Republic, Lost_ How Money Corrupts Congress--And a Plan to Stop It - Lawrence Lessig [90]
When Al Gore was vice president, his policy team had a proposal to deregulate the Internet. As a “network of networks,” the Internet lives atop other physical networks. In 1994 some of those networks were telephone networks; some were (promised to be) cable networks. The bits running on the telephone lines (both the dial-up connections and DSL) were governed by Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. The bits running on cable lines were regulated by Title VI.
Title II and Title VI are very different regulatory regimes. One has an extensive regulatory infrastructure (Title II); the other has a very light (with respect to access at least) regulatory infrastructure (Title VI). So Gore’s idea was to put both kinds of Internet access under the same regulatory title, Title VII, and to give that title the smallest regulatory footprint it could have. Not no regulation, but much less regulation than is contemplated today by “network neutrality” advocates.
Gore’s team took the idea to Capitol Hill. One aide to Gore summarized to me the reaction they got, “Hell no! If we deregulate these guys, how are we going to raise any money from them?”
As I said, Reagan often spoke as if it were the bureaucrats who were pushing to increase the size of government. These bureaucrats, like roaches, would push and push and push until they regulated absolutely everything they could.
What Reagan didn’t think about is how members of Congress—even Reagan Republicans—might themselves become the roaches. How they both, Republicans and Democrats alike, have an interest in extending the reach of regulation, because increasing the range of interests regulated increases the number who have an interest in trying to influence federal regulation. And how is that influence exercised? Through the gift economy enabled by Santa, the lobbyist.
Now, of course no one would say that Congress regulates simply for the purpose of creating fund-raising targets—though that was the clear implication of Ryan Grim and Zach Carter’s story about the perennial battles among potentially large funders that get waged in Congress.9 But souls on the Right—especially those enamored of incentive theories of human behavior—should recognize that it is more likely Congress’s thinking about targets of fund-raising that affects the scope of government power rather than bureaucrats angling to increase the scope of their work. That having lots of targets of regulation is actually a good way to have lots of targets for fund-raising. And thus, so long as fund-raising is a central obligation of members of Congress, there is a conflict between the interests of small government activists and the interests of the fund-raising-dependent congressmen.
This point is even clearer when you think about it from the perspective of the targets of this fund-raising. According to one survey, almost 60 percent of the time when members of Congress meet with regulators and other government officials, “they do so to help their friends and hurt their political opponents.”10 That fact produces “fear,” this study concludes, in the minds of business leaders. That “fear… drives most business leaders to contribute to campaigns. It’s also why most say donors get more than their money’s worth back for their political ‘investments.’ ”11
Martin Schram asked former members about that fear. As he describes it,
I asked, “just what do you suppose the lobbyist is thinking when he or she gets a telephone call in which a senator or representative who sits on a committee that oversees the lobbyist’s special interest is asking for a large contribution.” [W]hen pressed… the Members pondered it, and then often voiced the same basic, obvious conclusion: “The lobbyist must figure that he or she has no choice but to contribute—or risk being shut out.”12
This dynamic is common. One Joyce Foundation study found that “four fifths of [individual donors] said that office holders regularly pressured them for contributions.”13 Almost 84 percent of corporations reported that candidates pressured them for contributions at least