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THE CONGRESS, INTEREST GROUPS, AND PUBLIC POLICY:
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The Congress, Interest Groups and Public Policy: Why A Little is Better than A Lot
In this paper we begin the inquiry into an congressional-interest group relationship and its impact on public policy looking at one example in health policy. We argue that Congress is in the driver’s seat in the relationship with interest groups and that it is in Members’ best interest to take small, incremental policy steps, often seemingly against interest group preferences, with the idea that such actions will garner additional “rent” from the groups in future years. Members simply don’t benefit adequately from “solving” a problem; they benefit most from partially solving the problem (enough to take credit for solving it) but then quietly returning to the table at a later time when more interest group rent can be extracted. In this paper we analyze Medicare provider payments between 1997 and 2003—a time when the Congress first “took away” resources from interests and then slowly gave them back as an example of how Congress can successfully extract rent and, with the help of groups, justify why their action is good public policy.
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| | Authors: Weissert, William. and Weissert, Carol. |
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The Congress, Interest Groups and Public Policy: Why A Little is Better than A Lot
In this paper we begin the inquiry into an congressional-interest group relationship and its impact
on public policy looking at one example in health policy. We argue that Congress is in the
driver’s seat in the relationship with interest groups and that it is in Members’ best interest to
take small, incremental policy steps, often seemingly against interest group preferences, with the
idea that such actions will garner additional “rent” from the groups in future years. Members
simply don’t benefit adequately from “solving” a problem; they benefit most from partially
solving the problem (enough to take credit for solving it) but then quietly returning to the table at
a later time when more interest group rent can be extracted. In this paper we analyze Medicare
provider payments between 1997 and 2003—a time when the Congress first “took away”
resources from interests and then slowly gave them back as an example of how Congress can
successfully extract rent and, with the help of groups, justify why their action is good public
policy.
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