"So Damn Much Money"

Robert G. Kaiser, “So Damn Much Money” (The Triumph Of Lobbying And The Corrosion Of American Government), Alfred A. Knopf, 2009, 377 Pages
The author has been with The Washington Post since 1963 and is the author or coauthor of six books.
So Damn Much Money tracks how the political culture of the U.S. has been deteriorating for decades. Washington now attracts the greedy who rush to get through the turnstile of “service to the country” to the lucrative trough provided by lobbying, public relations, etc… Kaiser tells this story in parallel tracks: one documents the lobbying career of Gerald S.J. Cassidy; the other the Congress and its sinking into bitter partisanship. The country is facing staggering challenges: how to pay for the retirement of the baby boom generation, how to provide health care to American citizens, how to cope with the largest influx of immigrants in American history, how to protect America from terrorists, how to preserve American prosperity in a complex global economy, how to save the earth. All these challenges share one peculiarity: the politicians in Washington avoided or ignored every one of them. Oh…did I say health care? Just watch this measured debate now going on.
My Notes:

Pg. 69: The rules and procedures of the House and Senate can be confusing. One of the most basic is also one of the least understood: the relationship between authorizing and appropriating. Traditionally, to spend the taxpayers’ money, both houses must pass two pieces of legislation: the first to authorize the project on which money is to be spent, the second to allocate dollars from the Treasury to that project. This is why, for example, the Senate and House both have armed services committees and appropriations subcommittees on defense. The armed services committees are supposed to write legislation authorizing military programs; the defense appropriations subcommittees work on bills to fund what has been authorized. Eventually, the full House and Senate must approve versions of both kinds of legislation, and the president must sign the bills in order for the money to be spent.

Cassidy found a law on the books “that you could say authorized a national nutrition center,” as he put it. From this he was able to fashion a specific appropriation of federal funds to a single university (Tufts) for a nutrition research center. In years to come this kind of legislative provision would become so common that it acquired a widely used nickname—an earmark, short for an earmarked, or specifically directed appropriation. But in 1976 this was an unusual idea. By the way, this was Tip O’Neill’s congressional district and he was a great help in getting this through.

Pg. 72: Schlossberg-Cassidy Associates had brought something new to an old game by stationing themselves at a key intersection between a supplicant for government assistance. Tufts University, and the people who could respond-members of Congress and the executive branch. Earmarks became a new kind of Washington business.

Pg. 115: In the congressional elections of 1974, the combined campaign spending of every candidate for the House and Senate—in thirty-four Senate and 435 House contests—was $77 million. Just four elections later, in 1982, the combined total was $343 million (a 450% increase in eight years). In the 2000 elections, the campaigns of all the candidates for president, the House, and the Senate cost $2.8 billion—three times what was spent in the 1976 elections, even after adjusting for inflation. In 2004, the total was $4.2 billion.

Pg. 116: The escalating cost of campaigns was one aspect of a great awakening in American politics. The rise of lobbying was another (began during the New Deal). The proliferation of interest groups trying to influence the political process was a third. All of these were related to each other, and all were related to the realization that government decisions could affect the economic well-being of a large and growing number of Americans.

Pg. 122: The disgust with Nixon and the subsequent pardon of Nixon by Ford resulted in a huge Democratic majority in the House (291-144) and a dominating position in the Senate (61-38). Until this “class of 74” arrived, liberal Democrats in the House had been frustrated by an informal alliance of conservative southern Democrats and Republicans. Power in the House was wielded primarily by the chairmen of its committees, and chairmanships were allocated by seniority. Among Democrats, the longest-serving members tended to be southerners, who generally had safe districts and no meaningful opposition. And southerners, with a few exceptions, were among the most conservative members of the Democratic caucus. The class of ’74 had no patience for this traditional arrangement, and it had the votes to change the rules and they did.
Items causing the deep animosity between Democrats and Republicans:

Pg. 205: Tip O’Neill decided in 1981 to allocate the Democrats more seats on the key House committees than their fifty-seat majority justified. Traditionally, the division of committee seats reflected the balance of power in the entire House. This flagrant violation of tradition was one of the causes of today’s’ bitter partisan divisions. In 1989 Gingrich successfully attacked Wright concerning questionable royalties Wright had collected on a book he had “wrote.” Later, Gingrich was attacked for a similar book deal of his own.

Pg. 209: In 1985 the Democrats still held a big majority in the House—more than seventy seats. To increase that majority by a singe seat, they then memorably overplayed their hand. At issue was the outcome in Indiana’s 8th Congressional District. On election night, the Democratic incumbent, Frank McCloskey, appeared to win by just seventy-two votes. But a subsequently discovered counting error in one county produced a different result: victory for Republican Richard D. McIntyre by thirty-four votes. Indiana’s secretary of state certified that result. Democrats demanded a recount, which increased McIntyre’s lead to 418 votes; the secretary of state certified McIntyre the winner for a second time. But the Democrats refused to accept that outcome. The House leadership created a bipartisan “Commission” of one Republican and two Democratic members who hired outside election experts and auditors from the Government Accounting Office to conduct their own recount, tough this was traditionally considered the states’ role. After many complications involving absentee ballots, he final count of the GAO auditors showed McCloskey, the Democrat, ahead by four votes. On this highly disputable basis, the Democrats voted to seat McCloskey. When Republican moved to declare the seat vacant and ask the governor of Indiana to call a special election, Democrats defeated that idea too, though nineteen Democratic members voted with the Republicans for a new election. The vote was 229-200. Now the animosity between Republicans and Democrats was fierce.

Pg. 265: By 1995, Senator Russell Long’s observation two decades earlier that there was only “a hairline’s difference” between a campaign contribution and a bribe was thoroughly out of date. Both parties had long since tacitly agreed that in an era when campaigns had become so expensive, both would accept contributions from parties that had obvious interests in the legislation that Congress passed, and neither would make accusations of bribery.

Pg. 300: Moneyed interests can set a legislative agenda that flouts the public interest but serves their narrow purposes. An example of this is the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, a project of the banking and credit card industries. The act made it more difficult for consumers to evade paying their debts by declaring personal bankruptcy. Consumer groups and academic experts argued that the law would create unfair new burdens for families forced into bankruptcy by unexpected medical expenses or the loss of a job, but the proponents were not deterred. Indeed, the final version of the law forced debtors to repay their credit card debt before they paid child support or alimony.

Pg. 343 (The Revolving Door): A study done by Public Citizen, an advocacy group, found that half the senators and 42 percent of House members who left Congress between 1998 and 2004 became lobbyists. Another study found that 3,600 former congressional aides had passed through the revolving door. Appointees from the executive branch followed the same path. In early 2008 the Center for Responsive Politics identified 310 former appointees of George W. Bush who had become lobbyists or Washington representatives. The center identified 283 former Clinton administration officials who had done the same. (2007 rule imposed a two-year cooling-off period on executive branch officials).

Pg. 347: As the new technologies became entrenched in the 1980’s, their practitioners became increasingly influential—and rich. Pollsters and consultants became the new elite. Though they and the politicians they served shared a common interest in disguising their importance, it could not be hidden. In an academic survey conducted as early as 1989, 44 percent of the consultants interviewed reported that their clients were uninvolved in deciding which issues would be emphasized in their own campaigns. Two-thirds said the candidates played no role in determining the tactics of their campaigns.

The growing importance of consultants and pollsters created a classic disincentive for some potential candidates. What sort of people would want to run for office if they were expected to leave decisions about issues, strategy, and tactics to the hired hands? This is one reason why Americans today would have such a hard time identifying true leaders in their Congress. With a handful of exceptions, there are none to be found.

The people who were encouraged to run for office in this environment were rarely future statesmen; they were more likely to be men and women who could raise money and follow instructions. Fund-raising—or being wealthy—became a critical political skill.

Pg. 356: There have been some improvements since the Nixon era. Congress itself has removed many egregious forms of corruption: cash contributions to politicians which once were as common as Capitol Hill spittoons; direct employment of members of the House and Senate—as lawyers or advisors, for example—by corporations, also common until the 1970s; cash for speeches that went directly into members’ pockets, the honoraria; unregulated soft money contributions from individuals, unions, and ‘s corporations that largely funded the 1996 and 2000 elections, banned in 2002. And the Senate’s decision to accept a two-year cooling-off period in 2007, when the House rejected it.