Let me get this straight.
There are two regulatory agencies overseeing stock and futures trading: the Securities and Exchange Commission, created in 1934, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, created in 1974.
Are you with me so far?
A year after the financial crisis, as lawmakers are trying to come up with ways to reform the financial sector, it has been proposed that these two agencies be combined into a single entity.
Republicans think this is a great idea.
Democrats think this is a great idea.
The SEC and CFTC both think this is a great idea.
But it will never happen, because it's politically impossible.
How can that be? Quite simply, it's impossible to get a committee chairman in Congress to give up power. If the two agencies were combined, the CFTC would no longer fall under the purview of the Agriculture committee, and that chairman would lose power in the form of lobbyist attention and special interest donations, among other things. Apparently, this is such a distasteful thing for a committee chairman to have to endure that they are able to marshal incredible forces to keep it from happening.
And so it can never happen. Even though virtually everyone else in the federal government thinks it would be a great idea.
It makes me wonder why we even bother evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments for the various positions on all the pressing issues before Congress, when in the final analysis, whether or not good policy is enacted depends on entirely on something so stupid as one committee chairman's self-interest.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
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2 comments:
I heard this story on NPR this morning on the way into work. What I don't understand is how one committee chairman can have that much power. If everyone thinks it's a good idea, the bill ought to start with 100 votes in the senate. Take away 1 for the committee chairman, and another half dozen for people on the committee who hope one day to be the chairman. It still ought to have 93 votes! Can the one chairman really make enough promises to everyone else to get 34 more people on his side? (If he gets support down to 59 he can filibuster it to death, right?)
If one person can bring something like this to a halt, how does any bill ever get passed at all?
The way I understand it, everyone thinks the policy is a good idea, but not everyone thinks it's a good idea to force a committee chair to yield power. No one wants to set that precedent for fear that they will be the next one asked (or forced) to give up something. So it's not really one person with tremendous power, but a collusion among lawmakers that such things are off-limits.
Still, think of the good that could potentially be accomplished if you got one guy in there who was willing to sacrifice power for the benefit of good legislation. Unfortunately, someone like that would likely never make it to committee chair in the first place.
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