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Political corruption
By Thomas Sowell
Political corruption
By Thomas Sowell
Jan 24, 2006
The Jack Abramoff scandal has put political corruption front and center in
Washington but this particular scandal, or even this particular kind of scandal,
barely scratches the surface of corruption in government.
It is not that all members of Congress, or even most members of Congress, are
taking outright bribes. Government is corrupted whenever it is diverted from its
avowed purpose and directed toward some other goal, especially goals that
conflict with its purpose.
This more general kind of corruption is much bigger than a few bribes and has
far weightier consequences. Staggering as it is to think of the trillions of
dollars in runaway spending by the federal government, that is just part of the
story.
There are still more trillions of dollars being promised in Social Security
pensions and Medicare payments, for which there is not enough money in the till.
It is like writing checks without enough money in the bank to redeem them.
Present members of Congress win votes by promising such goodies. That leaves it
up to future members of Congress to figure out how to welsh on those promises,
which could not be met without jacking up tax rates to unprecedented levels.
Even that probably wouldn't provide enough money, since confiscatory tax rates
confiscate the incentives needed to keep the economy going. An alternative
political ploy would be to pay people the amount of money that was promised but
in dollars so inflated that they won't buy anything close to what dollars bought
when they were paid into the Social Security system.
Getting millions of people to rely on pensions that are not going to be there is
corrupting government on a scale that makes bribing a few Congressmen look like
minor league stuff.
Misuse of the powers of government is widespread at every level of government.
Confiscating homes for which people have worked and sacrificed for a lifetime,
in order to turn the property over to someone else who is expected to pay more
taxes, is a corruption of the power of eminent domain, which was put there to
enable government to do things like build a dam or highway to benefit everyone.
In Burbank, California, the local politicians forced Home Depot to build a
little shelter in which illegal aliens can wait to be picked up for work as day
laborers -- for other people. The power to grant or withhold building permits
was another power meant to be exercised for the public good, not to impose
arbitrary extortions. But that kind of corruption is common in many communities.
What can be done about such corruption?
Some people think we need higher standards of behavior among public officials
and/or stricter scrutiny by voters. Both would of course be wonderful, if they
happened. But what are we to do in the meantime -- say, the next few centuries
or the next millennium?
Anyone familiar with ancient history knows that people have been the way they
are for thousands of years. Do not look for a change in human nature in 2006.
What we can change are the incentives and constraints.
At the heart of much government corruption is one simple thing: Re-election. It
takes big bucks to run a political campaign and all that most politicians have
to sell is the power of government that they control. That is what they do sell
in various ways to various special interests.
Term limits try to deal with the problem of re-election but the fatal weakness
of term limits is the "s" at the end of the word "limits." So long as there are
multiple terms, the first term is going to be spent trying to get re-elected to
a second term -- instead of devoting that time to serving the public interest.
What really needs to be done is to put a limit of one term in one office and a
waiting period of several years before being elected or appointed to another
office in government. In other words, make political careers impossible.
Can people who are not career politicians run the government? People who were
not career politicians created the government and the Constitution of the United
States of America.
It was one of the most incredible achievements in history. Who among our career
politicians today would be capable of such a feat?
Thomas Sowell is the prolific author of books such as Black Rednecks and White
Liberals and Applied Economics.
Political corruption: Part II
By Thomas Sowell
Jan 25, 2006
The over-riding quest for re-election is at the heart of the corruption of
public officials who betray the public trust in order to get the money needed to
pay for their political campaigns. It is hard to see how that corruption can be
ended, except by ending re-elections with a limit of one term and a ban on
running for another office for several years.
That way, the one term can be spent taking care of the duties of the office
instead of taking care of promoting a political career in that office or other
offices.
There are, of course, other sources of corruption. Members of Congress whose
work puts them in the rarefied company of movers and shakers in the private
sector, who make ten or a hundred times what Congressmen are paid, may find it
tempting to accept perks like free flights on corporate jets or weekends at
expensive watering holes. Some may hope for lucrative jobs after leaving
politics.
Maybe that won't influence Congressional votes. But maybe it will.
The stakes are too high for us to be penny-wise and pound-foolish by putting
trillions of dollars of the taxpayers' money in the hands of elected officials
who are paid less than the beginning salary of a top student from a top law
school.
If we paid every member of Congress $10 million a year, that would not increase
the federal budget by one percent.
Chances are that it would reduce the federal budget considerably, when members
of the Senate or the House of Representatives no longer needed campaign
contributions or the personal favors of special interest groups and their
lobbyists.
One term in the Senate would bring in $60 million, which most people could live
on for life, without being beholden to anybody and without having to seek a job
afterwards for special interests, much less having to sell their soul to
continue a political career.
Money is not the only thing that corrupts. Power also corrupts and some people
go into politics for power.
Nothing can be done about such people -- except force them to compete with other
people, drawn from a far larger pool, including top people in highly paid
professions who today can seldom afford to serve in Congress at the expense of
their family's standard of living and financial security.
Do we want laws made by people who would sacrifice their families in order to
get their hands on the levers of power? Or people who can serve in Congress
because they inherited wealth -- and therefore have never had to personally
experience what ordinary people experience and learn from, including government
red tape?
We need laws written by people who have confronted life in the real world, not
in the sheltered world of trust fund recipients or the insulated cocoon of
academia. Nor do we need people who have nothing to offer in the private sector
that would earn them more than what they currently receive in Congress.
Inexperienced power seekers include not only members of Congress but also their
staffs, who are often fresh out of academia, with little experience in the real
world, many untested notions, and often a touch of vanity as one of the
anointed.
The idea of paying the kind of money that would attract the kind of people we
need in government runs against many prejudices. Just plain envy is one. Some
people feel that those they elect should not make so much more than they do.
But think about it: If your child had some life-threatening condition that
required some very demanding surgery, would you worry about whether the surgeon
who saves your child's life had an annual income that was several times what you
make?
Members of Congress have not only trillions of dollars of our tax money in their
hands, they also have in their hands our lives and the lives of our children and
our nation. Are you going to worry about their incomes or about what caliber of
people we can attract to make the momentous decisions that have to be made?
Yes, it would be nice if all public officials were self-sacrificing individuals
who had no other thought than doing their best for their country. It would also
be nice if voters watched elected officials 24/7. But the best is the enemy of
the good. The road to Utopia has repeatedly turned out to be the road to hell,
in countries around the world.
Political corruption: part III
By Thomas Sowell
Jan 26, 2006
Some people fear that term limits for members of Congress or other elected
officials will just put more power into the hands of the permanent government
bureaucrats and the Congressional staffers.
This overlooks the fact that the powers of bureaucrats are set by elected
officials, who can abolish whole bureaucracies if they wish, as the Civil
Aeronautics Board was abolished, ending its protection of airline cartels. As
for staffers, they are hired and fired by elected officials.
To judge any proposed reform, it should be compared with what currently exists.
As things stand today, Congressional staffers are often young people with little
or no experience in the real world outside of politics, and often their skills
are largely confined to political skills, with their highest priority being to
get their bosses re-elected.
The power and the glamour of politics may attract many young people, even at
salaries less than those available in the private sector. Yet it is an extreme
example of being penny-wise and pound foolish to let people like this influence
the destiny of the nation.
That influence can be considerable when members of Congress are too busy with
public appearances and other activities designed to promote their political
careers to personally read and master the often complex legislation that they
have to vote on.
Staffers, like members of Congress, need to be paid salaries that can compete
with what seasoned and top-level professionals receive in the private sector.
Someone with 20 years of experience in the private sector has far more to
contribute to legislation than someone who has barely been in the world 20
years.
Someone who has spent 20 years in the real world seeing bright ideas come and go
-- and often end in disaster -- is not likely to be as susceptible to the kinds
of bright ideas hatched in academia or in various movements of true believers.
People with years of real world experience are likely to also have real world
obligations, like supporting a family, paying off a mortgage, sending children
to college, and putting something aside for their own retirement.
You can't hire such people as cheaply as you can hire some hotshot fresh out of
college who sees being a Congressional staffer as a golden opportunity to apply
the heady notions he picked up on campus. But you are not likely to get more
than you pay for.
The costs of government include not only the salaries of government officials
and other direct outlays, these costs include the devastating impact of
half-baked policies that can stifle economic activity or even lead to national
destruction from within or without.
Some people still have Utopian ideals of a government run by ordinary folks. But
when making serious decisions in real life, we go to people who know what they
are doing -- whether what we want is a transmission fixed or medical treatment.
Nowhere is it more important to have people who know what they are doing than in
Washington. And nowhere is it more important that what they are doing is
carrying out the duties of the job, not spending their time focussed on getting
re-elected.
Many people fear that government has gotten so complex that only the permanent
bureaucrats can cope with it, so that turnover among elected officials would
make the bureaucracy the real rulers of the country.
But the "expertise" of bureaucrats, like the expertise of Congressional
staffers, is largely an expertise in personal political survival.
Do you seriously believe that FEMA has expertise in dealing with natural
disasters, despite all their own disasters? Or that the Department of Education
has expertise in education, when it has presided over decades of dumbed-down
education?
These and other bureaucracies have expertise in political survival amid the
cross-currents of special interests. Such "expertise" has caused more problems
than it has ever solved.
One of the benefits of attracting a higher caliber of elected officials is that
they can curtail or eliminate such counterproductive and corrupting "expertise."
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