In his State of the Union Address earlier this year, President
Bush joined budget reformers in urging the adoption of the
line-item veto as a way of limiting the inexorable growth of
federal spending. Anyone familiar with the history of budget reform
knows this well-intentioned effort is doomed to failure. If
Congress is serious about cutting spending, it should represent
taxpayers in budget decisions.
For over 30 years, reformers have been trying to hold the line
on spending. In 1974, the solution was thought to be the
Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act. In 1985,
salvation was supposed to come in the form of the
Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act. Over the years, lawmakers have proposed
practically every conceivable legal device to cut, cap, limit, or
freeze spending. Yet from major entitlements to petty boondoggles,
programs continue to expand.
Why do these efforts to restrain spending fail? The answer is
simple: most congressmen believe that spending programs are
beneficial and necessary. This may come as a surprise to outsiders,
who imagine that congressmen can recognize the flaws in government
agencies, but are somehow corrupted to vote for wasteful programs
against their better judgment. But lawmakers live in a cocoon of
pro-spending propaganda, which lulls them into believing worthless
programs are worthy.
THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM is that it is very costly to communicate
with Congress. Civics books say that everyone has the right to be
heard in a democracy, but the truth is that it takes time and
effort to reach a congressman to advance a point of view. Suppose
you hear of a spending program that seems questionable. Take, for
example, the State Nutrition Action Plans programs of the Food and
Nutrition Service of the Department of Agriculture. You, the
taxpayer, discover that it shells out $500 million to state
bureaucracies to support vaguely defined programs and conferences
in “nutrition education.” You think it’s a boondoggle, and you wish
government would stop spending your money on it, but can you afford
to take the trouble to persuade lawmakers to stop funding it?
Writing a letter isn’t good enough. It would be only one of
thousands of missives that aides file away and forget (after
sending you the computer-generated response that says how sincerely
the congressman appreciates your point of view). To get your point
across, you are going to have to take a trip to Washington to meet
with lawmakers personally. Well, that’s going to take days and
days, and thousands of dollars. And what are you going to tell the
lawmakers when you see them? You have to have facts and figures to
back up your point. That means you have to research the program,
which will require more time and effort on your part.
Before you undertake this lobbying project, you ask yourself
what you stand to gain from it. Let’s say you pay $10,000 a year in
federal taxes. That means that this $500 million program costs you
$1.67. There’s no self-interest here.
Let’s suppose you are an idealist, and want to end wasteful
spending in order to protect the economic health of the country.
Again, the problem of scale defeats you. Even if this program were
eliminated, it would reduce federal spending by only 0.017% — and
therefore have no noticeable effect on the nation’s economy. You
reach the conclusion, then, that there is no motive, selfish or
idealistic, for you to lobby against a run-of-the-mill spending
program. You fall back on your couch in frustration.
Now consider what the supporters of spending programs are doing.
These include administrators whose incomes, status, and careers
depend on their programs. Eliminating their programs would cost
them not a mere $1.67 but their jobs! Hence, they have an enormous
personal financial interest in lobbying for the continuation of
their programs. Furthermore, administrators don’t have to fund
their lobbying activities out of their own pockets. Everything they
do to promote their programs — meeting with congressmen, preparing
flattering reports and press releases, organizing supporters — is
funded by taxpayers.
The second contingent of program supporters is the lobbyists
hired by those who get tax-funded payments, subsidies, and
contracts. They too have vested financial and professional
interests in maintaining and expanding spending. And, just like the
administrators, the lobbyists make no personal sacrifices in
lobbying for higher spending. Public relations and propaganda are
what they get paid for.
What would happen, then, if someone proposed eliminating a
program like the State Nutrition Action Plans? Congressmen would
hear from scores of authoritative, well-connected administrators
and lobbyists who have weeks of taxpayer-funded time available to
defend it. And because there is little money to be made in
protecting the public interest, no capable, sophisticated lobbyist
would advance the taxpayer’s position that the program was
unnecessary.
TO CORRECT THIS IMBALANCE, Congress itself should create an Office
of Taxpayer Advocacy charged with the specific mission of
representing the taxpayer interest in opposing unwise or
unnecessary spending. This agency could employ thousands of
researchers to investigate ineffective and unnecessary programs and
highlight the damage done by the spending of tax dollars. It could
establish a hotline for taxpayers to call about instances of waste
and abuse. It could employ writers and public relations specialists
to publicize the costs of spending proposals, to ensure that
Congress, the media, and the public heard anti-spending
arguments.
If administrators and lobbyists believe their programs are as
valuable as they say, they should welcome scrutiny and feel
confident that they will be able to refute their critics. The media
should be happy to have voices on both sides of spending questions.
Congress itself should embrace the idea. Most lawmakers know they
are being bombarded by the self-interested sales pitches of
spending advocates. They know they need to hear anti-spending
arguments in order to make responsible decisions.
How much might such an office cost? With a staff of about 5,000,
it would cost about $500,000,000 — 0.017% of the federal budget.
Congress could pay for it by abolishing any one of dozens of
questionable programs of equal size.
The creation of an Office of Taxpayer Advocacy would represent a
revolutionary change. Congress would create, for the first time, a
general interest lobby to counterbalance all the special interest
lobbies it has created with its spending largesse. By representing
the interests of American taxpayers in reality rather than
rhetoric, Congress could commit itself to making wiser decisions,
and put a brake on the reckless spending that threatens the
economy.
James L. Payne has taught political science at Yale,
Wesleyan, Johns Hopkins, and Texas A&M University. He is the
author of The Culture of Spending: Why Congress Spends beyond
Our Means (ICS Press 1991). This article is drawn from his
report, Budgeting in Neverland: Irrational Policymaking in the
U.S. Congress, just released by the Cato
Institute.
