Winner of the 2022 Gladys M. Kammerer Award from the American Political Science Association

“Hijacking the Agenda should have a big impact on how we think about Congress, policymaking, and political inequality. It provides an ambitious and creative analysis of an often-overlooked dimension of political power—the outsized role of the wealthy and well-organized in determining whose problems get addressed and whose get ignored.”
—Larry M. Bartels, May Werthan Shayne Chair of Public Policy and Social Science, Vanderbilt University

“To know who governs, we must know who controls the governing agenda. In this innovative book, four top political scientists show that the congressional agenda is disproportionately shaped by economic elites and the politicians most friendly to and funded by them. Combining sophisticated quantitative analysis and compelling case studies, Hijacking the Agenda sets a new standard for research on inequality and American democracy—and sounds a loud warning that all scholars and citizens should hear.”
—Jacob Hacker, Stanley Resor Professor of Political Science, Yale University

Why are the economic concerns of lower- and middle-class Americans so often ignored by Congress, while the economic goals of the wealthiest are prioritized, often resulting in policies promoting their interests? In Hijacking the Agenda, political scientists Christopher Witko, Jana Morgan, Nathan J. Kelly, and Peter K. Enns examine why Congress privileges the concerns of businesses and the wealthy over those of average Americans. They go beyond demonstrating this bias to document how and why economic policy is skewed in favor of the rich.

The authors analyze over 20 years of floor speeches by thousands of members of Congress to examine how campaign contributions and independent expenditures on behalf of candidates help set the national economic agenda. They find that legislators receiving more support from business and other wealthy interests were more likely to discuss the deficit and other upper-class priorities, while those receiving more assistance from unions were more likely to discuss issues important to the lower and middle class, such as economic inequality and wages. This attention imbalance matters because when members of Congress talk about certain issues, their speech is often followed by legislative action. While unions use their resources to push back against wealthy interests, spending by the wealthy dwarfs that of unions, often giving the upper class the upper hand.

The authors use case studies analyzing financial regulation and the minimum wage to demonstrate how the economic power of the wealthy enables them to advance their agenda. In each case, the authors examine structural power, or the power that comes from a group’s economic position, and kinetic power, the power that comes from the ability to mobilize organizational and financial resources in the policy process. They show how business uses its structural power and resources to effect policy change in Congress, as when the financial industry in the late 1990s promoted passage of a bill that eviscerated financial regulations put in place after the Great Depression. Likewise, when business wants to preserve the status quo, it uses its power to keep issues off of the legislative agenda, as when inflation erodes the value of the minimum wage and its declining purchasing power leaves minimum-wage workers in poverty. Although groups representing lower- and middle-class interests, particularly unions, are sometimes able to shape policy if conditions are right, they lack structural power and have limited financial resources. As a result, the wealthy have considerable advantages in the policy process, advantages that only intensify as their economic power becomes more concentrated and policymakers continue to see policies beneficial to business as beneficial for all.

Hijacking the Agenda is an illuminating account of the way economic power influences the congressional agenda and policy process to privilege the wealthy and marks a major step forward in understanding the politics of inequality.

CHRISTOPHER WITKO is professor of public policy and political science and associate director of the School of Public Policy at Pennsylvania State University.

JANA MORGAN is professor of political science at the University of Tennessee.

NATHAN J. KELLY is professor of political science at the University of Tennessee.

PETER K. ENNS is professor of government at Cornell University and executive director of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.

“This powerful book should be mandatory reading for anyone who cares about our nation. The authors provide compelling evidence that by neglecting what science shows our children and families really need, we are imperiling our future. Even more importantly, they offer a plan to support all our children and their parents, ensuring that each of our children has the opportunity to thrive.”

—David T. Ellwood, Isabelle and Scott Black Professor of Political Economy, and director, Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy, Harvard Kennedy School

Early care and education in the United States is in crisis. The period between birth and kindergarten is a crucial time for a child’s development. Yet vast racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities that begin early in children’s lives contribute to starkly different long-term outcomes for adults. Compared to other advanced economies, child care and preschool in the U.S. are scarce, prohibitively expensive, and inadequate in quality for most middle- and low-income families. To what extent can early-life opportunities provide these children with the same life chances of their affluent peers and contribute to reduced social inequality in the long term, and across generations? The updated second edition of Cradle to Kindergarten offers a comprehensive, evidence-based strategy that diagnoses the obstacles to accessible early education and charts a path to opportunity for all children.

The U.S. government invests less in children under the age of five than do most other developed nations. Most working families must seek private child care, but high-quality child care options are expensive relative to the means of most families. This means that children from lower-income households, who would benefit most from high-quality early education, are the least likely to attend them. Existing policies, such as pre-kindergarten in some states, are only partial solutions, and what exists varies tremendously in terms of access and quality.

To address these deficiencies, the authors propose to overhaul the early care and education system, beginning with a federal paid parental leave policy that provides both mothers and fathers with time and financial support after the birth of a child. They also advance an expansion of the child care tax credit, and a new child care assurance program that provides grant assistance towards the cost of high-quality early care for low- and moderate-income families. Their plan establishes universal, high-quality early education in the states starting by age three, and a reform of the Head Start program that would include more intensive services for families living in areas of concentrated poverty and experiencing multiple adversities from the earliest point in these most disadvantaged children’s lives. They conclude with an implementation plan and contend that these reforms are attainable well within a ten-year timeline.

Reducing educational and economic inequalities requires that all children have robust opportunities to learn and fully develop their capacities and have a fair shot at success. Cradle to Kindergarten presents a blueprint for fulfilling this promise by expanding access to educational and financial resources at a critical stage of child development.

Ajay Chaudry is a writer on social policy and research professor at New York University, and former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Human Services Policy at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in the administration of President Barack Obama.

Taryn Morrissey is Associate Professor of Public Administration and Policy at American University.

Christina Weiland is Associate Professor of Education at the University of Michigan.

Hirokazu Yoshikawa is the Courtney Sale Ross Professor of Globalization and Education at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, and Co-Director of the Global TIES for Children Center at New York University.

“Tax breaks are the largest component of the U.S. welfare state, more costly than Social Security and Medicare combined. Christopher Ellis and Christopher Faricy’s pathbreaking analysis illuminates the broad political appeal of these programs in a country wary of ‘big government’ and obsessed with ‘deservingness.’ It also highlights the social cost—in economic inequality and unrelieved poverty—of America’s peculiar reliance on a submerged welfare state.”
—Larry M. Bartels, May Werthan Shayne Chair of Public Policy and Social Science, Vanderbilt University

“The Other Side of the Coin is far and away the most in-depth study of American attitudes toward tax expenditures. The authors and that standard models of public opinion provide an incomplete understanding of these attitudes, demonstrating along the way that tax expenditures could be a fruitful pathway to generating support for redistribution.”
—Nathan J. Kelly, professor, Department of Political Science, University of Tennessee

Despite high levels of inequality and wage stagnation over several decades, the U.S. has done relatively little to address these problems – at least in part due to public opinion, which remains highly influential in determining the size and scope of social welfare programs that provide direct benefits to retirees, unemployed workers or poor families. On the other hand, social tax expenditures – or tax subsidies that help citizens pay for expenses such as health insurance or costs of college, and invest in retirement plans – have been widely and successfully implemented, and they now comprise nearly 40 percent of the spending of the American social welfare state.  In The Other Side of the Coin, political scientists Christopher Ellis and Christopher Faricy examine public opinion towards social tax expenditures — the other side of the American social welfare state – and their potential to expand support for such social investment.

Tax expenditures seek to accomplish many of the goals of direct government expenditures, but they distribute money indirectly, through tax refunds or reductions in taxable income, rather than direct payments on goods and services or benefits. They tend to privilege market-based solutions to social problems such as employer-based tax subsidies for purchasing health insurance versus government-provided health insurance.

Drawing on nationally representative surveys and survey experiments, Ellis and Faricy show that social welfare policies designed as tax expenditures, as opposed to direct spending on social welfare programs, are widely popular with the general public. Contrary to previous research suggesting that recipients of these subsidies are often unaware of indirect government aid – sometimes called “the hidden welfare state” – Ellis and Faricy find that citizens are well aware of them and act in their economic self-interest in supporting tax breaks for social welfare purposes. The authors find that many people view the beneficiaries of social tax expenditures to be more deserving of government aid than recipients of direct public social programs, indicating that how government benefits are delivered affects people’s views of recipients’ worthiness. Importantly, tax expenditures are more likely to appeal to citizens with anti-government attitudes, low levels of trust in government, or racial prejudices. As a result, social spending conducted through the tax code is likely to be far more popular than direct government spending on public programs that have the same goals.

The first empirical examination of the broad popularity of tax expenditures, The Other Side of the Coin provides compelling insights into constructing a politically feasible—and potentially bipartisan—way to expand the scope of the American welfare state.