CHAPTER 1

White-Collar Government

In 1971, a house painter from Providence named Edward Beard was electedto the Rhode Island state legislature. Beard's political prospects initiallyseemed uncertain: he had never held a public office before, and to makeends meet he had to continue working full time as a painter while servingin the state legislature. However, Beard was a determined politician, andhis down-to-earth style quickly earned him a loyal following in his largelyworking-class district. In 1974, he stunned the state's political establishmentby running for Congress and defeating an incumbent from his ownparty in a campaign that cost Beard just $900 and, in his words, "a hell ofa lot of work" (Siddon 1977, 2). The following January, Edward Beard quithis house painting job and was sworn into the United States Congress.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Congressman Beard—who had "never earnedmore than $9,800 a year [the equivalent of roughly $35,000 today] beforedrawing his congressional salary" (Stuart 1977)—spent much of his time inWashington promoting causes that he saw as important to the interests ofworking-class Americans. He consistently voted in support of prolabor legislation;during his first term, the AFL-CIO gave him a perfect score in its annualranking of legislators' voting records. By his second term, he had beenappointed chair of the House Committee on Education and Labor's Subcommitteeon Labor Standards. And in 1977, Beard founded the House'sfirst Blue Collar Caucus "to let people know that blue collar workers canbe in Congress ... [, that] Congress is not just for lawyers and professionalpeople" (Siddon 1977, 2).

The connection between Beard's humble background and his energeticpopulism was not lost on political observers, or on Beard himself. He kepta small paintbrush in his coat pocket and on the door of his congressionaloffice as a "symbol of who I am and where I'm from—the working people"(Associated Press 1980, J8). When asked why he founded the Blue CollarCaucus, Beard explained that "many of us experienced unemployment.Many of us know, from first-hand experience, what public works jobs mean.I shined shoes in Providence. I was a recipient of The Providence JournalSanta Claus Fund" (Tolchin 1977, 13A). Beard was also outspoken aboutthe importance of encouraging working-class Americans to play more of arole in government. "It is a real shame," he often told reporters, "that onlytwo percent of the members of Congress come from the majority of the voters"(Siddon 1977, 2).

Scholars have long recognized that people like Beard—people fromwhat we might call the working class—are rare in American political institutions,especially compared to their numbers in the nation as a whole. AsDonald R. Matthews (1985, 18) observed more than a quarter century ago,"almost everywhere legislators are better educated, possess higher-statusoccupations, and have more privileged backgrounds than the people they'represent.'" Whether this enduring feature of our political process has realconsequences, however, remains an open question. Although political observers,philosophers, and policy makers have expressed concerns about thesocial class makeup of our political institutions since the Founding, politicalscientists have done little more than speculate about the links betweenpolicy makers' class backgrounds—their past and present positions in oursociety's economic or status structures—and the conduct of government.Class-based differences in ordinary Americans' political views are well documented.So, too, are the connections between policy makers' choices andother personal characteristics such as their races and genders. For the pasthalf century, however, scholars of US politics have acted as though the socialclass divisions that we observe in political opinion surveys, in electionresults, and in everyday life somehow disappear in our policy-making institutions.

This book provides a long-overdue look at how inequalities in the socialclass makeup of American political institutions affect public policy in theUnited States. Using data on US legislatures, I explore how lawmakers fromdifferent classes make decisions about the economic issues that have historicallydivided Americans along social class lines, issues like taxes, businessregulations, and the social safety net. My analyses focus both on how legislatorsfrom different classes differ in office and on how these individual-leveldifferences influence collective outcomes—how the shortage of peoplefrom the working class and the sharp overrepresentation of white-collarprofessionals affect the economic policies our government enacts.

The findings reported in this book provide the first evidence that the unequalsocial class makeup of our political institutions affects who wins andwho loses in the policy-making process. Like ordinary Americans, lawmakersfrom different classes tend to think, vote, and advocate differently oneconomic issues. The numerical underrepresentation of the working classin our legislatures consequently skews economic policy making toward outcomesthat are more in line with what more privileged Americans want.

These long-standing realities of American political life have serious implicationsboth for contemporary debates about the government's role ineconomic affairs and for larger questions about policy making, representation,and political equality in the United States. Scholars, political observers,and those interested in reforming our system of government cannotafford to continue ignoring the fact that the working class is vastly underrepresentedin public office, that policies that affect Americans from all walksof life are made by a white-collar government.

What Is Class?

Societies tend to be organized or stratified along widely accepted economicand status dimensions. Some people are well off and well regarded. Othersare not. And most observers agree about which people are which. Scholarsrefer to groups of people who occupy comparable positions on these dimensionsas social classes. People in a given class tend to have similar interestsbecause of their similar places in society. Some recognize these commonbonds and consciously identify with their class. Others are driven by theirsocial endowments to...