Legislators on both sides of aisle blindly support legislation written by ALEC
What does health care legislation currently working its way through the South Carolina legislature, which would allow the state to opt out of the national Affordable Care Act, have in common with Arizona’s draconian immigration law, Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law (which inhibited police from investigating the shooting of Trayvon Martin) and voter ID legislation being pushed across the country? These bills weren’t written by elected lawmakers; they were drafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a lobbying coalition backed by corporate interests including the Koch brothers, Exxon-Mobil and AT&T. ALEC produces fully-drafted legislation and then shops those bills around to amenable legislators.
Should this matter? Our elected representatives still debate and vote on laws, even if the task of writing them has been outsourced.
Health care economist Lynn Bailey, who followed the debate on the S.C. health care bill, was quoted in the Free Times as saying, “The sponsors of the legislation couldn’t answer any questions ... they didn’t know anything about this specific piece of legislation.”
That’s right: The senators who put their names on the bill didn’t know anything about it. It was enough for them that it came from ALEC.
In a recent New York Times column, Paul Krugman explained how ALEC’s supposed “limited government” agenda is really about devolving government responsibilities to private profit-driven corporations. ALEC is closely tied, for example, to private education companies and to the Corrections Corporation of America, a company that is paid to operate prisons. It is terrifying to think that businesspeople who profit from our criminal justice system are writing and promoting laws, like the Arizona immigration law, that could result in more people going to jail.
It’s good that ALEC is finally getting press. Laws should be written in the open and publicly debated, not assembled in closed rooms by corporate interests and then quietly slipped through the legislatures. The exposure has made some of ALEC’s more publicly visible corporate backers nervous. Now lawmakers who have worked with ALEC would like us to think they’re benign, and the laws they’ve written are good laws, not self-serving. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley tweeted, “U might think abt not drinking Coca Cola since company succumbed to pressure fr Leftist not to support ALEC.” Yes, he really writes like that.
Whether our laws should be made according to the principles of democracy or according to the whims of corporate interests should not be an issue of left vs. right. Those of us outside the halls of power, whatever our political persuasion, need to make it clear to our so-called representatives that we want laws written for us, not for corporations.
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