Change the Setting, Change the Response

Politicians present a very different face in an academic setting than they do in public. In an academic setting, I have found them to be very candid and frankly less confident in policies than they normally appear to be.

I have listened to presentations by four speakers in my Public Policy class at the University of Missouri: Former U.S. Rep. Kenny Hulshof (R-Mo.); Katie Bailey, an advisor to Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.); and state Sen. Kurt Schaefer (R-Columbia) and state Rep. Stephen Webber (D-Columbia).

My class is focusing on the federal deficit this semester, and all of these speakers were quite candid in discussing their concerns about the deficit. All of them expressed sincere doubt that the Super Committee will come up with any substantial cuts, although Hulshof said he believed Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) could play a dealmaking role on the committee.

Hulshof said he believes the Super Committee’s secret meetings keep its members from pandering to public opinion. I do not believe meeting in secret to figure out the nation’s budget is good for the country. I think Hulshof’s concerns are valid, but I am very uncomfortable as a journalist with the secrecy surrounding the Super Committee’s negotiations. A good compromise could be allowing a single reporter from, say, the Associated Press to attend the meetings and distribute a daily summary to the media.

Bailey pointed out two major differences in lawmakers before and after the recession. She said members of Congress appear less concerned about getting pork for their districts than they used to. She also said that, until the 2010 elections, Sen. Coburn had to put a number of bills on hold because no funding mechanism was in place. Since the 2010 elections, she said Coburn has yet to put any bill on hold.

Schaefer and Webber provided a great deal of insight into how dependent states are on federal funding during their presentation. Schaefer said only about a third of Missouri’s $23 billion budget actually comes from taxes and must be divided up among different services. The other two-thirds comes from federal appropriations and fees for permits and other specific services and thus can only be used for certain programs. Of that third of the budget that is negotiable, the biggest three parts are education, prisons and Medicaid. They said revenue dropped by $2 billion between 2008 and 2010 as the recession set in, so the state has less to work with than before in deciding on that third of the budget.

Seeing policymakers in a setting like this is, I think a golden opportunity for journalists to get more candid responses about a variety of policy issues. All of the information I learned in these presentations would be extremely useful in stories. Getting policymakers away from the heat of the debating floor can help draw out more matter of fact responses, leading to better information and leads for better stories.