People like to complain about how slowly Congress makes decisions. It's popular to pick on partisan politics as the source of Congress's sluggishness, especially in connection to COVID relief packages. In an article from CNN, the writer does just that, stating "Congress was slow to oversee US response to crisis amid partisan battles." What the writer does not recognize is that Congress's slow pace is, though frustrating, a feature of its structure that has potential benefits for society.
According to Weingast and Marshall in "The Industrial Organization of Congress... ", the committee system under which Congress operates makes it durable against opportunistic behavior. That is, while there are many interest groups trying to gain benefits from the COVID relief packages and rapidly changing information as the virus spreads through the US, Congress's resistance to changes in circumstances protect it from individual congressmen trying to secure opportunistic benefits for their constituents among the panic. If Congress were to rush through legislation as is implied by media sources lamenting their delay, it is likely that the legislation would be less allocatively efficient than the current result.
No comments:
Post a Comment