I agree with the Arizona judge that this does constitute logrolling. Each legislator can include their own priorities in exchange for agreeing to pass the entire bill. In other words, they convince others to support their own priorities by voting for the priorities of others. The entire process is simply condensed. Does this improve on classic logrolling? I argue that, on the whole, it does not. On the one hand, it eliminates the issues of cheating and bluffing that Mueller describes in 5.9. You can't renege on a deal when there is only a single vote. On the other hand, logrolling on such a large scale and involving so many tradeoffs amplifies possible inefficiencies and makes Tullock's concern with government overspending that much more important. Omnibus bills seem to be the natural evolution of traditional logrolling and highlight the inefficiencies that can come with it.
Sunday, October 03, 2021
Omnibus Bills, The Modern Day Logroll
On Monday of last week, a judge in Arizona struck down a ban on face-mask mandates by school districts. The judge's reasoning was that the ban violated the "single-subject rule" for legislation due to its being passed as part of a large state budget bill. Her exact ruling stated that "the bill is classic logrolling - a medley of special interests cobbled together to force a vote for all or none." It's interesting to note, however, that in many ways this situation differs from classic logrolling. The traditional logrolling situation involves agreeing to vote affirmatively on separate issues in order to secure support on your own issue of choice. Arizona legislators, however, included all such issues in one single "omnibus" bill. Arizona is not an outlier here; the federal government frequently debates omnibus budget bills and is currently debating a multi-trillion dollar infrastructure bill that could easily be described as omnibus legislation. Given the proliferation of such bills, we have to ask if they even constitute logrolling and, if so, are they more efficient than traditional logrolling?
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I actually find this way much more efficient than traditional logrolling. If you look at the decision making costs incurred, it would be significantly cheaper to do an all in one logrolling bill. All of the candidates would only have to vote once to pass a plethora of issues instead of multiple different voting processes for individual ticket items. So, decision making costs are lessened because it takes up less of the representatives' time.
This method also gives individuals more confidence in the passing of their own respective issues. Instead of needing to trust that a representative will pass your bill because they passed yours, they actually have to pass your bill in order to pass their own, making everyone more willing to vote and ultimately resulting in more laws passed.
On paper this is an efficient and effective use of time and law making because it reduces costs and increases voter efficacy. However, in practice it leads to random and contradictory laws that would not otherwise have been entertained by lawmakers.
So, yes, you are right that there is an issue here that causes inefficiency, but whether or not this inefficiency outweighs the gains presented varies from omnibus bill to omnibus bill. Economically, however, it appears to be a more efficient option when done correctly.
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