The IRS as Microcosm

The controversy swirling around the alleged IRS targeting of conservative groups has placed severe scrutiny on that agency. Much of the coverage of the controversy (exhaustively catalogued here) has centered on the IRS specifically, with the disagreement centering primarily on the scope and depth of the wrongdoing. Was the targeting the result of "a few bad apples" or did the activities result from directives issued from senior levels in the hierarchy?

A common theme in the coverage is the perception of an ideological or political bias with the IRS as an agency. One direction stories have taken is to look at the political contributions of IRS employees in an attempt to establish the partisanship of the IRS as an agency. One story reported a four-to-one ratio of Obama contributors to Romney contributors among IRS employees, with the implication that this lopsided partisanship is evidence of a more systematic aspect to the targeting.

The political contributions of random employees within the IRS are not completely persuasive, in part because many employees are in low-level positions with little authority. Their contributions are more likely to result from demographic factors than from agency ideology. To get a better idea about the partisan mix of the policy-making aspect of the agency, I decided to examine the contributions of an arguably more relevant group of employees--the lawyers--within the IRS and other government agencies. Lawyers are relevant because they are the ones taking the lead in writing regulations, litigating cases, and making delicate legal judgment calls in borderline cases.

I searched the Federal Election Commission database for contributors with the term "lawyer" or "attorney" in the occupation field. I then sorted the results by government agency (including the many permutations of agency names in the database). This produced a list of 20 federal agencies with at least 20 employees contributing to either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney in the 2012 election.

The results for the IRS were striking. Of the IRS lawyers who made contributions in the 2012 election, 95% contributed to Obama rather than to Romney. So among IRS lawyers, the ratio of Obama contributors to Romney contributors was not merely 4-to-1 at previously reported, but more like 20-to-1. The ratio of funds to Obama was even more lopsided, with about 32 times as much money going to Obama as to Romney from IRS lawyers.

So has the IRS gone off the rails into hyper-partisanship, leaving behind other more balanced federal agencies? One might imagine that the IRS is different from other federal agencies in ways that would attract employees who more readily support Democratic candidates. Conservative-leaning lawyers might lack the tax-collecting zeal that could lead a lawyer to a career position in the IRS.

The data show, however, that the partisanship of the lawyers in the IRS is not unsual or even particularly extreme among federal agencies. In fact, the lawyers in every single federal government agency--from the Department of Education to the Department of Defense--contributed overwhelmingly to Obama compared to Romney. The table below shows the results for all agencies with at least 20 employees who contributed to either Obama or Romney. (I also included the United Nations and FINRA, even though neither is a federal agency.)

UPDATE: New numbers with many more agencies in this new post.

AGENCY	NUMBER OF LAWYERS CONTRIBUTING TO		PERCENT OBAMA
	OBAMA	ROMNEY
NLRB	44	0	100.00%
UNITED NATIONS	23	0	100.00%
DEPT. OF EDUCATION	47	0	100.00%
DEPT. OF LABOR	66	2	97.06%
FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER	65	2	97.01%
FINRA	26	1	96.30%
FEDERAL ENERGY REGULATORY COMM.	23	1	95.83%
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY	86	4	95.56%
FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION	80	4	95.24%
INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE	38	2	95.00%
FDIC	36	2	94.74%
DEPT. OF HOMELAND SECURITY	34	2	94.44%
EEOC	32	2	94.12%
DEPT. OF VETERANS AFFAIRS	26	2	92.86%
SEC	70	9	88.61%
DEPT. OF THE INTERIOR	20	3	86.96%
FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION	45	8	84.91%
DEPT. OF JUSTICE	455	87	83.95%
SOCIAL SECURITY ADMIN.	50	10	83.33%
FEDERAL GOVT (UNSPECIFIED)	289	74	79.61%
U.S. ARMY	37	15	71.15%
DEPT. OF DEFENSE	17	8	68.00%
Notes: Some categories overlap. I generally coded the employer at the level of specificity the reporting person disclosed the information even if it could fall within a broader category (e.g., U.S. Attorney versus Department of Justice). Because of wide variations in spelling and terminology, some contributors were undoubtedly left out of the data.

The IRS is near the top in terms of partisanship, but does not stand out as being markedly different from the other agencies. Some agencies, such as the Department of Education and the NLRB, did not have a single lawyer who contributed to Mitt Romney, even though dozens contributed to Barack Obama. The Department of Justice had the largest number of lawyer contributors of any federal agency, and 84% of those employees contributed to Obama.

On the one hand, one might interpret the data as suggesting there is nothing wrong with the IRS; it is on the high end of the partisan scale but not particularly different from other agencies. On the other hand, one might interpret the data as suggesting that there is a nefarious influence in hiring and retention through the whole federal government. Actually, neither conclusion is quite right.

There are two primary reasons why federal agency lawyers might be so lopsided in their publicly disclosed political contributions. The first and most intuitive possibility is that there are virtually no Republican lawyers in the federal government, either by self-selection or because of screening in hiring, firing or promotion. Another possibility is that there are Republican lawyers in the federal government but they do not contribute to presidential campaigns, at least in ways that reveal their identities.

The first explanation--few Republican lawyers in government--does have potentially innnocent explanations related to self-selection. The fact is that lawyers contribute more to Democrats than Republicans, and government workers contribute more to Democrats than Republicans. So a person who is both a government worker and a lawyer is particularly likely to support the Democrats, even if he or she was not chosen for or retained in a position for that reason.

The latter explanation (that Republican lawyers are present in agencies but remain silent) would actually be more ominous in some ways. The explanation has some plausibility, as it seems unlikely that the Department of Education has literally zero Republican attorneys. Why don't they want to be publicly identified as supporting a Republican candidate? The reason could suggest a more serious cultural problem within the agency than the mere fact of a lopsided government agency.

The political contribution numbers of government lawyers show that the IRS controversy is really a symptom of a larger disease--the rule by career bureaucrat lawyers. Lawyers as a group are not politically representative of the country as a whole, and neither are government employees, so the combination of the two of them creates a dramatic mismatch with the bulk of America. The result of the mismatch is that government agencies lack the political diversity that is necessary to effectively represent the American people. The idea that the Department of Justice, on which we depend for fair and impartial enforcement of the law, is so overwhelmingly tilted to one side should make everyone uneasy regardless of political viewpoint. Whatever the reason for the disparity,the numbers reveal a severely dysfunctional culture in government agencies, one that does not serve the country well.

The media and Congress have understandably focused on the IRS specifically in sorting out the controversy. The numbers, however, suggest that the problem is not with the IRS in particular, but with the federal government as a whole (and indeed, with state governments as well). The root of the problem is the rule by a class of career government employee lawyers who lack the diversity of opinion that is found in the non-lawyer private sector.  The IRS inquiry, rather than focusing narrowly on "who knew what" within the agency, should lead to a top-to-bottom rethinking of who's doing the administration in the modern bureaucratic administrative state.

 

 

Comments

[Eric Rasmusen]

Well done. How about government economists?

(Yes, I agree, you've done lots of work already. How about one of you readers?)

[Robert Anderson]

Eric, This is a great idea. I'm running it now and will have answers shortly!

[The Drill SGT]

FWIW, I'm married to a registered Democrat Federal Lawyer who voted for the McCain and Romney. Likely her first GOP votes evah, but you got to start somewhere.

[benjamin]

This is a one sided analysis. Of course government employees are likely going to give more to the party that isn't opposed to a larger government. That's like being surprised to discover that the NRA gave all their PAC money to the GOP. Oh, shocking. This doesn't mean anything except to enforce the concept that people tend to give money to / vote for their interests.

Reading any more than that into this is facetious.

[meerk]

Being a government lawyer is a lame existence unless you have a completely deluded sense of mission that comes along with wearing the government "white hat". Any conservative government lawyer gets disillusioned quickly -- it's tough to swallow the bureaucratic nonsense if you aren't a true believer -- and they tend to leave. So yes, there is some self-selection going on, but it has to do with liberals' misplaced sense of mission. It's frightening that these liberal government lawyers see themselves not as dull bureaucrats but avenging angels for the great principles. But in the end they wield much less power than they realize. The real power is reserved for political appointees who aren't career civil servants. But don't tell the liberal lawyers this, it would rock their delusional world.

[Sanjay]

To second the point made by Benjamin (above), why would an active Republican work for the government when GOP policy since President Reagan has been (paraphrasing Grover Norquist) to shrink government small enough so it can be drowned in the bathtub? Of course we see lopsided political representation among government employees.

A second, ignored, aspect is the incumbency of President Obama in 2012. Since he's a pro-government politician, and since Gov. Romney missed no opportunity to pander to the anti-government fringe of his constituency, it makes perfect sense for any government employee to support "more of the same", i.e., open the checkbook for the President.

I appreciate the work involved in churning through the data. But the support for the thesis that "people tend to give money to / vote for their interests" is unsurprising. In the end the critical question - how high up the hierarchy did the policy direction go? - remains unanswered.

(For what it's worth, I don't find the analysis one-sided. Rather, I find it circumscribed by the data the author chooses to base it on.)

[Letitia]

This info is more valuable if we can find out if it swings the other way when a Republican administration is expected to win a second term. It might indicate that government employees (in this case lawyers) believe that their contributions to the incoming party will get noticed or are expected or pushed by outside influences. And of course if it always holds true, regardless of the incoming party/presidency, well, then it might be very interesting to consider whether the president in power (and depending on party) was able to get its agenda through each agency and if not, why not.

If the direction of contributions changes with each changing administration/party (particularly in second terms where there is a higher expectation of re-election), it could indicate a belief among lawyers that they "should" contribute to the second term to keep their jobs.

And finally, if it is always slanted heavily towards the Democrats, it might suggest why Bush wanted to replace the DOJ attorneys for his own: to get his agenda pursued against resistance (and why perhaps Obama's is sailing through without so much as a phone call to DOJ). Hmm.

Great information. Thanks for taking the time. Pepperdine MBA alum.

[Jerry]

The comments above suggest that there should be no surprise that those in government support those who are for big government. The question is how far will they go to make sure that big government stays in power. I think the recent scandals suggest pretty far.

[Robert Anderson]

Letitia,

Those are really valuable suggestions and would make the analysis stronger. It might be difficult because we'd have to go pretty far back to find a situation where a Republican was expected to win the presidency, and (other) things could have changed so much in the interim. Thanks for the helpful suggestion.

[Richard Belzer]

I think a good first test of Letitia's hypothesis is to look at contributions in 2004. It is not necessary or appropriate to limit the search to campaigns in which an incumbent Republican president was "expected to win" as long as the incumbent was not expected to lose.