Republic, Lost_ How Money Corrupts Congress--And a Plan to Stop It - Lawrence Lessig [165]
51. Numbers drawn from Norman J. Ornstein, Thomas E. Mann, and Michael J. Malbin, Vital Statistics on Congress 2008 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2008). See also Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, The Broken Branch (Oxford University Press, 2006), 18 (“In the 1960s and 1970s, the average Congress had an average of 5,372 House committee and subcommittee meetings; in the 1980s and 1990s the average was 4,793. In the… 108th, the number was 2,135”).
52. Numbers drawn from Ornstein, Mann, and Malbin, Vital Statistics on Congress 2008. See also Mann and Ornstein, The Broken Branch, 18.
53. Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (Oxford University Press, 2009), 1272–73.
54. Steven S. Smith, “Parties and Leadership in the Senate,” in Quirk and Binder, eds., The Legislative Branch (Oxford University Press, 2005), 274–75.
55. Andrew Seidman, “Former Members of Congress Lament Current Partisanship,” McClatchy (June 16, 2010), available at link #120.
56. Makinson, “Speaking Freely,” 39–40.
57. Ibid., 6.
58. Lee Hamilton, “Will the House Come to Order?” The American Interest Online (Sept.–Oct. 2006), available at link #121.
59. To complain about distraction is not to betray doubt, as Daniel Ortiz puts it, about voters. A voter, like any employer, could well want his agent to stay focused on the job, if only to avoid the necessity of extra monitoring. See Daniel R. Ortiz, “The Democratic Paradox of Campaign Finance Reform,” Stanford Law Review 50 (1997) (arguing support for campaign finance reform is premised upon doubt about voters). The same applies to Issacharoff and Karlan’s claim that a concern about “corruption” is really a concern about a “corruption of voters.” For again, if the focus is on a distorted process, even if the voters could compensate for that distortion, they are rational to avoid the distraction that forces them to compensate. The fact that I double check the cash drawer does not mean I have no good reason to avoid hiring a kleptomaniac. See Samuel Issacharoff and Pamela S. Karlan, “The Hydraulics of Campaign Finance Reform,” Texas Law Review 77 (1998): 1723–26.
Relatedly, Issacharoff and Karlan point to the “well-known feature of American political participation: there is a strong positive correlation between an individual’s income and education level and the likelihood that she will go to the polls and cast a ballot.” Ibid., 1725. In fact the connection to policy outcomes is more complicated. As I describe below, see text at n. 104: policy tracks income, but the richest are not the most highly educated.
60. Baumgartner, Berry, Hojnacki, Kimball, Leech, Lobbying and Policy Change, 257–58.
61. This table is based, with permission, on Figure 12.1 in ibid., 258. I have re-created it using a subset of the data drawn from Table 1.4 in ibid.
62. Ibid., 258.
63. Richard L. Hall and Alan V. Deardorff, “Lobbying as Legislative Subsidy,” American Political Science Review 100 (Feb. 2006): 69.
64. Center for Responsive Politics, OpenSecrets.org, Lobbying Database, available at link #122.
65. Hall and Deardorff, “Lobbying as Legislative Subsidy,” 81.
66. Or as Baumgartner et al. report, almost everyone. See Laura I. Langbein, “Money and Access: Some Empirical Evidence,” Journal of Politics 48 (1986): 1052; Kevin M. Esterling, “Buying Expertise: Campaign Contributions and Attention to Policy Analysis in Congressional Committees,” American Political Science Review 101 (2007): 93; Clawson, Neustadtl, and Weller, Dollars and Votes.
67. Makinson, “Speaking Freely,” 59. See also Thompson, Ethics in Congress, 117.
68. Declaration of Paul Simon, McConnell v. FEC, No. 02-0582 (D.D.C. 2002).
69. Clawson, Neustadtl, and Weller, Dollars and Votes, 8.
70. Schram, “Speaking Freely,” 62.