Transparency Fail

Politico takes a whole arti­cle today to tell us what we already knew: that tele­vised con­fer­ence com­mit­tee looks a lot like tele­vised floor debate. And why shouldn’t it? Bills sim­ply don’t get writ­ten on live TV, no mat­ter how long you put Sen­a­tors in front of run­ning cameras.

Lan­guage gets drafted in back rooms, and always will be. Each clause is turned inside-​​out by a team of lawyers and econ­o­mists to eval­u­ate every impact. Often the leg­is­la­tors don’t even write it — lob­by­ing firms are more than happy to deliver “sug­gested lan­guage” on behalf of their clients to over­worked com­mit­tee staffers. Whin­ing that they don’t do it on TV doesn’t get any­one anywhere.

If “trans­parency” is really the goal, then it’s reform of the lob­by­ing process itself that will have to be pur­sued. But I don’t expect much suc­cess in that direc­tion. Peo­ple will find ways to pro­duce the lan­guage they want, and in the pri­vacy of their offices Sen­a­tors will make the com­pro­mises and adjust­ments so that every­one can claim vic­tory. That’s how com­pro­mises must be made if gov­ern­ment is to work at all.

(Photo: wood­ley­won­der­works)

11 June 2010 – 4:41 pm | By Benjamin Daniels | Posted in Economics | Comments (137)