U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd argued, if inadvertently, for eliminating the Senate during his otherwise classy farewell speech on Nov. 30.
If historians and pundits agree on nothing else, they firmly concur that delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention created the Senate to establish a smaller assembly of wiser, cooler heads to assess the legislation of the far larger House of Representatives before allowing any of it to become law.
Delegates sharply disputed giving each state an equal number of votes in either chamber before they reached a compromise allowing all states two members each in the Senate, while representation in the House of Representatives would be proportionate.
James Madison and other delegates supported this arrangement once they were left with the choice of enacting a Constitution with this clause or leaving Philadelphia with empty hands. Their vote for it was grudgingly given.
Too often, you must wonder if many members of the Senate are deliberately insulting the memory of the Constitution’s framers with their behavior.
While Dodd certainly did not call for abolishing the Senate, he contradicted himself by affirming that the Senate in practice today is too often not the Senate envisioned by Madison.
Dodd said, “Our electoral system is a mess. Powerful financial interests, free to throw money about with little transparency, have corrupted the basic principles underlying our representative democracy. And, as a result, our political system at the federal level is completely dysfunctional.
“…Intense partisan polarization has raised the stakes in every debate and on every vote, making it difficult to lose with grace, and nearly impossible to compromise without cost.”
The cost of the tax compromise will be $700 billion each year to extend tax cuts for our wealthiest citizens.
The senator, who has represented Connecticut for the last 30 years, also said: “The Senate was designed to be different, not simply for the sake of variety, but because the framers believed the Senate could and should be the venue in which statesmen would lift America up to meet its unique challenges.
“The history of this young democracy, the framers decided, should not be written solely in the hand of the political majority. In a nation founded in revolution against tyrannical rule, which sought to crush dissent, there should be one institution that would always provide a space where dissent was valued and respected.”
Huh? In one breath he is saying the Senate structure is being abused, and in the next breath he is repeating the vision that Madison and his fellow framers held for the Senate.
So what is the point of keeping the Senate, or at least the Senate as we know it?
I cannot see any point. The very kind of partisan bickering that consumes the House of Representatives is prevalent in the Senate over most of the same issues. Even if we keep the Senate, its very structure and process requires some fundamental changes.
At the current rate, I would concur with any detractor that little will ever change. However, it is critical that we lay out what is wrong with the system because these are obstacles that prevent any progress.
To change policy, we almost definitely need to change the system.
I imagine that anyone concerned about progressive issues would be frightened if the Senate was abolished this January since Democrats will still be in the majority, while Republicans will control the House.
However, in any future election the Republicans could rule both chambers or, if we only had the House, Democrats might be in control.
As it stands now, we just expend lots of time and effort that end in deadlock and/or bad bargains.
If the Senate was eliminated, its extra responsibilities such as appointing Supreme Court justices and ratifying treaties can be transferred to the House.
In addition, the 100 seats taken from the Senate could be added to the House. That would at least guarantee far more representation in the House. This could benefit progressive causes since Republicans would lose some of the more liberal segments of their congressional districts.
As I have conceded, this will probably never happen. Even so, the Senate must still change. The most obvious problem is the filibuster. The Senate will likely be asked to consider changes that would at least weaken the filibuster, allowing debate to end within a reasonable amount of time.
If it was not for the filibuster, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont would not have needed to conduct his own filibuster of sorts. Unlike many of his colleagues, Sanders views his job as a civic duty, not as an instrument for political calculations. He should be the standard, not the exception.
We will find out early next month what the Senate does.
The most overriding obstacle to accomplishing anything in Congress is the composition of the Senate. Every state is allowed the same number of senators, no matter how many Americans are affected by its decisions.
A rough estimate shows that the 57 Democrats and two independents represent more than 200 million Americans, and next month they will still represent slightly less than 190 million. Republicans will represent roughly 116 million Americans.
New York and California’s four senators, all Democrats, represent a combined one-sixth of the nation’s population.
Even when Republicans held the majority of seats in the Senate, they often fell short of representing the majority of the population.
In 1787, delegates from New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware adamantly contested proportionate representation in either the House or the Senate because they feared large states like Virginia, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts would control the agenda.
As many readers may recall, the Connecticut delegates proposed the famed “Connecticut Compromise” to elect House members on a proportionate basis and allow each state two representatives in the Senate. The Connecticut plan was ignored for four or five weeks until the delegates quietly adopted it in a close vote on July 16.
Madison and four other advocates of proportionate representation buried the issue on July 17 when they learned that no other large-state delegates felt strongly about the matter.
Today, New Jersey outranks Virginia in the population rankings, respectively 11th and 12th, and Massachusetts is 15th and Maryland is 19th. While Delaware ranks 45th, its interests align far more closely with the larger and more progressive states than with the conservative states, many of which are ranked lower in population.
Nine out of 10 senators from those five states are Democrats, and Republican Scott Brown broke Massachusetts’ Democratic streak in the Senate last January in an off-off year election. Democrats still retained all 10 House seats on Nov. 2.
If the Nov. 2 election does not bear out Delaware’s political leanings, I cannot what would. My search for comprehending that is quite bewitching.
It is always possible for a collection of the smaller states to control the Senate. Actually, this is about an ideological combination of smaller states with senators from large conservative states, such as Texas, and swing states like Pennsylvania.
We can hope that moderates and liberals constitute a majority of the Senate, but there are no guarantees.
Most importantly, the Senate would at least become more democratic if the states are represented on a more proportionate basis. If we maintain a 100-seat chamber, the smaller states would need to lose one senator and some larger states would be represented by more than two senators.
Texas would benefit as well as California and New York, while divergent ideological states like Vermont and Wyoming - respectively, 49th and 50th in the rankings - would each be represented by one senator.
If Sanders is the odd man out in Vermont, perhaps he can simply set up residence across Lake Champlain on the New York state side and run for a new Senate vacancy there. After all, he grew up in Brooklyn.
The amendment process works against changing the structure of the Senate, but changing the system is a prerequisite to changing policy.
Maybe we’ll get more people like Sanders in the Senate.
No comments:
Post a Comment