Today's Congress Functions Similar to Gilded Times
Throughout the history of Congress, few care to mention eras that transformed the legislative branch that we know today. After all as it is one of the most important branches of government, at the same time it is the most misunderstood and least popular.
Perhaps why people give such a low approval rating for members of Congress, is because of its constant gridlock, and lucrative partisan political games, all for the sake of winning the next election to gain majority control in a legislative chamber.1
This is not America’s first merry-go-round, because if one has studied history, this would be far too familiar.
The Gilded Age was a period in American history that ranged from the late-1870s up until the beginning of the 1900s. Issues at the time were increased poverty, the rise of inequality, working labor concerns, and the growth of corporate influence in politics.2
Because of the growth of corporate influence in politics, the average Joe does not understand the key role congressional party leaders have in deciding certain policy goals, let alone writing a stakeholder analysis to their political boss.
‘Adversarial clientelism’ is a term written in part of the second chapter titled, “Capacity for What? Legislative Capacity Regimes in Congress and the Possibilities for Reform,” by authors Lee Drutman and Timothy Lapira in their Congress Overwhelmed: The Decline in Congressional Capacity and Prospects for Reform, for which they introduce, “When party leaders prioritize resolving collective action problems by centralizing power yet still allocate resources for simple predictable purposes, Congress winds up in this second legislative capacity regime, adversarial clientelism.”3
The highlight of this terminology is to take into account the highly polarized political parties in Congress, with the priority to build partisan teams. Both parties are destined to represent a variety of interests with minimal overlap of political ideology, and with little expectation of winning over members from the other side of the aisle.
Upon breaking down adversarial clientelism, the authors note they took the first term adversarial because it contains the competition between the two parties. The second term clientelism is used because after all, both political parties are of interest to represent different coalitions that may benefit from one party in power over the other. At the end of the day, political parties work hand-in-hand with groups to advance legislative agendas and policy outcomes, all for the exchange in return for some advancement in electoral gain.4
With this in mind, it is the role of the congressional party leadership to have large leverage of authority to political groups or other organizations. Besides the main floor of a legislative chamber, committee hearings (and committees in general) are another way to deliver a political theatre spectacle for their clients, as well as the news cameras. This is because it’s a good venue for members who were passed down the partisan party memo to deliver partisan priorities for the political clients at stake.
In this area, there is little focus on bringing out bipartisan compromises. Party leaders instead focus on big donors and coalition groups to work out a compromise [emphasis added.] This is to make a clear depiction of an ‘us versus them’ mentality.
Rank-and-file members of congress are members who do not belong to the party leadership, whether that is by a committee, or a party as a whole caucus/conference. These types of members have difficulty creating their independent brand, and usually have to rely heavily on party leadership to attain most information that is crucial to the political advancement of the party.
Drutman and Lapira make remarks based on terminological breakdowns on different historical eras of congress, as defined by different cases which are included in the following, with a photo of their chart below5:
In the case of representation, when there is one party in the majority over the other, a party in power can only do so much to collectively represent different groups in a governing coalition.
Just as political parties are business too, parties have organized coalitions rooted in the interest and ideologies that solely focus on representing groups that are active the most.
Passing legislative solutions to America's tough facing challenges whether they are social or economic (no matter how large or small), will be put on the back burner because focusing on winning the next election will always take center stage.6
In the case of responsiveness, a party that has a stake in controlling the majority role has strong instincts to respond by offering legislative solutions to issues from that public even if those solutions are incredibly broad. Because leadership in congress is only made up of only a few people, most problems may not be offered a hearing. This is because majority leadership is in full control of setting their agenda and schedule.7
In the case of deliberativeness, there is little success in having in-depth deliberations and debates since those in leadership hold an advantage in gathering resources necessary to support their cause. This is because party leaders jump to pre-justified conclusions when they make everyday decisions. When members in the minority party or rank-and-file membership, it becomes difficult to change their minds when they have little access to the information withheld by the majority party.8
To provide a small example of an issue on deliberation, congressional party leaders complain about the lack of transparency when it comes to appropriation bills most likely. Here are some quotes from the introduction chapter into James M Curry’s book Legislating in the Dark: Information and Power in the House of Representatives.
Former Representative John Conyers (D-MI) once said, “I love these members; they get up and say, “Read this bill.” What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”9
In a similar context, former House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), then-House minority leader at the time, spoke against the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act with displeasure, “Here we are with 1,100 pages - 1,100 pages not one member of this body has read. Not one. There may be some staffer over in the Appropriations Committee that read all of this last night - I don’t know how you could read 1,100 pages between midnight and now. Not one member has read this.”10
Like Boehner’s quote, this is a common occurrence if a member is coming from the minority party, not the majority party.
Now resorting back to Drutman and Lapira, in the case of oversight, there is little need to have oversight if there is a unified government. However, in a divided government, oversight is politically used to expose or make a scandal amongst the opposing party. All of this is to undermine the image of the opposing party, and not for policy ideas. At the end of the day, it’s plain old political theatre.11
The authors note that while in the early stages of the era of adversarial clientelism may benefit certain individual members of congress who may fall into the trap of likening the order and false predictability it promises, it later projects itself into a weakened Congress. When one puts policy in the hands of the very few members that serve under congressional party leadership positions, Congress is very limited in its ability to address the problems facing the public because it also allows the parties in power to focus on the next election. 12
All this stems in a strikingly familiar context because it has its roots dating back to the Gilded Age. With the power party leadership controls in congress and the leverage they have to build collective actions all in centralized power, there is no reason to doubt that American politicians are currently stuck in a Gilded Age 2.0 when it comes to political polarization.
The famous 1889 cartoon below: ‘The Bosses of the Senate’ depicts tall wealthy fat men in top hats who represent a wide range of trusts and monopolies, watching the floor of the Senate closely with their flamboyant stance.13
But take a closer look near the top-left corner of the cartoon, you should see a door with a closed sign, and above it reads the ‘People’s Entrance’ while behind the big men is a sign that reads ‘Entrance For Monopolist.’ The message rings loud and clear, that big corporations are the center stage in American democracy, and any input from the American people is not welcomed to the wealthy elite club.
Those who had massive wealth in the Gilded Age, especially amongst those who were heads of large industrial companies, would lobby members of Congress to pass legislation in the favor of large businesses. Senator Mark Hanna (R-OH) once said in the 1890s that two things in politics were important, “The first is money, and I can't remember what the second one is."14
Former President Barack Obama recently said that politics in America has “now become a contest where issues, facts, policies—per se—don't matter as much as identity and wanting to beat the other guy. That's taken priority."15
And to ‘beat the other guy,’ many politicians will find ways to raise money to support their cause. The 2010 SCOTUS case of Citizens United v FEC, which prohibited federal law to ban corporations and unions from spending money in federal elections. Money is the equivalent of free speech, and both sides benefit from this landmark decision.
In a 2016 episode that aired on CBS 60 Minutes titled, “Are Members of Congress Becoming Telemarketers?” reporter Norah O'Donnell interviewed former republican Florida congressman David Jolly about the amount of time members of Congress had phone call wealthy donors for campaign donations:
Rep David Jolly: You have six months until the election. Break that down to having to raise $2 million in the next six months. And your job, new member of Congress, is to raise $18,000 a day. Your first responsibility is to make sure you hit $18,000 a day.16
It wasn’t until later in that same interview O’Donnell pressed former democratic New York congressman Steve Israel about the priority that was to attain four hours on fundraising call time, while the other interactions such as constituent visits are only between 1-2 hours.17
The item in question was over a 2013 model schedule to new Democratic lawmakers, which was later published by the Huffington Post -18
The interview excerpt between O’Donnell and Israel reads as followed:
Norah O'Donnell (Narration): The man in charge of the Democratic campaign committee at the time was Congressman Steve Israel, a Democrat from New York.
Norah O'Donnell: That's more time calling and asking for money than constituent work or floor work in Congress.
Rep. Steve Israel: Very frustrating.
Norah O'Donnell: That's what your message was--
Rep. Steve Israel: Yes.
Norah O'Donnell: To other lawmakers, "Spend more time raising money than working on your constituents' needs or being on the floor of the Congress."
Rep. Steve Israel: Very frustrating. The result of a system that is broken, the result of a system that allows unlimited amounts of money to be spent against you.
Norah O'Donnell: Before Citizens United, about how many hours a day would you have to spend on the phone raising money?
Rep. Steve Israel: I'd have to put in about an hour, maybe an hour and a half, at most, two hours a day into fundraising. And that's the way it went until 2010, when Citizens United was enacted. At that point, everything changed. And I had to increase that to two, three, sometimes four hours a day, depending on what was happening in the schedule.
Norah O'Donnell (Narration): Israel revealed he's spent more than 4,000 hours on the phone soliciting donations. It's something he won't miss when he leaves Congress at the end of this term. Still, he doesn't support the Stop Act.
This speck is only a needle in a haystack that shows how members in party leadership are willing to have other members of their party focus on wealthy donors to help their campaign and other re-election prospects.
If many of the wealthy elite are putting in large sums of money into political causes, this too means congressional leaders are geared towards helping that same class to benefit in their next election.
Despite a new era for the increase of small-dollar donations, large individual donors still play a big influence in politics.
For more information about the impact Citizens United v FEC has made on American politics in the last decade, look no further than a recent page from OpenSecrets.org titled ‘More Money, Less Transparency: A Decade Under Citizens United.’19
Insight about the all-time high cost of the 2020 election can also be found in an article published by OpenSecrets here. While those interested to learn more about the current state of congressional campaign finances can look at another OpenSecrets article here.20
[An additional source I recommend to many of those who want to learn about political campaign finance, in general, is the book Campaign Finance: What Everyone Needs to Know by Robert E. Mutch.]21
Money talks in politics, and now it runs the gears of how Congress ought to operate. Just like the Gilded Age before, party leaders in Congress are destined to follow the money trail to advance their cause for partisan policy purposes.
Gallup, “Congress and the Public,” https://news.gallup.com/poll/1600/congress-public.aspx.
Edward T. O’Donnell, “Are We Living in the Gilded Age 2.0?,” January 31, 2019, https://www.history.com/.amp/news/second-gilded-age-income-inequality.
Lee Drutman, and Timothy M. Lapira, “Capacity for What? Legislative Capacity Regimes in Congress and the Possibilities for Reform,” in Congress Overwhelmed: The Decline in Congressional Capacity and Prospects for Reform, (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2020), 22.
Drutman and Lapira, “Capacity for What? Legislative Capacity Regimes in Congress and the Possibilities for Reform,” 22-23.
Ibid., 28.
Ibid., 23.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Frances E. Lee, “Introduction,” in Insecure Majorities: Congress and the Perpetual Campaign, (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2016), 1.
Lee, “Introduction,” in Insecure Majorities: Congress and the Perpetual Campaign, 1.
Drutman and Lapira, 24.
Ibid.
United States Senate, “The Bosses of the Senate,” https://www.senate.gov/art-artifacts/historical-images/political-cartoons-caricatures/38_00392.htm.
Emily J. Charnock, “Money and the Financing of Campaigns,” Civil Politics, 2014, ed. Ravi Iyer, https://www.civilpolitics.org/money-and-financing-caOpmpaigns/.
Scott McDonald, “Barack Obama Says Issues, Policies, Facts Don't Matter to American Voters Anymore,” Newsweek, November 15th, 2020, https://www.newsweek.com/barack-obama-says-issues-policies-facts-dont-matter-american-voters-anymore-1547602.
David Jolly, “Are Members of Congress Becoming Telemarketers?,” interview by Norah O'Donnell, CBS 60 Minutes, April 24, 2016, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-are-members-of-congress-becoming-telemarketers/.
Steve Israel, “Are Members of Congress Becoming Telemarketers?,” interview by Norah O'Donnell, CBS 60 Minutes, April 24, 2016, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-are-members-of-congress-becoming-telemarketers/.
Ibid.
Karl Evers-Hillstrom, et al., “More Money, Less Transparency: A Decade Under Citizens United,” OpenSecrets.org, January 14, 2020, https://www.opensecrets.org/news/reports/a-decade-under-citizens-united.
“2020 Election to Cost $14 Billion, Blowing Away Spending Records,” OpenSecrets.org, October 28, 2020, https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/10/cost-of-2020-election-14billion-update. ; Alyce McFadden, “Small-Dollar Donors Get Behind Headline-Grabbing Lawmakers,” OpenSecrets.org, April 20th, 2021, https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2021/04/small-dollar-donors-q121-headline-congress/.
Robert E. Mutch, Campaign Finance: What Everyone Needs to Know, (Oxford University Press, 2016).