Why Pork Won't Die

Jay Cost has an interesting post on porkbarrel spending, admonishing conservatives to give Congressional Republicans some slack on earmarks. I'm unpersuaded, but he does demonstrate the logic behind the practice. I just think it resembles bribery too closely.

The first mistake that conservatives make when they criticize the congressional GOP is the assumption that congressional Republicans are Republican in the same way that they are. It is not true. A half-century ago, the great Harvard political scientist V.O. Key argued that a political party must be understood as the conglomeration of three distinct parts - the party organization, the party-in-government, and the party-in-the-electorate. All three parts have different, sometimes competing, interests. Today's party-in-the-electorate - the base, the party intellectuals, the donors - want above all to have the party platform enacted. The Republican party-in-government - President Bush as well as the Republican congressional caucus - also wish that. However, they desire something more than the implementation of Republicanism - and that is their reelection. Long gone are the days of the citizen legislature that the Framers envisioned for the Congress. Congress is now composed of professional legislators - who, once they have secured office, intend to keep it indefinitely. This is their primary goal. It is a goal that the party-in-the-electorate does not share. Voters in the Republican electorate have no personal offices that they need to preserve.

The preeminence of reelection in the mind of the legislator is something that most pundits accept, but fail to appreciate. To understand members of Congress, the priority of reelection is an absolute, positive, unequivocal first principle. This is not to say that members of Congress do not care about good policy; it is only to say that good policy comes second to reelection. Members pursue good policy only when they think that it will not diminish their chances in the next election. So, when it comes to "Republican congressmen", you cannot separate the first word from the second. They are Republicans, but they are not Republicans like the party faithful. They have different goals: reelection first, Republicanism second.

This is a good explanation, but not a good justification. It's a fair point that if you don't get reelected, you can't enact the Republican agenda, but that doesn't justify the secretiveness about it. Earmarks should be acknowledged and publicized when they are requested. A case should be made that they will serve the public good, and not that of the contractor who has given the congressman a contribution. There must be more transparency. Nothing would do more to solve the problem than that.

Another truth Cost points out:

The average voter, in the course of making his vote choice, does not ponder the extent to which the selection of a Republican will extend Republicanism; rather, he evaluates what he thinks of the member personally and what he has done for that district. This view is due to the design of the system. Congress was not designed to efficiently advance the national welfare. It was designed to efficiently represent and balance local interests. That is what it does, and that is how voters think about it when they make their vote choice.

This is also probably true, but is that really what people want? It has a discomfiting resemblance to graft. Is it really good for the country for it to go broke trying to keep incumbents in office? This is the "stop me before I spend again" argument. Would voters think this way if members of Congress weren't flaunting their earmarks in their campaigns. Of course, opponents may attack them for not bringing enough spending to the district, but that leads back to the same excuse: the voters are stupid.