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Sigh @ US Senate
Some mornings, all I can do is stare at my inbox and at the news wires as they trickle out, and wonder what the hell Congress thinks it's doing, collectively.
See, one of the basic problems with politics (and human decision-making in general) is that politicians undervalue the future. Or in economics parlance, their discount on the future is too high.
At a personal level, most adults have learned delayed gratification (or at least we hope so). You do not go out and immediately spend all of your paycheck, because you know you will need it for food and rent. You save money for years so that you can buy a house. Et cetera, et cetera. Except, people often do not plan adequately for the future. See: inadequate planning and saving for retirement.
This happens on the societal/governmental level of decision making as well. Often times long-term health and strength depend on doing things that aren't particularly comfortable now. For instance, a lot of American infrastructure is decaying, everything from sewers to subways to highways, because most of it was built in the 1950s and 1960s and very little of it has been adequately maintained (because not maintaining things saved money at the time). For the long-term health of the economy and standard of living for people living here, our infrastructure needs to be systematically updated, and in some cases rebuilt. Except we're not doing it (the Stimulus money actually helps here, but does not begin to address the full problem). We're not doing it because it would cost money now, and we don't want to spend it. Which is all well and good, except we have no reason to believe we'll have more money later (recession aside, the budget squeeze will be noticeably worse 10 years from now than it will be 5 years from now, because of demographic squeezes), and doing it later will cost even more. So we're being really dumb by not acting. (By "we" I mean legislators. But also the larger idea of the country--legislators respond to voters' desires on this sort of thing.)
When I was in college, my public policy textbooks talked about this issue. I think they called them the problem of "short time horizons," or "mismatched time horizons." (The mismatch would be between the policy time line and the political time line.) So the existence of the problem is accepted, and documented in academia.
Except, my textbooks claimed that the problem of short time horizons was caused by elections, because elected officials never think past the next election. That's true, as far as it goes. But I'm really starting to doubt it. If elections were really the driver, you would expect more short-term planning in the House than in the Senate, since House terms are 2 years and Senate terms are 6. Except, that doesn't seem at all to be the case. If anything, the current House is much better at thinking long-term than the current Senate. (Mostly this is because the House leadership has far more control over its chamber--by nature of institutional design, good thinking founders--and the House leadership is more ready to think-long term than the Senate as a whole.)
And then there's the circus we're seeing right now. They are literally enacting two-month legislation this week. It... it defies all logic. They're still going to go through the pain of casting unpopular votes--in fact they're going to have to go through it twice. It will still be a problem for them in the election. There is almost no benefit to these short-term stopgaps, and these measures are horrible public policy--so much uncertainty always creates its own costs.
They're just... I don't know. Mice, without thought to anything past next week. Utterly lacking in courage, utterly unwilling to do what is necessary, just because it is difficult. Unwilling to swim against the tide, even when doing so is in they're (and our) best interest. The ruling majority in the United States Senate is not guided by partisanship (and its leader is not Harry Reid--who I generally respect, actually, even if he's no Lyndon Johnson). Its guiding principles are inertia and avoidance of anything requiring courage.
I understand the forces that are pushing these Senators, but they are not helping themselves by consistently taking the easy way out. They're not even doing a good job of helping themselves politically, and they're screwing up public policy in the process. It just makes me sad.
See, one of the basic problems with politics (and human decision-making in general) is that politicians undervalue the future. Or in economics parlance, their discount on the future is too high.
At a personal level, most adults have learned delayed gratification (or at least we hope so). You do not go out and immediately spend all of your paycheck, because you know you will need it for food and rent. You save money for years so that you can buy a house. Et cetera, et cetera. Except, people often do not plan adequately for the future. See: inadequate planning and saving for retirement.
This happens on the societal/governmental level of decision making as well. Often times long-term health and strength depend on doing things that aren't particularly comfortable now. For instance, a lot of American infrastructure is decaying, everything from sewers to subways to highways, because most of it was built in the 1950s and 1960s and very little of it has been adequately maintained (because not maintaining things saved money at the time). For the long-term health of the economy and standard of living for people living here, our infrastructure needs to be systematically updated, and in some cases rebuilt. Except we're not doing it (the Stimulus money actually helps here, but does not begin to address the full problem). We're not doing it because it would cost money now, and we don't want to spend it. Which is all well and good, except we have no reason to believe we'll have more money later (recession aside, the budget squeeze will be noticeably worse 10 years from now than it will be 5 years from now, because of demographic squeezes), and doing it later will cost even more. So we're being really dumb by not acting. (By "we" I mean legislators. But also the larger idea of the country--legislators respond to voters' desires on this sort of thing.)
When I was in college, my public policy textbooks talked about this issue. I think they called them the problem of "short time horizons," or "mismatched time horizons." (The mismatch would be between the policy time line and the political time line.) So the existence of the problem is accepted, and documented in academia.
Except, my textbooks claimed that the problem of short time horizons was caused by elections, because elected officials never think past the next election. That's true, as far as it goes. But I'm really starting to doubt it. If elections were really the driver, you would expect more short-term planning in the House than in the Senate, since House terms are 2 years and Senate terms are 6. Except, that doesn't seem at all to be the case. If anything, the current House is much better at thinking long-term than the current Senate. (Mostly this is because the House leadership has far more control over its chamber--by nature of institutional design, good thinking founders--and the House leadership is more ready to think-long term than the Senate as a whole.)
And then there's the circus we're seeing right now. They are literally enacting two-month legislation this week. It... it defies all logic. They're still going to go through the pain of casting unpopular votes--in fact they're going to have to go through it twice. It will still be a problem for them in the election. There is almost no benefit to these short-term stopgaps, and these measures are horrible public policy--so much uncertainty always creates its own costs.
They're just... I don't know. Mice, without thought to anything past next week. Utterly lacking in courage, utterly unwilling to do what is necessary, just because it is difficult. Unwilling to swim against the tide, even when doing so is in they're (and our) best interest. The ruling majority in the United States Senate is not guided by partisanship (and its leader is not Harry Reid--who I generally respect, actually, even if he's no Lyndon Johnson). Its guiding principles are inertia and avoidance of anything requiring courage.
I understand the forces that are pushing these Senators, but they are not helping themselves by consistently taking the easy way out. They're not even doing a good job of helping themselves politically, and they're screwing up public policy in the process. It just makes me sad.