Transcription
Look at the politics of policy adoption. The question that we want to address here is: why do politicians support some policies and not others? This is kind of the second stage in Anderson's policy model. One thing it recognizes is that politics is the art of the possible. If you see this picture here down underneath, you have a picture here of George W. Bush and Ted Kennedy. Certainly not two people that you consider to be ideologically similar in any way, shape, or form. However, they came together to pass the No Child Left Behind Act in the early 2000s because they were able to bridge their kind of gaps in ideology. So you try to get what you can get done, and don't do things that are impossible. There are certain things that are off the table; they just could never be kind of discussed in American politics. So politics is the art of the possible; don't try to do things that are impossible.
So alternatives don't get the same attention. For example, when President Obama essentially looked at revising health care with the Affordable Care Act, he took a look at that. One thing that was really on the table for the most progressive or liberal part of the Democratic Party was having a single-payer system. However, they knew that there was no way that they'd be able to get the votes to be able to do that. So that was taken off the table immediately; that was not possible, therefore was not part of the discussion. You really want to take a look at issues that have broad-based support, issues that are likely to gain a majority in Congress, or else it's not really worth spending your time doing that.
So you know, part of this process is compromise and bargaining. And that's a messy process, which American people don't tend to like because we tend to become more ideological and think that things should just be done on the basis of whether or not the issue is right or wrong. But you don't get to 50% plus one without some kind of bargaining and compromise. And really, it's part and parcel of the democratic system that such a thing should happen. One of the quotes I really like from President Obama during the Affordable Health Care Act, when they're discussing what to do, particularly in relationship to this idea of a single-payer system, was President Obama used to quote, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." That is essentially that if you want to pass a public policy, you're not always going to get what you want, so you have to compromise, and it's better to get something rather than to get nothing. He basically was telling liberals and progressives that, "Look, I know what you want; I probably support the single-payer system as well," said President Obama. "However, it's not possible, so let's get what we can; let's ensure as many people as possible under a plan that we can feasibly cobble together in an effort to be able to increase health insurance in the United States."
Now, if you take a look here, John Kingdon, who's a very well-known kind of scholar of Congress, put together the decision criteria for members of Congress. You see here there's a lot of integral parts that go into the votes that a member of Congress might have. As you can tell from the language here, Kingdon put this together quite some time ago. So substitute "voting congressman" for "Congress people" or "members of Congress," but there are a lot of things that are kind of integral to their decision-making: interest groups, my constituencies, my staff, fellow members of Congress, the administration, and particularly the president, if that president is of my political party. All these things serve as kind of cues for me as a member of Congress to make my decisions in the way that I see fit. Certainly the most important for them, because the number one goal of members of Congress is re-election, is the constituency. So that's the most important thing.
So what goes into me deciding as a member of Congress how to vote? There's a number of things in the kind of decision criteria that we could take a look at. A lot of factors weigh in. One is the constituency and interests: Is this something that will have an effect on my district economically? Will this hurt some type of industry in my district, or will it help them? That's a cue to me. My constituency may be very conservative or very liberal, or rural or urban, and there are sort of interests that those people have that I have to represent. And I realize that if I run against those interests, I'm going to have a very difficult time explaining that. Public opinion is very important, and again I think it's very important to stress that public opinion, not of the entire country, but of my district or of my state, is really what's most important to me. Members of Congress oftentimes will say, "Well, maybe the American public as a whole supports this, but my people don't support it." And public opinion can be viewed from two different manners, then: one is what is my district's view versus what the country says, and my district or my state is always going to take precedence over the country because guess what, those are the people that elect me.
My political party affiliation has a very strong indicator of how I'm going to vote as well. So hold on with your stats here: three-quarters of the time—oh, there's 75% of all votes, seven three-quarters of the sessions of Congress—oh, more than half of votes are along party lines, meaning all Democrats vote one way and all Republicans vote another. So party ID is very important. And then finally, there are other kind of variations of decision rules. So there's something called stare decisis. If you happen to be into the whole con law thing, you realize that that basically just means precedent. So in the absence of wanting to change policy, people just stick with the status quo, and that's generally what people will stay with in making their decision. There was, during the 1990s, at a point at which we actually had a balanced budget in the United States, something called PAYGO, where basically every new law that was enacted in Congress that spent money had to have a balancing cut in some program. So if I wanted to spend ten million dollars on education, I had to cut ten million dollars out from some other thing, and that was a decision rule that was put into Congress because they couldn't control their own spending habits. We had a balanced budget, and they forgot all about deficits, and you know that went away.
There are also some values that I may have, and they can influence me. So the organizational values within Congress oftentimes kind of place the institutions of the House, of the Senate, and the values of those institutions might be something that influences the way that I vote. I can have professional values from my outside life. You know, I might be a doctor, I might be a teacher, I might be a lawyer, and the values that I've learned in a career and those services influence the way that I would vote. I have personal values obviously that I hold dearly to myself on the basis of my life experiences and various interests that I have. Obviously, I have policy values and ideological values as well. So there are all types of values that are kind of floating around there determining how I would make a decision.
Now, sometimes I'm going to take a look at an issue and say to myself, "Ah, I really don't care; this is not of interest to me, not of interest to my constituents." Then how do I make the decision? Or maybe it's an issue that's so complex that I don't understand how to make the correct decision. So Kingdon took a look at kind of the factors that members of Congress look at when, when I go and look for help, who I ask. Right? So we call this kind of a voting cue, and not surprisingly, you're going to go to people that you agree with. Right? If you are a conservative Republican, you're going to try to find and ask another conservative Republican as to what they think the right thing to do in this case is. Right? I'm not going to go to a liberal Democrat and ask them how I should vote because obviously they don't agree with me.
There are a couple other things that all kind of float together: credibility, expertise, and seniority all come together. So generally, I'm going to look towards a person that's done a fair amount of research and has a lot of experience at the committee level with an issue. Why? Because they're the experts. Over the years, they've established a reputation as being people that are honest, credible people that provide good information. Particularly the longer that you're in Congress, you're more likely to deal with people that have given wise advice in the past. So that's important. And finally, take a look at the state delegation as well. And essentially, in taking a look at the state delegation, you can think of this even somewhat in a nonpartisan manner. You know, if you were, say, for example, a Philadelphia-area member of Congress, you have a shared, pooled interest with other members of the Philadelphia delegation or the suburban areas because you've got people that work in Philadelphia that live outside of Philadelphia. The Philadelphia metropolitan area is important to you, and the success of the area is important to you even if you don't represent the city. So you talk to your, the people around you that represent territories around you, your state delegation, your local delegation, because they've got experiences as to how things are going to affect Pennsylvania or Philadelphia or whatever the case may be.
Now, not all issues are important to each decision-maker, as I just mentioned. Ralph Wright, who was a Speaker of the House in Vermont, wrote a very interesting book a couple years ago, and he came up with a couple of theories of three different types of votes I thought were relatively interesting to understand how a legislator would think. He said basically there are three things: constituent votes, conscience votes, and "what the hell, why not" votes. Right? Constituent votes are: If I don't vote this way, my people are gonna be really angry. I have to vote on the basis of what they want. Sometimes, for personal, for moral reasons, for whatever reason, there are certain things that I have to vote a certain way because my conscience dictates that that's the way that I should vote. That's the second type of vote. And then there's this kind of third, "what the hell, why not" vote, and that is essentially, "Yeah, it doesn't affect my people, doesn't affect me, I've got no interest." You come to me and you say, "Hey, Representative Lecrone, will you support my issue and vote positively on this?" And I say back, "What the hell, why not?" Now, there is some kind of Machiavellian aspect to this, of course, and that is that what's going to happen next time I need a vote, that person I'm gonna go and ask them. I'm not gonna say, "Hey, you remember when I voted for your pet project?" But what I am gonna do is they'll remember that I voted for their project when they needed it, and they will help me vote for my project as well. So in the absence of any real reason to do something, why not just vote when people ask me, as long as it doesn't hurt me in some way?