How many political parties does it take to run a government?

Apparently one.

The Internal Revenue Service has come under fire in recent weeks for allegedly targeting conservative groups for scrutiny based in part on their ideology. Some have argued that the controversial practices result from an IRS culture that does not reflect an appropriate balance of liberal and conservative viewpoints. Does the public data from political campaign contributions support that hypothesis?

Yes and no. In a prior post I reported evidence that IRS lawyers are indeed heavily slanted toward the Democrats, at least in terms of their contributions to presidential campaigns. A tabulation of records from the Federal Election Commission database revealed that dozens of IRS lawyers made contributions to President Obama large enough to require disclosure ($200 or more), but that only a few IRS lawyers made such contributions to Romney.

The analysis also revealed, however, that the IRS is not unique or even particularly unusual among federal agencies in this regard. During the 2012 presidential campaign, the majority of lawyers’ contributions went to President Obama in every single agency throughout the federal government, and in most agencies more than 90% of the contributions went to Obama. Thus, the partisan imbalance among lawyers is not unique to the IRS, but in fact is present throughout all federal agencies.

To give a fuller picture of the scope and extent of the partisan imbalance among federal government lawyers, I collected additional data to include more agency lawyers in more agencies. The table below sets forth results for all 40-some agencies that had at least 10 lawyers who contributed to either Obama or Romney. I have also included some government-like entities that are not part of the U.S. government, such as FINRA, the PCAOB, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the United Nations, and the World Bank, as well as one entry for lawyers in the judicial branch. Note that the categories overlap because I used the level of generality or specificity contained on the disclosure form (e.g., so that IRS is separate from Treasury if disclosed that way).

AGENCY NAME	NUMBER OF LAWYERS CONTRIBUTING TO		OBAMA CONTRIBUTORS AS % OF CONTRIBUTORS TO
	OBAMA	ROMNEY	OBAMA AND ROMNEY	ALL PRES. CANDIDATES
NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD	44	0	100.00	100.00
DEPT. OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES	48	0	100.00	97.96
FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD	15	0	100.00	100.00
DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE	19	0	100.00	100.00
DEPT. OF EDUCATION	47	0	100.00	100.00
PCAOB	11	0	100.00	91.67
FANNIE MAE	13	0	100.00	100.00
UNITED NATIONS	23	0	100.00	100.00
FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER	94	2	97.92	97.92
FINRA	26	1	96.30	96.30
FERC	25	1	96.15	96.15
DEPT. OF LABOR	74	3	96.10	96.10
FDIC	43	2	95.56	95.56
CFTC	21	1	95.45	95.45
FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION	82	4	95.35	95.35
FEDERAL JUDICIARY	18	1	94.74	94.74
DEPT. OF STATE	35	2	94.59	92.11
EPA	104	6	94.55	92.86
WORLD BANK	16	1	94.12	94.12
DEPT. OF VETERANS AFFAIRS	31	2	93.94	88.57
IRS	46	3	93.88	90.20
FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION	12	1	92.31	85.71
DEPT. OF COMMERCE	22	2	91.67	88.00
EEOC	42	4	91.30	91.30
FDA	10	1	90.91	90.91
FREDDIE MAC	18	2	90.00	85.71
DEPT. OF HOMELAND SECURITY	44	5	89.80	88.00
DEPT. OF TREASURY	43	5	89.58	89.58
U.S. DEPT. OF HUD	24	3	88.89	88.89
US POSTAL SERVICE	15	2	88.24	88.24
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMM.	90	13	87.38	84.11
CFPB	20	3	86.96	86.96
PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE	26	4	86.67	86.67
DEPT. OF TRANSPORTATION	19	3	86.36	86.36
FCC	47	8	85.45	85.45
DEPT. OF THE INTERIOR	27	5	84.38	79.41
SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION	57	11	83.82	81.43
DEPT. OF JUSTICE	511	105	82.95	82.29
DEPT. OF ENERGY	9	2	81.82	75.00
FEDERAL LABOR RELATIONS AUTH.	9	2	81.82	81.82
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT	327	82	79.95	78.04
U S ATTORNEYS OFFICE	81	21	79.41	79.41
ARMY	61	18	77.22	74.39
NAVY	22	9	70.97	70.97
AIR FORCE	9	4	69.23	60.00
DEPT. OF DEFENSE	24	13	64.86	63.16
TOTAL	2404	357	87.07	85.73

 

The scope and extent of the partisan imbalance in the agencies is staggering. The lawyers in every single federal agency leaned heavily toward Obama. Only the armed forces had Obama contribution percentages less than 70%, and even there the not a single branch approached balance. Overall, the majority of the agencies saw over 90% of lawyer contributors giving to Obama. The Department of Education, probably the most egregious example in the whole government, not only had no agency lawyers contribute to Romney, but apparently had a very substantial portion, if not a majority, of its lawyers actually appearing in the database by contributing $200 or more to Obama.

Even the Government Accountability Office—a part of the legislative branch—where one might think partisan balance would be deliberately prioritized, had essentially no political diversity among its lawyer-contributors. Even though the GAO’s mission is to provide “Congress with timely information that is objective, fact-based, nonpartisan, nonideological, fair, and balanced," the analysis turned up nine GAO lawyers who contributed to Obama and none who contributed to Romney. Among all GAO employees, the analysis turned up only one employee who contributed to Romney compared to nearly one hundred who contributed to Obama.

The uniformity is disturbing and not simple to explain. Intuitive explanations, such as President Obama’s tenure in office, are not consistent with the data. For one thing, the same general patterns existed in 2008 after eight years of a Republican president. For another, the same patterns exist in the PCAOB, FINRA, and the GSEs, which are not subject to direct executive control. Thus, the fact that Obama has been presiding over the executive branch for four years does not appear to account for the imbalance.

Interestingly, the data also show that the slant toward the Democrats is not the inevitable result of combining two left-leaning attributes (lawyer status and government employee status) in one person. For example, compare the partisan makeup of employees under civil service systems (presented in the table above) with those working in the House and Senate, where democratic political influences are stronger. Among lawyers working for the House the contributions were approximately 60% for Romney and 40% for Obama, whereas in the Senate they were the reverse. There we see a balance in each case roughly proportionate to each party’s representation in the respective chamber, and balancing out to 50%-50%, a result that reflects America’s own partisan divide. Thus, somewhat ironically, it appears that the insulation from politics enshrined in the civil service system may be the very thing that produces the highly politically charged one-party system in the federal bureaucracy.

How big a problem is this? That depends on how much the partisan imbalance affects concrete decisions made by agency lawyers. What is crystal clear is that the federal bureaucracy is effectively a one-party system, at least among the career lawyers named in public disclosure documents. Although the causes of this imbalance are likely complex, the result is straightforward. The political views of lawyers in government reflect only a thin slice of the full spectrum of mainstream American politics. In the powerful modern administrative state, an almost completely monolithic federal bureaucracy is likely to produce at least the perception—and very possibly the reality—of unfairness to ordinary Americans.

Appendix for wonks and bloggers.

 

Comments

[RJ Miller]

I've spend quite a bit of time over the past month researching the topic of partisanship of both lawyers as well as regulatory agencies; both of which have a sizable influence on the laws that are put in place and how they are enforced.

This has been the most useful post so far on the subject, thanks for posting this!