure...If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability---James Madison in "Notes of the Secret Debates of the Federal Convention of 1787, Taken by the Late Hon Robert Yates, Chief Justice of the State of New York, and One of the Delegates from That State to the Said Convention."Also consider Madison's political philosophy and system here:
Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority----James Madison, Federalist Paper #10.Unlike the agrarian revolts springing up in America and Britain to which Madison was responding, a public health care competitor is in no way seeking to create "unstable" governments or to "disregard" "the public good" by "the superior force" "of an interested and overbearing majority." In fact, as many already know, it seeking to achieve----and would achieve----the opposite: stability with absolute regard for the public good. It's still early to determine whether supporters of the public option will be "the superior force" in the end, but we do know they are an "overbearing majority."
And the insurance companies are well-aware of this majoritarian support for health care reform, sharing Madison's anxiety over a well-organized majority "faction," and have begun financing and organizing faux populist protests against reform-minded members of Congress through groups such as FreedomWorks, Conservatives for Patients' Rights, Americans for Prosperity, and conservative media. This is their attempt to appear as that populist, "overbearing majority" of Madison's nightmares. Once again, The Daily Show has the most trenchant analysis of this process on the airwaves:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Master Rebators - The Crank Cycle | ||||
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Although Stewart's talking about the "Cash for Clunkers" program, the tactic or process----the Crank Cycle, if you will----is the same. (See the fantastic intro to this hilarious segment here).
So once again, if the Democrats don't pass substantial reform (i.e. a public option to help de-consolidate health insurance markets), we should know the structural and institutional reasons why. Nonetheless, with the power they enjoy right now in the Congress, and that ever-so-frightful-majoritarian support for a public (competitive) option behind them, there should be ABSOLUTELY no excuses this time! We wouldn't want to see a 21st Century Shay's Rebellion done health-care-reform style would we?
1 comment:
Thanks, Steve.
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