The Washington Times reports here:
The Times‘ analysis suggested that the Senate is an increasingly broken chamber. All five of the worst performances on record were in the past decade. Four of those were when Democrats were in control and Republicans were in the minority.
In the House, the record was decidedly mixed. Of the worst five years, two were in the 1950s, two were in the 1980s and one was in the past decade.
Maybe the Senate is such a mess because it views itself as a more powerful version of the House, with which it is in constant competition as an institution and over which it lords itself at every opportunity, the Senate healthcare bill of 2010, now known as ObamaCare, being the most recent prime example. Had more Democrats in the House opposed this bill in March 2010, fewer of them had lost their seats in the historic Republican sweep in November.
Arguably the Senate is more powerful, for two reasons.
One, because of popular election of Senators, which puts them in direct competition in the same electoral sphere as representatives, contrary to the original intention of the constitution. And two, the fact that the tenure of a Senator is three times longer than a representative's. The lowly two-year man is ever on guard of losing the next election, while a Senator watches him come and go, mindful of the inattention of the voters over so long a period as half a decade.
The Senators' interests should primarily be to protect the interests of the States they represent, especially the States' independence from the federal government. But they are not. Instead they seek at every turn to usurp the representative function of the members of the House, where bills should originate. Is it any wonder the States have no representation in Washington, the legislatures of which must rely on leagues of Attorneys General to file suits in federal courts to protect themselves from encroachments of federal power?
The remedy for all that starts with a much bigger House, which means repealing The Reapportionment Act of 1929.
With the will of the people once adequately represented for a change, Senators might eventually be persuaded to meddle less at pain of repeal of the 17th Amendment. Already the most expensive races in the country, the dilution of the cost of running for office at the representative level with 10,267 districts instead of 435 might occasion an unwelcome shift of focus back upon the excess and corruption evident in running for the Senate, the mean expenditure for which in 2008 was nearly $6 million, six times what it currently costs the typical representative to run.
Representatives will not need to spend $1 million buying TV and radio ads to reach 30,000 constituents instead of 700,000 now, but Senators will still have to in order to reach the millions of their constituents. They will stand out in those media in a way which they haven't been accustomed to in the past and the spotlight will be on them as never before.
And as we all know, sunlight is a marvelous disinfectant.
With the will of the people once adequately represented for a change, Senators might eventually be persuaded to meddle less at pain of repeal of the 17th Amendment. Already the most expensive races in the country, the dilution of the cost of running for office at the representative level with 10,267 districts instead of 435 might occasion an unwelcome shift of focus back upon the excess and corruption evident in running for the Senate, the mean expenditure for which in 2008 was nearly $6 million, six times what it currently costs the typical representative to run.
Representatives will not need to spend $1 million buying TV and radio ads to reach 30,000 constituents instead of 700,000 now, but Senators will still have to in order to reach the millions of their constituents. They will stand out in those media in a way which they haven't been accustomed to in the past and the spotlight will be on them as never before.
And as we all know, sunlight is a marvelous disinfectant.
