Letters

From the May 1995 issue

(Page 3 of 5)

CCAGW has but one objective, and it has not changed in the past decade: to urge the passage of legislation to end wasteful spending. Because congressional ratings reflect both the shifting composition of Congress and an ever- changing tapestry of legislation, it would be highly irregular if honestly nonpartisan ratings showed no anomalies. In fact, I am downright suspicious of groups claiming to be nonpartisan, yet which consistently follow a "party line." There are plenty of those thinly disguised groups in Washington, which determine the outcome before the game is played. CCAGW is not, and will never be, one of them.

There are good reasons why the National Service and the National Competitiveness Acts were not rated--they were not on CCAGW's agenda at the beginning of the 103rd Congress, and we don't ambush members without telling them in advance about rated votes. Regarding the House rule vote on congressional compliance, we didn't rate it because it would have only applied to the House for one session. The second vote would have permanently changed the law and was the real substantive vote.

I hope that REASON will not tilt at political windmills for pseudo- control of agendas, but rather work doubly hard to ensure that conservatives and anti- spending groups work together to assure a genuinely positive change in American politics to save our children and grandchildren from a crippling debt they can never hope to repay.

That is our agenda. Please do not let petty political control guide your thinking and evaluation. Too many depend on your reasoned independence.

J. Peter Grace

Chairman

Citizens Against Government Waste

Washington, D.C.

Rick Henderson replies: Mr. Grace's credentials as an vocal opponent of excessive government spending and regulation are unassailable. Unfortunately, his impassioned defense of CCAGW's rating of the 103rd Congress still leaves some questions unanswered. For instance, the group's decision not to rate votes on the national-service program--one of the few specific, big-ticket initiatives Bill Clinton consistently promoted throughout his campaign--is curious, to say the least. And Mr. Grace made no attempt to justify CCAGW's decision to include unanimous or near-unanimous votes in its ratings scheme. As my story pointed out, unanimous votes say nothing about the behavior of individual legislators, unless the group conducting the ratings wants to boost everyone's score.

Mr. Grace says CCAGW decides which votes it will rate at the beginning of the session. The votes it actually rated suggest much more flexible criteria than that. It rated the Penny-Kasich spending-cuts package, an important measure, to be sure--but Penny-Kasich was crafted in the fall of 1993, 10 months into the session. Indeed, 24 of the 37 House votes rated were either on rules or on amendments to other bills, many of which were never dreamed of until long after the session began.

Mr. Grace says CCAGW takes great pride in being nonpartisan, which is indeed an attribute too few organizations in Washington value. But can CCAGW best fulfill its mission by not offending Democrats or by pointing out which members of Congress most effectively attack government waste?

Bell Ringing

Tom Hazlett's article ("Ding Dong," Jan.) about The Bell Curve was fair, given the fact that it was (as he stated) based on the article by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray in The New Republic. However, the issue of the relationship of race and intelligence is just one segment of The Bell Curve. (Indeed, I feel that the authors did themselves no good by writing that essay, which was focused primarily on race.)

The thrust of the book is much broader, and its message is of importance to people concerned about liberty. Essentially the authors argue that intelligence is more important in coping with life's problems than many of us have thought. Second, because the United States is a meritocracy, people are being sorted, more and more, by intelligence. That is, in recent decades, many bright people have gone to college (that wasn't always the case) and the brightest of the bright are going to elite colleges. There they marry other members of what Herrnstein and Murray call "the cognitive elite," and they enter professions in which they interact primarily with other members of the elite. As a result, over the past few decades, very smart people, more than ever before, have acquired power, affluence, and prestige.

The problem that Herrnstein and Murray warn against is that the people in this power elite then try to make life difficult for the average person and especially difficult for people whose cognitive ability is quite limited. For example, they institute zoning rules that make it hard to build homes and regulations that make it hard to start small businesses, and they create government intervention programs that discourage marriage.

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