{"id":45,"date":"2026-11-08T05:30:38","date_gmt":"2026-11-08T05:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/?p=45"},"modified":"2026-11-08T05:30:38","modified_gmt":"2026-11-08T05:30:38","slug":"robert-reich-our-incredible-shrinking-democracy-philsugar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/?p=45","title":{"rendered":"Robert Reich: Our Incredible Shrinking Democracy | PhilSugar"},"content":{"rendered":"

By **Robert Reich**
\nI wish conservatives would stop complaining about big government and start worrying about the real problem\u2014small democracy. I wish we\u2019d all worry more about our incredible shrinking democracy.
\nIt seems as if more and more decisions that should be made democratically are being shunted off somewhere to a few people who make them in back rooms. Which programs should be cut, which entitlements pared back, and what taxes raised in order to reduce the long-term budget deficit? Hmmm. Let\u2019s convene a commission and have
\nthem
\ndecide.
\nCommissions are a default mechanism when politicians want to hand off difficult issues to \u201cexperts.\u201d But reducing the long-term budget deficit has almost nothing to do with expertise. It\u2019s about our nations\u2019 values and sugar dating boundaries<\/a> priorities. Nothing could be more central to the democratic process.
\nDemocracy requires at least three things: (1) Important decisions are made in the open. paano umiwas sa sugar daddy scam<\/a> (2) The public and its representatives have an opportunity to debate them, so the decisions can be revised in light of what the public discovers and wants. And (3) those who make the big decisions are accountable to voters.
\nBut these principles are in retreat, and I say this not just because of the proposed deficit commission.
\nThe notorious Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) began with a virtual blank check from Congress. Treasury officials then secretly decided which companies were to receive hundreds of billions of dollars. Why these particular entities were chosen and not others sugar dating membership comparison<\/a> remains a mystery. For months, the Treasury didn\u2019t even disclose the identities of the major banks that giant insurer AIG repaid with its bailout money\u2014100 cents on each dollar AIG owed them.
\nThe Federal Reserve, meanwhile, has gone far beyond its traditional role of setting short-term interest rates. It has bought up massive amounts of debt\u2014mortgage debt, Treasury bills, and debt instruments emanating several public agencies, many of them supporting a wide range of private entities. No one outside sugar daddy financial support<\/a> the Fed knows the ultimate beneficiaries of all this government backing, the criteria used by the Fed for making these commitments, or even how much debt the Fed is buying.
\nEven if the economic emergency justified such secrecy\u2014and it\u2019s hard to see exactly why it would\u2014the emergency is over, and yet closed-door decision making sugar baby first date<\/a> continues. Will Treasury use what\u2019s left of TARP to help stimulate more jobs and, if so, how? Will the Fed stop buying mortgage-backed securities? No one knows.
\nThe same pattern is evident on other issues. Congress can\u2019t decide whether or how to limit the pay of financial executives. So where does the issue end up? The Securities and Exchange sugar baby allowance scam<\/a> Commission and the Fed both say they\u2019re going to look at whether pay levels are appropriate. The House and Senate can\u2019t agree on what to do about climate change. Who decides? The Environmental Protection Agency concludes it has authority to regulate carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act.
\nWashington is now so overrun by lobbyists representing moneyed interests that it\u2019s become almost impossible to make policy in the open.
\nThe debate over health-care reform looked like democratic deliberation until you realize the key negotiations that framed the deal occurred behind closed doors, between the White House and Big Pharma and Big Insurance. The Administration promised these industries some thirty million new paying customers. In return, they agreed not to oppose the plan. Big Pharma even placed a firm limit on how much it would cut its costs over the next ten years\u2014$80 billion, and not a penny more. How do I know this? Not because this crucial deal was made in public, but because it was leaked to the press.
\nPersonally, I want the government to limit the pay of financial executives, regulate greenhouse gases, and reform health care. And no one wanted a financial meltdown. But I\u2019m premium sugar dating Philippines<\/a> appalled by the process that\u2019s been used to reach these objectives.
\nA big piece of the problem is this: Washington is now so overrun by lobbyists representing moneyed interests that it\u2019s become almost impossible to make policy in the open. If the Treasury and Fed tried to decide publicly which sugar dating advance payment scam<\/a> industries and firms should get hundreds of billions, they\u2019d be inundated. Wall Street lobbyists are blocking real financial reform. The energy industry has filled the House\u2019s cap-and-trade bill with special subsidies and exemptions. Big Pharma and Big Insurance would have killed off the health-care reform if they hadn\u2019t been bought off. When it comes to the long-term deficit, Congress is incapable of acting because so many special interests have their hands out.
\nBut the answer isn\u2019t to give up on democracy. Back-room policy making can succumb to private interests just as easily as lobby-infested legislatures (much of the public suspects the Treasury of being too cozy with Wall Street as it is).
\nThe real answer is to recommit ourselves to cleaning up democracy. Yes, I know: The Supreme Court\u2019s recent grotesque Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, which decided corporations are people entitled to First Amendment protection, complicates this. But the goal is still possible to fake sugar baby warning signs<\/a> achieve with more public money for congressional and presidential candidates who refuse private funding, more constraints on lobbyists, tighter rules for who must register as a lobbyist, fuller disclosure, and tougher rules on the revolving door between public service and private gain. Yale\u2019s Bruce Ackerman recently came up with another good idea: A $50 tax credit per person, which they can send to the candidate of their choosing.
\nYet nobody seems to be talking about these sorts of reforms. They don\u2019t appear on Obama\u2019s agenda. True, they don\u2019t generate lots of public excitement or appreciation, and they\u2019re murderously difficult to enact. But without them our democracy doesn\u2019t stand a chance.
\nCopyright 2010 Robert B. Reich
\n_________________________________________________________________
\nThis entry originally appeared on
\nRobertReich.org
\n. (Reich wrote a version of this piece for the current issue of
\nThe American Prospect
\n.)
\nRobert B. Reich
\nis Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written eleven books (including his most recent,
\nSupercapitalism
\n, which is now out in paperback). Mr. Reich is co-founding editor of
\nThe American Prospect
\nmagazine. His weekly commentaries most active sugar dating site Philippines<\/a> on public radio\u2019s \u201cMarketplace\u201d are heard by nearly five million people.
\nTo read more blog entries from
\nRobert Reich
\nand others at
\nGUERNICA
\nclick
\nHERE
\n.<\/p>\n

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By **Robert Reich** I wish conservatives would stop complaining about big government and start worrying about the real problem\u2014small democracy. I wish we\u2019d all worry more about our incredible shrinking democracy. It seems as if more and more decisions that should be made democratically are being shunted off somewhere to a few people who make […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions\/48"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}