This is just a factoid. But it's a revealing factoid. Relying on the wealthiest Americans to finance our elections isn't bad for the obvious reason, which is that rich people "buy" elections. It's bad for the less obvious reason that rich people buy the attention of the electeds. As Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat, recently told the Yale Institution for Social and Policy Studies, senators and congresspeople are functionally telemarketers, whose ambition requires them to spend the majority of their time raising money for the next election.

This is about the farm bill, how exactly? Elected representatives trying to raise millions of dollars a pop don't have people on food stamps or unemployment insurance on their speed dial. That would be absurd. But they do have ag lobbyists and large farm donors. And they do have deficit-weary financiers who are scared of debt and the growing safety net. The people on the other ends of these fundraising calls (or at these fundraising events) wield a powerful weapon. Their influence shapes "the limits of acceptable political discourse, one conversation at a time" to the point where passing a bill without increased farm subsidies seems wholly unacceptable but passing a bill without food assistance for 47 million families feels a-okay.

"It doesn't really matter what low-income or middle-income voters think about a policy," Sunlight's Lee Drutman wrote. "They might favor it. They might oppose it. It has no real effect on how likely the policy is to happen." When the rich and the poor disagree on policy, Marty Gilens has shown, Washington basically sides with the rich.



The mechanics of this "for the 0.01%, by the 0.01%" government don't explain everything you need to know about the farm bill vote. It can't. Democrats have to play by the same call-your-rich-friends rules too, and they support funding for SNAP. The House GOP is antagonistic toward the safety net for ideological reasons shaped by culture, geography, and certain assumptions about work ethic and the role of government spending.



But in a system that requires elected officials to perform the duties of a high-end telemarketer, the poor are easy to ignore. Or, put more generously, they're hard to remember. Republicans say they'll get to food-stamp funding later this month. But their first vote was to protect big agriculture because big ag is on the speed-dial. First call. First vote. That's just Washington at work.

