Congress Can’t Outlaw Unintended Consequences

Jerry Climer

In our book, Fixing Congress: Restoring Power to the People, Mike Johnson and I review the negative impact of large population congressional districts, historic changes to the role of US Senators, and how campaign finance has evolved to reduce the influence of residents at home. This paper explores how those changes produced consequences for your taxes, federal spending, and public debt.

One hundred eleven years ago, individuals with noble intentions made decisions that have negatively impacted our democratic/republic form of governance. Their three decisive actions produced unanticipated challenges we are living with today:

1.   They froze the size of the US House at 435 members;

2.   They changed the US Senate from its role as the voice of the republic into a duplicative democratic body representing more residents with longer terms than the House and;

3.   They invented the federal income tax.

Before the 1910 census could take effect on US House representation, the number of representatives in the House had been adjusted following every census. That reflected the Founder’s objective of keeping the House highly reflective of residents’ preferences. From originally representing an average of around 30,000 folks to 210,000 by 1912, to today’s single-member congressional district representing a colossal 762,000 residents.

The Founders anticipated adjustments to the size of districts, and when the Bill of Rights was proposed, it included an amendment that offered an adjustment plan. That plan did not withstand review, and the US now has one of the worst representative-to-resident ratios in the free world.

Large congressional districts have spawned unintended consequences, making communications more complex and campaigns much more expensive. Campaigns used to be funded by the candidate, friends, and neighbors who could vote for that candidate. Today, a congressional campaign’s goal of communicating with those 762,000 residents routinely costs over a million dollars, more than can be collected from friends.

Raising that level of funds frequently requires raising it from inside and outside that congressional district, and it is common to see a campaign where outside money exceeds that locally raised. If an outside wealthy individual, union, corporation, or special interest PAC legally donates more than individual players at home, whose telephone call will get answered first?

To illustrate the scale of such donations in federal elections, and this example applies to the presidential campaigns, the Wall Street Journal reported that Tim Mellon legally made a $50 million donation to Trump’s super PAC, while Mike Bloomberg legally gave nearly $20 million to boost Biden’s. How does that stack up against your $3,300 maximum for each election?

In our book, coauthor Mike Johnson, not the Speaker, and I offer options for both large congressional district sizes and campaign finance challenges. However, we don’t endorse any specific approaches as we outline some pros and cons of various ideas. We want to start a debate about Fixing Congress, and this is a good place to start.

We do the same thing as we discuss another well-intentioned idea that generated unintended consequences for the US Senate. To give residents direct influence over US Senators, the 17th Amendment, another of those 111-year-old changes, ended state governments naming US Senators, as had been done since the country's founding. The shift from the indirect selection of senators to the direct election of senators sounded great but weakened the Congress and the nation.

It was not anticipated that senators would cease to be voices in the republic by doing so. Instead, like the House members, senators shifted their focus to electoral politics, raising huge amounts of money for political campaigns. Senators can reach even more out-of-state donors and raise even larger amounts of money, and they frequently raise more from outside their state than from within.

Before senators were popularly elected, their state legislature kept an eye on them; senators knew what the legislators expected, and state legislators were not averse to replacing senators who failed to reflect the state’s objectives. Thus, US Senators played a critical role as voices in the republic and did not worry about raising campaign money or keeping millions of residents happy by spending more taxpayer money on pet programs.

As we describe in Fixing Congress, there were weaknesses in that old appointment system, but in attempting to fix its problems, the baby got thrown out, and calmer voices in the republic got lost to popular sentiment.

The unintended consequence was that no one was fighting for the long-term interests of residents, and everyone, senators and representatives, was fighting for campaign dollars from their residents and out-of-state sources legally allowed to be involved. Not surprisingly, to respond to constituents, senators also became advocates for more regulation and spending by the federal government.

We’ve seen the federal budget grow year after year. With that hunger for distributing freebies prevalent in both houses of Congress, is it any wonder Congress authorized the government to become more skilled at telling the states how to serve their own people? This led to the need to collect more revenue to expand programs. The feds now dictate many programs inside states that force states to spend on priorities that do not reflect their residents’ priorities. Many issues belong at the national level; many others don’t.

Both senators and representatives know that delivering the bacon is a better way to greet constituents than talking about austerity. So why worry about balancing the budget? To see what has happened, it is projected that next year, the US government’s debt will exceed 106.2 percent of the nation’s private sector's annual economic output – which has never happened before. The popular election of senators removed the brake-power on federal spending that once existed.

The Constitution’s 16th amendment was adopted 111 years ago to meet the country’s need for a more predictable and expanding revenue stream. To sell it, that first federal income tax only applied to the top 1 percent of earners, and everyone else was assured they did not need to fear the taxman. Unintentionally, that shift in taxation introduced envy and greed into the tax system. If you were part of the 99% who had less income than the 1 percenter, why oppose shifting that tax burden to the guy behind the tree who must have too much money anyway?

Of course, even if the proponent’s intentions were pure, that 1% of income level was not enough to feed a growing government. The rate has routinely expanded to include roughly the top 49% of income earners, who now pay 98% of the federal income tax. The greed and envy game is so ingrained that almost no one feels compelled to keep the tax system’s burden fair for all earners.

With this broader array of earners now mandated to pay for programs and legislators enticed to keep spending more to reward their constituents, why stop? Candidates and incumbents make noise about cutting spending and changing the tax load, but how often does that happen when the political rewards encourage more spending and fewer taxes? It is easy for an elected representative, House, or Senate to favor taxing the other guy. Besides, social security and other programs will probably go bankrupt after they leave office. But appointed senators might see it differently.

Unintended consequences of just these three changes from 111 years ago have created a system that guarantees perpetual growth of the federal government and debt while simultaneously reducing the influence of each resident and removing a vital attribute of a republic where wiser long-term decisions are made that don’t necessarily placate beneficiaries of today’s federal largess.

This essay does not imply reverting to the conditions of 111 years ago. Everything has changed domestically, internationally, and in terms of communications. We need new approaches built on those realities that also empower women, racial groups, and youth, who are all now encouraged to be engaged in this democratic republic that excluded them 111 years ago. Fixing Congress offers options without recommendations.

We encourage you to engage in conversations that offer “Uncommon Solutions for Unprecedented Problems.” Submit them here or on our LinkedIn sites, and we will share your thoughts across those vehicles. Our book is available at Amazon.com or your favorite online bookstore.