Influence Peddling is not a First Amendment Right

If you want to figure out what’s wrong with our government you need only look at how money enters the process. The Supreme Court just enabled influence peddling on an entirely new level this week. Campaign Financing laws all over the country will now be challenged by conservative and pro-business rent seekers. Consumer, workers, and the policy process will be much worse off, if that’s even possible to imagine.

Economist Jeffrey D. Sachs has piece at SciAm worth viewing. It’s called Fixing the Broken Government Policy Process; Greater transparency and limits on lobbyist influence would promote better long-range strategies. He believes there are four sources that have broken down the government policy process.

First is a chronic inability to focus beyond the next election. “Shovel-ready” projects squeeze out attention to vital longer-term strategies that may require a decade or more. Second, most key decisions are made in congressional backrooms through negotiations with lobbyists, who simultaneously fund the congressional campaigns. Third, technical expertise is largely ignored or bypassed, while expert communities such as climate scientists are falsely and recklessly derided by the Wall Street Journal as a conspiratorial interest group chasing federal grants. Fourth, there is little way for the public to track and comment on complex policy proposals working their way through Congress or federal agencies.

Most of his examples come from the policy area of sustainable development. I’ve been railing on about the ridiculousness of the ethanol subsidies going to corn for some time. I’m certain it will eventually lead to food shortages and it certainly is a costly way to creating alternative energy programs. Sachs ably explains this policy mishap well. The desire for sustainable development and new energy is a good one, but the ethanol industry and it’s influence peddling/rent seeking waylaid tax dollars for its constituents at the cost of effective policy. He explains how the private sector can waylay many good public welfare policies.

These failings take a special toll on the challenges of sustainable development because there is no quick fix, for example, for the challenge of large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Instead of getting long-term strategies for adopting low-carbon energy sources, upgrading the power grid, encouraging electric transportation and so on, we are getting cash for clunkers, subsidies for corn-based ethanol, and other ineffective and highly costly nonsolutions delivered by large-scale lobbying.

Some free-market economists say sustainable development should be left to the marketplace, but the marketplace now offers no incentive to reduce carbon emissions. Even putting a levy on carbon emissions, either through a carbon tax or carbon-emission permits, will not be sufficient. The development and deployment of major technologies potentially crucial to more sustainable energy—such as nuclear power, wind and solar power, biomass conversion and transport infrastructure—are matters of systems design requiring a mix of public and private decision making.

Herein lies the policy challenge today. When we let the private sector enter into public decision making, we end up with relentless lobbying, money-driven politics, suppression of new technologies by incumbent interests and sometimes miserable choices devoid of serious scientific content. How can business and government work together without policies falling prey to special interests?

As we’ve seen more and more money pour into politicians, we’ve seen more and more policies benefit specific industries at the cost of the treasury and long term, effective policy that would benefit the nation. In light of this recent Supreme Court decision that basically adds accelerants to the already massive fire, what’s a citizen to do?

Sachs suggests that we should at least push for more transparency in the lobbying process. This is of course something this administration promised and then left on the campaign floor with the confetti pretty quickly. They went behind close doors with Big Pharma nearly immediately and went running for friendly audiences the minute that townhall meetings turned ugly. It’s difficult for any administration that tries to control their message and their image to really wallow in the democratic process. This is especially true when the Pol in question finds the only thing clean about the process to be prepackaged speeches in front of adoring crowds. Sach’s suggest we look to the web to find ways to bring the public into the policy process.

He also suggests that the government get busy writing laws to keep lobbyists in check. Actually, he suggests that laws be written to ensure they cannot write checks.

Currently lobbyists are still allowed to contribute massively to congressional campaigns and to political action committees. The largest lobbying sectors—including finance, health care and transport—have spent billions to promote policies that favor narrow interests over broader public interests. A major step toward reform would be to prohibit campaign contributions by individuals employed by registered lobbying firms. The right of individuals to make campaign contributions would not be infringed, but they would have to make a choice between their lobbying activities and their personal financial contributions to the political process.

SCOTUS has just turned the world of campaign finance reform upside down. At the moment, Obama has publicly recognized the issue. Will he give the issue more than just casual lip service? We need to start forcing the issue. I can’t believe that any group of people that came out of the Chicago Way are going to suddenly develop allergies to influence peddling.