Who's an oligarchy?

I’ve written elsewhere that America’s national legislature is too small to provide effective representation to a nation of nearly 330 million citizens, but also too large to perform well as a deliberative body. I mentioned in that essay that China’s national legislature has a better ratio of people to representative than America’s House of Representatives does. But I added that the Chinese legislature is a rubber stamp for a smaller elite of real deciders.

America’s legislative branch can sometimes be a rubber stamp to a smaller elite of real deciders, too.

On March 25, 2020, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that “the Senate” had reached an emergency deal to buoy the country up during the coronaviris crisis. The Washington Post reported how the deal was made. 

[A]s midnight neared Tuesday, the pace of shuttle diplomacy picked up on the second floor of the Capitol, as [Treasury Secretary Steve] Mnuchin, White House Legislative Affairs Director Eric Ueland and the newly named White House chief of staff, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), met alternately with McConnell and [Democrat leader Charles] Schumer, who was in frequent contact with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Did you see the name of your Senator mentioned in that paragraph? Does that description sound like 100 senators meeting openly and representing the citizens of each state effectively and equally? No it doesn’t. This was a process involving five named people and only a few more not named. Your senator and mine were probably at home in bed while this was happening. Here’s more from the Washington Post.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced the breakthrough on the Senate floor around 1:30 a.m., after a long day of talks with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and other administration officials.

So again, you’ve got one Republican senator, one Democrat senator, the unelected Treasury Secretary, and “other administration officials.” Your senator and mine weren’t in the room where it happened.

The same perspective appeared in Vox, which is a particularly astute source of news and analysis. In their report, Vox quoted McConnell saying, “The Senate has reached an agreement,” and in the next sentence “the Senate will vote on the bill later.”

“At last, we have a deal,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said early Wednesday morning. “After days of intense discussions, the Senate has reached a bipartisan agreement on a historic relief package for this pandemic.” McConnell added the Senate will vote on the bill later in the day.

You could ask how they reached an agreement if they haven’t voted yet. The founders expected the legislative process would be expressed in the votes of the elected members of the senate. They would have said agreement was achieved when the majority voted for a bill. But that’s not haw America works nowadays.

In today’s process, the “agreement” was the deal stuck by a few people (most of them not even elected) in secret discussions. The vote that follows only affirms what the dealmakers decided.

I’m not passing judgment here about the $2 trillion coronavirus aid package. It may contain some, even many, good elements. And the need for a quick government response may be justified. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

But what happened overnight was not democracy in action.