David Leonhardt, the New York Times' competent and clear-speaking economics reporter, offered a nifty little example of how small "special interests" hold such big sway on Capitol Hill.

Here's the story: Congress was thinking of passing a bill to inch down the prices Medicare pays out for medical equipment - by using competitive bidding, instead of the old way of indexing inflated prices. You know, kind of like what happens in the free market, when buyers and sellers negotiate the best price. The bill probably would have saved Medicare about $1 billion a year, which is barely a fiscal bandaid; still - as Medicare slides towards bankruptcy - every bit helps.

But while $1 billion in savings would hardly be noticed in the federal budget, a $1 billion loss would certainly not be missed by the medical equipment industry. That's why what you'd expect would happpen, happened; lobbyists and a surge in campaign support from the medical equipment industry miraculously made Congress' competitive bidding plans disappear.

Special interest groups aren't bad-guys or evil-doers - they're just human; when they see their livelihood potentially dry up, they'll fight for survival. The problem is that the rest of us - that is, we citizens - don't have the organization or incentive to fight back over a measly $1 billion (we have lives, you know). And our lawmakers, who are supposed to be lawmaking in our best interest but who also need cash to run a campaign, think they'll get away with bowing to special interests because no one's looking. And guess what, no one usually is.

The three solutions I see: 1) genetically reengineer our lawmaker's moral DNA, 2) get citizens to pay more attention or 3) take away our lawmakers' need for campaign cash. Since 1 may be inethical and 2 impossible, can we say "more public funding for campaigns please?"