One of the things that is really starting to annoy me is the whinging from the children that the Senate “Doesn’t represent the population”, “Gives outsize control to smaller States”, and the like.
Statements like this, and others, display an appalling lack of knowledge of what the Senate of the United States was created to do. Or it displays a contempt in that the speaker actually does know the purpose of the Senate and is lying through his, or her, snaggle teeth in a bold-faced attempt to subvert the Constitution.
The Senate is not, and has never been, designed to “proportionally represent the People”. The purpose of the Senate is to represent the individual States — those entities that the kiddies desperately wish would go away in favour of an over-reaching, all-powerful Federal government.
The purpose of the Senate is that the State of Wyoming, and the State of Delaware, and of Texas, and each of the other States has a say in the Federal government. Senators were not meant to represent the people of the States — that is the job of the Representatives. Senators were directly selected by, and responsible to, the State legislature, and voted according to the best interest of their State.
Of course, that started to change with the advent of the never-sufficiently-cursed 17th Amendment. And I stand firmly convinced that the idiots who did so should probably roast in hell, because they ushered in this modern era of an over-reaching Federal government.
The second — and these days more important — function of the Senate is to “cool the passions and control the urges of democratic masses”. In this era of the 15-second attention span, and instant gratification, this braking effect has never been more vital.
Should the Senate of the United States be reformed? Oh, indubitably. The start of reformation should be the repeal of the 17th Amendment, to be replaced by an amendment setting deadlines and procedures for the State legislatures to choose their Senators smoothly and on-time — which was the alleged reason that we “needed” the 17th Amendment.
Put the Senators back to being beholden to the State legislatures, not the people, as the Founders intended. Put them back to being the brakes on impulsive legislative idiocy; not along for the ride.
Let’s have a Senate which gets the Federal government under by-God control for once; and start getting power back to the States where it belongs.
LawDog
Without the Senate, and the Electoral College as currently implemented, the nine biggest cities would effectively rule the country. They’d have a majority over everybody in between. No candidate would have to pay any attention to ‘the little people’. Win nine cities and you’re in.
Our Founders knew that was a bad idea 234 years ago. Today’s whiny babies don’t get it.
Alternatively, today’s whiny babies DO get it, they think they should control everything, and they live in those nine cities.
The coastal/urban AOCs of the country just can’t stand that under the rules, their vote is stymied by the State of Montana.
And being whiny babies, the reasonable solution — moderate or change their position to something more palatable — isn’t an option, so instead they’ll try to change the rules so others’ opinions don’t matter.
a.k.a. The four-year-old’s solution to interpersonal conflict.
Wouldn’t be fun behind closed door to grill the shit out of the alphabet bois and line by line the budget. Image , if you will, a world where MSG Airborne gets to redline the federal budget, wait for it, with a red crayon (one for the devil dogs I say, with a bit of training and discipline, they can run with the 82d). I tingle with anticipation of my rendezvous with destiny.
By the time the 17th was passed, Progressives in both worthless major parties had so destroyed this nation that the end was inevitable. It only passed because most state legislatures, also corrupted by the cancer of progressivism, had already begun rubberstamping the election results of popular elections for the office of US Senator. Nothing in the Constitution at the time prevented that behavior, and I can guarantee that so many are so in love with the ability to directly elect their Senator (or believe that their vote actually matters), and so many are so happy to be able to purchase their Senator directly rather than having to pay off half a legislature, that there would be profound opposition to ever going back. Not that I disagree with your very true statements about the true purpose of the Senate. Just saying.
Agreed!
The 17th Amendment needs to go the way of the dodo, for damned sure.
I’ve often complained about the 17th Amendment. In light of the rampant corruption at that time, its passage was understandable.
Like most government “solutions”, it moved the problem to a larger scale, rather than solving it.
https://frontierinstitute.org/a-copper-king-and-the-17th-amendment/
I’m reminded of a “demotivational” poster:
Government – If you think the problems we cause are bad, just wait until you see our solutions!
So I’m going to ask the experts who know these things. Wondered about the number of representatives in congress and found this.
1920 – 492
1970 – 435
2020 – 436
But the population of the United States
1920 – 106,021,537
2020 – 331,449,281
Tripled + 92,363,867
If our population has more than tripled how can any of us have full representation . What am I missing? Is it constitutionally set that we can’t go above a certain number. I’m sure the founding father couldn’t have imagine these numbers.
Yes – the House is limited to 435 voting members by either law or amendment.
I don’t think we should go back to the original ratio of Reps to people, as we’d need a large football stadium to hold them all, but the current ratio is insufficient.
I’ve often wondered how these witless wonders would run a company. It’s no different in how you set up your corporate by-laws. You decide on a method on picking who does what and what they are responsible for and then away we go.
Sure, you might want to change it when it doesn’t work that well but there is never any serious reasons provided, it’s all just on a whim.
Besides, for those dimbulbs who don’t quite get it, you pick your US Senators by selecting your State Representatives who you have empowered to decide. It’s meant to cool the passions of the moment and pick deliberative people. Of course, we could just go with impulse and see what happens.
I suppose that’s what the home shopping channels are for but on the Senate side it might cause just a few problems. What the hell, it’s all no money down and 5 easy payments these days anyway.
The 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th where all passed by the progressives in the decade of 1909-1919, and the only one I wouldn’t immediately ax is the 19th, but I’m willing to entertain arguments that it should go as well, just because it came from the same progressive’s
16, direct income tax
17 direct election of senators
18 prohibition, repealed by 21st in 1933, they can learn sometimes.
19 cannot prohibit people from voting based on sex.
By 1787, the Articles of Confederation that had provided the framework for the United States government since 1776 had proven totally inadequate for governing the new and growing country. The Articles were essentially a treaty between independent, sovereign states, with a deliberately weak central government for administration, but subservient to the states.
There were several failings of the articles but key among them were individual states taxes on interstate trade, foreign treaties, obtaining credit from foreign banks, and rallying the separate state militias to respond to an invasion from various European Powers occupying the North American continent.
Amazingly, all of the states except Rhode Island sent delegates to Philadelphia to “reform” the Articles. It quickly became apparent that “reform” was impossible and a whole new framework was needed. One that would require the states to cede some power to a central, federal government.
After much debate, yelling and shouting, a basic framework was hammered out with the exception of the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Would representation in Congress be by state or by population? The more populous states led by Virginia pushed for proportional representation based on population, the smaller states led by New Jersey wanted each state to have an equal number of representatives . The “Great Compromise” effectively grafted both ideas together in a bicameral legislature with a House of Representatives based on state population, and the Senate with two Senators per state appointed by the State Legislatures. By requiring approval of both houses to pass laws, the states collectively could effectively veto populist laws that had taken down earlier democracies like the Greek city states and Rome. I.e. bankrupting the treasury to pay for bread and circuses.
“…had proven totally inadequate for governing the new and growing country. ”
According to some.
So, a convention of States convened to propose amendments and the delegates violated their oaths and wrote a new Constitution, which required amendments to fix, or clear up, the Committee Of Style’s obsfuscations.
Sadly, there’s as much chance of killing the 17th Amendment as there is of shooting the Income Tax Amendment between the horns…. (sigh)
I would also restrict any politician from receiving money from outside the confines of his/her district. Possibly add a death penalty / automatic declaration of war for foreign election money.
It is no accident that the 17th Amendment immediately followed after the Federal Reserve Act and the 16th Amendment (legalizing income tax).
The whole of the 19teens serves as an indicator that the USofA had become an Empire, not a Republic.