The real scandal of campaign finance is not the frantic pursuit of private contributions by candidates and parties–a much overreported story–but the quiet conversion of some large federal programs into tax-supported vehicles for political sloganeering. When examined critically, these programs provide few (if any) genuine public benefits. They merely create the mirage that elected officials are attacking some pressing national problem. The result is tax-subsidized political propaganda on a massive scale. The costs dwarf all private campaign contributions.
A good example is COPS, the Clinton administration’s program to put 100,000 more police on the street. Through fiscal 2000, the program will cost about $7.5 billion. By contrast, all campaign spending for 1998 congressional races totaled roughly $1.5 billion, says Michael Malbin, executive director of the Campaign Finance Institute.
COPS has paid big political dividends. It has helped the Clinton administration wrest the crime issue from Republicans. “We cut crime with 100,000 community police,” the president said in his State of the Union address.
The trouble is that the claim is mostly make-believe. Crime’s drop started in 1992. Congress didn’t pass COPS until 1994. The Justice Department estimates that it takes about 18 months for new police officers to be trained and reach the street. In 1996, the program claimed to have put 20,000 extra police on the street. The latest official claim is (contrary to Clinton) only 60,000. This is out of more than 650,000 state and local police officers.
Even this overstates COPS’ impact, because many of these police would have been hired anyway. Under the program, localities get up to $75,000 to pay for up to three quarters of the first three years’ cost of new officers.
After that, the subsidy stops. To think that COPS permanently raised the number of police, you have to believe that local governments are so stupid that they can’t see beyond three years. Localities have been expanding their police forces since the early 1980s. From 1988 to 1995, the number of officers rose about 100,000 or roughly 20 percent. At most, COPS probably accelerated the hiring of some new officers.
COPS epitomizes what might be called “the new pork barrel.” Politicians once appealed to voters through bricks and mortar: a new highway or military base. This continues, but politicians now need something more. They must impress a broader public that pays only passing attention to government, usually through television. Government programs are increasingly crafted for their political symbolism, not their real benefits.
You might think that the siphoning of billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize political sound bites would merit some public scrutiny. It does–but not much. The press and “watchdog” groups like Common Cause are generally uninterested. They’re too busy chasing the “scandal” of private campaign contributions. Of course, the sheer number of contributors dilutes the power of any individual or group. But the “scandal” endures because the morality tale seems so simple: private money corrupts the public good.
The larger corruption–the misuse of public funds for political self-promotion–is minimized as “politics as usual.” Even many older programs now follow the new political logic. Consider the minimum wage. People think it’s an easy way to reduce poverty. It isn’t. Many minimum-wage earners are middle-class teenagers. Some poor workers receive higher wages; but the higher minimum wage causes some to lose their jobs. The mass of Americans, however, think the poor are helped. So Congress may raise the minimum from $5.15 to $6.15 an hour.
Another example is the recent $7 billion “emergency” farm-aid legislation. It is supposed to rescue farmers from disastrously low grain prices. In the short run, it will provide financial relief. But in the long run, it won’t save many family farms. We know this, because massive subsidies since the 1930s have not prevented the decimation of family farms. From 1935 to 1997, the number of U.S. farms dropped from 6.8 million to 1.9 million. The subsidies haven’t been powerful enough to override the forces–mainly mechanization–that have made for bigger, lower-cost farms.
Still, Congress passes the subsidies. Everyone sympathizes with hard-working family farmers. They are part of the country’s folklore. Hardly anyone in Congress wants to be seen as worsening their plight, especially in an election year. That would seem cruel.
Politicians–not farmers–are the main beneficiaries of farm subsidies. Public policy increasingly becomes public relations. The idea is not to do good. It is to look good. The best part is that the PR is paid by taxpayers. This, however, is not a scandal, because it is too common and too complicated for anyone to notice or care.
