HIDDEN “LUMPS OF COAL”

The traditional way in which teachers of civics classes have taught how a bill becomes law has been much maligned. I'm sure most of you have seen the cartoon that depicts the process as “Bill” gets born and proceeds through the two houses of Congress. Our hero (the cartoon features a male voice for Bill) makes it through, but the journey is long and filled with hazards – many of his cohorts die in the process. The criticism is that the cartoon whitewashes the level of politics that law-making involves. A much more realistic version of the process, although the story involved is about proposing an amendment to the Constitution, is shown in the movie, Lincoln – a film all high schools should show their students. In that feature film, you get a real sense of what “sausage making”¹ is all about.

Why is the film's version more useful than the cartoon version? An obvious answer is that reality – the more real the better – gives students a better context, a better basis by which to build expectations for the possible, a more accurate ability to place accountable judgments and therefore, an ability to vote more effectively. So far, this is pretty obvious stuff. But transparency does not end with merely having a realistic view of the law-making process; it also goes to the substance of the laws that get through the process. Of particular import is how “submerged” provisions of laws and their resulting policies affect the welfare of citizens – often those who are the intended beneficiaries. These elements are important to look at if we want to make public policy more transparent.

Suzanne Mettler has a short book out that reports on her work on the issue of submerged policy.² She conducted what can be described as a “survey-based experiment” in which, through a set of questions, she (and her collaborator, Matt Guardino) determined if added information about a particular policy would change people's minds about a given policy. But before revealing what they found out, what do we mean by submerged policy? These are policies that because of what the law arranges, in its implementation, have components that are either difficult to understand, to trace, or to appreciate. Consequently, the average citizen is not aware of how the policy unduly benefits some and hurts others. Often these arrangements usually benefit third parties or favor parties that unduly secure resources from the way the policy works out. Oftentimes these incidents of less than transparent provisions are named “shadow,” “hidden,” or “camouflaged” policies. For example, our public health programs that pay third party insurance companies instead of paying health care providers directly, do what they do without a full appreciation of their effect. Or, the student loan program used to pay banks and other lending institutions instead of paying colleges or students directly amounts to a hidden benefit for those third parties, the banks. An example of a group of citizens unduly benefiting from a policy is the upper income people's benefit from the homeowner mortgage interest tax deduction.

What the researchers found was that if added information is given to those surveyed, the subjects change their opinions concerning those policies and they usually change in the direction that favors a more equitable distribution of resources. These changes usually involve money or are against business interests benefiting from policies that are meant to bolster opportunity for those not so advantaged. A review of the types of laws and policies that come under these concerns include tax expenditures, loans, loan guarantees, and contracts involving third parties – such as insurance companies. They also found that the changed views were not limited to policies that had hidden beneficiaries, but policies that are meant to help the poor. When given more information about the Earned Income Tax Credit, for example, respondents report a more positive view of such a program.

One related issue with this entire area is that if a set of policy makers wants to reform a policy that has “submerged” elements, those officials are subject to and often are the target of propaganda, sponsored by the benefited parties, that capitalizes on the very obscure nature of the policy area. We saw this in the propaganda blitz against the Affordable Health Care Act – Obamacare – in which such ludicrous charges of death panels and the like were rolled out. We heard the cry: “Do you want government making your health care decisions for you?” While unaccountable insurance companies are making a lot of our current decisions for us, we tend not to know this until the day comes when an insurance company is telling us or a relative that a particular procedure is not covered under the policy we or our relatives have. The fact is that while the charge that government was taking over our health decisions was and is overstated, we at least get to vote for those government policy makers who are setting up the programs while we have no say as to who sits in those executive suites that run the multi-billion dollar insurance companies. But facts like these are “hidden” or not fully appreciated or understood by many voters.

Under a civics curriculum that is guided by a liberated federalist outlook, classroom instruction would shine a spotlight on this type of problem since the emphasis would be on having stakeholders informed and active in the formulation of public policies. Of course, the issue has to be prevalent enough to justify class time, but Mettler's book illustrates how this angle to viewing public policy has unearthed a significant number of policy concerns. Her book does this by using a concept that portrays a non-federalist character in many of our laws and policies – an element that purposefully hides a “lump of coal.”

1Term is a euphemism for law-making.

2Mettler, S. (2011). The submerged state: How invisible government policies undermine American democracy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. This study came to my attention in a book review: Howard, C. (2012). Political Science Quarterly, 127 (3), pp. 480-481.