Congress

Profiting from Politics: How Members of Congress Exploit Campaign Finance Laws

/ Matthew Clemente / Leave a comment

Profiting from Politics: How Members of Congress Exploit Campaign Finance Laws

There is not a lot that unites Republicans and Democrats in this era of hyper-partisanship. However, last evening 60 Minutes posited that there is one thing that is common to both parties–profiting from public office. 

Here is how the story began:   

The government shutdown that finally ended on Wednesday night furloughed 800,000 government workers for the better part of two weeks, but there was one group of federal employees that was able to maintain the lifestyle that many of them have grown accustomed to: members of Congress.

 

With all the talk about their irreconcilable political differences, we wanted to see if they shared any common ground. And we found some. For example, there seems to be a permanent majority in Congress that’s completely satisfied with the current state of campaign financing and congressional ethics and members of both parties have institutionalized ways to skirt the rules.

 

Most Americans believe it’s against the law for congressmen and senators to profit personally from their political office but it’s an open secret in Washington that that’s not the case. As the saying goes the real scandal in Washington isn’t what’s illegal, it’s what is legal.

Is The Two-Party System is Making America Ungovernable?

/ Matthew Clemente / Leave a comment

That was the proposition being debated on the Intelligence Squared podcast. The debate originally occurred in 2011; however, it has a particular relevance today with the government is shutdown and the debt ceiling looming.

Moderated by ABC News’ John Donvan, this debate featured David Brooks–Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times–and Arianna Huffington–Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Huffington Post, who argued for the motion; and P.J. O’Rourke–H.L. Mencken Research Fellow at the Cato Institute and Zev Chafets–Former columnist, New York City News, who argued against it.

Here is description of the debate:

The Republican and Democratic parties are entrenched in calcified partisanship, where politics is played as a zero-sum game. The rise of the Tea Party, liberal backlash, and the exodus of moderate voices from Congress all point toward the public’s growing discontent. Has our two-party system failed us? Is this a call to change our two-party system of governance?

Representing the LGBT Community

/ Eric van der Vort / Leave a comment

Towleroad has a round-up of recent discussions that have centered around members of Congress (MCs) who are members of the LGBT community, yet have voted against generally liberal or progressive positions (most recently voting with the GOP majority in the House to ‘shut down’ the government).  This has led to a good deal of debate about the disconnect between LGBT elected officials and the putatively progressive community they are part of.  Michaelangelo Signorile describes the voting behavior in question:

Since taking office, Sinema has voted with the GOP against economic justice issues that progressives, including LGBT activists, view as crucial. Both she and U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), an openly gay former Clinton aide, also elected for the first time in 2012, have voted with big banks and Wall Street time and again. Right out of the gate, Maloney, who took a lot of Wall Street money, voted with the GOP on the debt ceiling early this year, and actually co-sponsored a bill that would roll back reforms of the very Wall Street practices that led to the economic collapse. He even voted with the GOP to take authority over the Keystone XL project from the president. Like Sinema, he also voted to jeopardize Obamacare or shut down the government. And he too was supported in his election campaign by the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, the Human Rights Campaign, and other gay and progressive groups, touted as a progressive.

The assumptions behind the idea that Sinema and Mahoney should vote in accord with liberal or progressive values are, I would argue, fairly faulty.  At the core of this argument is an assertion that there is a connection between liberal or progressive values, on the one hand, and LGBT identity on the other.  While it is true that there is a tendency in the LGBT community to vote for Democrats and Democratic candidates, this is hardly a universal trait and, more critically, is a poor measure for the whole panoply of political attitudes.  Party ID is a useful but blunt measure for policy preferences.  For example, some measures show that in the most recent presidential election, LGBT voters favored President Obama 3 to 1. However, polling done prior to the election indicates that much of this may have more to do with Obama’s favorable stances toward LGBT issues rather than universal approbation of Obama’s or Democratic policies more generally.  As just a few examples: 60% of respondents in the Logo TV poll report supporting the Affordable Care Act while approval ratings among LGBT voters are higher than the general population, but, aside from gay rights issues, the approval ratings for Obama’s handling of health care, general economic issues and unemployment/jobs each hovers around the 60% mark.  These results indicate that perhaps 2/3 of LGBT voters are support or are in agreement with Obama and the Democrats on important issues of the day.

The White House’s record on LGBT rights in general has been strong.  It is equally indisputable that, over time, the Democratic party has grown more friendly to the LGBT community than the Republican party.  The connection that Signorile and others bemoan between liberal or progressive values and LGBT voters, citizens and representatives is not created by attitudes on economic issues, foreign policy and so on.  Rather, as political scientist Kenneth Sherrill has argued, what may be driving much of this partisan loyalty is a sense of shared fate (a sense of group identity or shared consciousness that can lead to perceptions of common interest) — many LGBT voters may default to the Democratic option because of their positons on LGBT issues.  To infer from this that the majority of LGBT individuals share a liberal or progressive outlook is faulty inference.  Normative desires for LGBT representatives who are also ideologically “pure” members of the Democratic coalition are fine, but to turn these into operative assumptions that LGBT voters are primarily or predominantly liberal is a step too far.

Less Than “Do Nothing” Congress?

/ Matthew Clemente / Leave a comment

Less Than “Do Nothing” Congress?

Recently Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross interviewed New York Times congressional correspondent Jonathan Weisman about Congress’ coming summer recess and its inaction in the last term.  

Here is a description of the interview: 

Friday is the last day before the 113th Congress scatters for their summer recess. And what has it accomplished so far? Almost nothing, says New York Times congressional correspondent Jonathan Weisman. As he points out in a recent article:

“None of Congress’s 12 annual spending bills have reached Mr. Obama’s desk, and with the House and the Senate far apart on total spending levels, a government shutdown is possible on Oct. 1, when the current spending law expires.

“Once Congress returns on Sept. 9, lawmakers will have just nine legislative days until the current fiscal year ends and large swaths of the government would be forced to close.”

Weisman joins Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross to discuss why this Congress has passed so few laws, and explain some of the conflicts between Republican lawmakers and President Obama.