The way the world works is not in itself reason enough to
dismiss the possibility of an ideal being more fully realized, and to refuse to
take practical steps to its realization. Horse-trading is a staple in politics.
The expression “making sausage” is typically used to refer to political
horse-trading because people generally do not know—nor do they want to know—how
sausage gets made; and it is probably best that way, at least according to the
politicians. I propose that we “get under the hood” anyway, because only then
can we ask ourselves whether political horse-trading is overused; a better way
may be possible and even practical under some conditions.
Political horse-trading occurs when one elected
representative (Mr. X) agrees to go along with another representative’s (Mr. Y)
piece of legislation, which isn’t very important to X’s constituents but is to
Y’s, in exchange for Y’s vote on another bill, which isn’t important to Y’s
constituents but is to X’s folks back home. With enough support and
horse-trading both bills stand a good chance of becoming law, whereas without
the practice perhaps neither bill would pass. Although the legislative output
of the legislative chamber is increased, that the support for each bill is
overstated—the votes in favor being more than the number of representatives who
support the legislation itself. A minority of representatives in the chamber
may be for drilling for oil in natural parks, for example, but a bill whose
express purpose is to permit such activity by oil companies could pass anyway
due to horse-trading. The general will as per the representatives as a whole
would not be in line with the legislation passed, meaning theoretically at
least that the will of the people would not be in favor of drilling; so is more
legislative output necessarily a good thing in a representative democracy?
Rousseau would point to the general will as having been thwarted by ambitious
politicians looking out narrowly for the particular will of their respective
constituencies or even just themselves. Out of an original social contract
comes “a moral and collective body made up of as many members as the assembly
has voices, and which receives by this same act its unity, its common self, its life and its will.”[1]
This will is the general will. If particular interests make out well at the
expense of the good of the whole, then the general will is thwarted or
compromised. Hence, horse-trading may not be justified by its facilitative
impact in terms of legislative output.
In May 2015, the U.S. Senate rebuffed the U.S. President’s
request to have the proposed Pacific trade treaty (PTT) voted “up or down”
without amendments (i.e., “fast-track” authority). The U.S. House of
Representatives had already approved the fast-track authority. In spite of
Democratic senators claiming that workers would not be adequately protected as
the trade deal had been negotiated, enough of those senators turned around and
voted a week or so later to end the debate. Sixty-two senators voted for
cloture, enabling the fast-track authority to go through. The U.S. president
and the Senate’s majority leader had enough power to do the necessary
horse-trading.
The vote nearly failed—being a few votes shy of the 60
needed to end debate. “It only succeeded after about a dozen senators engaged
in a tense discussion in the middle of the Senate floor, well after the time
for the vote had expired.”[2]
The bending of the Senate’s rules on the duration of the vote is itself
suspect; it could be the smoke over cloaked horse-trading. According to several
U.S. senators, "the key was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)
promising Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) to have a vote on reauthorizing the Export-Import
Bank, which backs loans in places where there might not otherwise be sufficient
funding to purchase products from the United States. A key beneficiary is
Boeing, in Cantwell's state."[3]
Does this constitute horse-trading, or would the reauthorization of the Export-Import
Bank make the Pacific trade deal better for U.S. workers?
As an instance of corporate welfare, the Bank would
primarily benefit American businesses that export to the impoverished countries
getting the loans. The companies’ shareholders and to some degree the workers
would also benefit from the additional business. Even so, reauthorizing the
Bank would not mean that workers in countries that are party to the TPP would
be protected or that the free-trade deal would not result in American workers
being laid off. The A.F.L.-C.I.O. contended at the time that 700,000 jobs in
the U.S. had been lost or displaced due to NAFTA.[4]
Presumably the figure would not have been higher without the corporate welfare that
the Export-Import Bank was dolling out. We can conclude, therefore, that
Cantwell’s horse-trade with McConnell did nothing to remove Cantwell’s concerns
about worker-protections under the TPP—assuming she really had concerns!
Moreover, we can conclude that the support for fast-tracking
the TPP deal was less than 62 senators who voted in favor of ending debate,
since the horse-trading made the difference in the cloture vote. In effect,
McConnell broadened the scope of the vote by making a promise regarding another
issue. In doing so, he blurred the general will and thus compromised the
democratic principle wherein the people’s representatives vote on the merits of
the same thing—rather than some of the representatives essentially voting on
one thing and other representatives voting on something else. The legislative
output is greater, but so is the risk that bad legislation will go into effect.
What if legislative votes were like straw polls wherein each
representative would be asked what he or she thinks of a proposal, such as
drilling in national parks. The matter requires judgment as well as
information. Looking into an issue and making a judgment on it is what elected lawmakers are presumably supposed to do.
Political horse-trading impedes or compromises the judgment and perhaps even
the information-gathering. To be sure, judgment is involved in deciding which
bills to trade; however, this sort of judgment is not the same as judgment on a
particular issue, with a vote ensuring from it. Theoretically at least, being
satisfied as a country with legislative output reflecting legislative judgments
on the respective bills, rather than informally grouping them so they all get
through, has the benefit of better public policy unless the lawmakers’ judgment
capacity is bad (i.e., voters making bad choices in who they vote for). Put
another way, if enough senators (technically, states) judged that the PTT
negotiated by the Obama administration would be a bad treaty, then the
fast-track status should not have been approved; the check-and-balance in the
Senate’s power to ratify treaties would be of value.
Practically speaking, Obama and McConnell could not be
expected to hold back on using their power to reach 60 votes. To assume
otherwise would be tantamount to expecting a stream to run uphill.
Horse-trading could be made illegal, but enforcement would be a bitch given the
nature of the beast. Making use of referendums at the policy level, such as
whether the U.S. Government funds should cover abortion, or whether pot should
be legalized, would preempt legislative horse-trading, though voters could of
course use their vote in a referendum for another purpose rather than to
signify their judgment on the issue at hand. Even so, considering the
prevalence of horse-trading in legislative chambers, the general will stands a
better shot at being reflected if referenda are included on ballots. Voting
only for a candidate—theoretically in part because of the candidate’s good
judgment—implies that he or she would use it on issues rather than merely to horse-trade well. The prevalence of
legislative horse-trading means that the electorate should not rely so much on
voting to fill offices; some direct democracy should also be in the mix.
Perhaps then legislative rules (with teeth) clamping down on horse-trading
would be enough to pick up the slack. Even more idealistically, perhaps voters
might vote for candidates who find contributing to the general will rather than
obfuscating it to be fulfilling and of value. Of course, if the electorate
deems (i.e., the general will) that good legislation is the aggregation of
bills satisfying various parts (i.e., constituencies) of the whole, then the
voters will favor candidates who value horse-trading. To the extent that such
candidates get elected (and reelected) even though the majority of the voters
believe that their representative should use his or her judgment on each issue
rather than horse-trade, then at least part of the problem lies with
representative democracy itself.
1. Jean-Jacque Rousseau, The Social Contract, in The Social Contract and Other Political
Writings, Victor Gourevitch, ed. and trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004), p. 50.
2. Michael McAuliff, “Senate Advances Fast-Track for
Obama Trade Deals,”
The Huffington Post, May 21, 2015.
3. Ibid.
4. Kevin Granville, “The
Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Deal: What It Would Mean,” The New York Times, May 11, 2015.
