Anyone want to take a stab at listing what Obama would have accomplished if the House of Representatives were our only legislative chamber? Like, not only what the House has passed over the last year, but what they would have passed if they didn’t have to make some effort to work with the Senate. I’m just guessing, but I bet that all politicians would be more popular, and I bet we’d have less unemployment, among other things.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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I’d love to hear some good arguments AGAINST abolishing the Senate. I can think of a lot of reasons FOR it..!
About the only decent argument I’ve heard for keeping the Senate is that the disproportionate power of small states is all that keeps secession movements in the Mountain West from getting really serious. However, even if that’s true, that’s no argument for keeping a Senate with a filibuster rule.
I’m inclined to think it’s more about forcing the residents and pols of those states to have to put their windbagging to a real test.
Well, it does keep Joe Lieberman off of public assistance. Who else would employ him?
I can think of 290 things:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/2/23/839908/-Report:-Senate-sitting-on-290-bills-passed-by-Ho
use
just got this from patrick leahy; “TODAY the House of Representatives voted 406-19 to pass its version of the Health Insurance Industry Antitrust Enforcement Act”. (HR 3596)
Now it’s up to the Senate to take up this bill and send it to President Obama’s desk to be signed into law.
the stimulus would have been larger, that’s for sure.
and if frogs had wings they wouldn’t bump their asses.
hasn’t the purpose of the Senate always been to keep the “people’s house” in their place?
Yes – it was created so the business class could have a disproportionate control over the affairs of state.
290 pieces of legislation held up.
290.
think on that.
There never was any reason to have a Senate. It’s purpose, like so much of Rube Goldberg mess bequeathed to us by the Constitution, was to accommodate the slave states. Getting rid of it would be a priority if we had a left worthy of the name in this country. Just one more reason we need to get over the creaky old Constitution and make a new plan before one gets made for us when the nation simply falls apart on its own.
Archaic as the Constitution may be, repeal it today and it would be replaced by a tome that makes the Tax Code read like See Spot Run…
So the age of slavery, of female servitude, of all the other outrages of the 18th century, was the only one with enough decent and bright people to make a workable system? It’s worth a try, and will become a necessity sooner or later. If we’re too stupid and petty to make it work, well, we’ll pay the price for that one way or another. Maybe a dose of responsibility, instead of hiding behind an old scrap of paper, would finally wake us up a little.
No, we have plenty of decent and bright people today to craft a workable system, it’s just that we have WAY more trifling and ignorant people today who empower monied interests to dictate our way of life. To paraphrase Adali Stevenson, the decent and bright people of today are a distinct minority…
They always were. Otherwise our history would bear some discernible relationship to our rhetoric.
Actually, the Senate was created to pacify small states like Delaware and New Jersey who were afraid that that they would be overwhelmed in a strictly population-based legislature. The slave states wanted a unicameral legislature apportioned according to population with slaves counted as full members of the population to increase their numbers.
The Senate only became a big deal to slave states later on, when they insisted on adding a slave state simultaneously with any new free state in order to keep balance in the Senate. Of course, they were totally fine with admitting Texas without a free-state counterweight. So basically yesterday’s conservatives are pretty much like today’s conservatives.
I just took a gander at the Constitution to see what would be required abolish the Senate, and it turns out that it would be no less than unanimous consent from all 50 states…
49 states could vote to eliminate the Senate, but if one contrarian state decided that it wouldn’t give up its equal suffrage in the Senate then the whole exercise would be for naught.
I STILL WANT MY PONY!
</petulance>
Which is why we’ll either have a Constitutional Convention or a revolution. You just don’t keep a creaky monstrosity like this going without a way to adapt to realities less than 200 years old.
Revolution? Sure – right after Jersey Shore goes off. I promise…
So you think we can just muddle along the way we are? I don’t. It will change one way or another because it’s no longer capable of survival as is, and little tweaks and sentimentality won’t be enough to fix it ad infinitum. What’s your scenario for the next 100 years?
I fear that the book written about it several years hence will be titled “The Decline And Fall Of The American Empire” – history doesn’t repeat itself but it often seems to rhyme…
I’m not sure it’s necessarily all that bad. Abolishing the Senate means that every state has zero representation in the Senate. That’s completely equal.
The unusual thing about the Senate is that the lower house can’t override it.
Well, that and the rather unusual for a 60% majority to get anything done.
Actually, you need to think carefully about dismantling bits of your constitution – you may not like the new equilibrium that results.