True as well. But the result has in my opinion worked out very well. I’m grateful that the small states held out for this provision.
Er, the chances of both are exactly zero.
The only possible mechanism is a special convention requiring unanimous consent.
This is like ripping the handrails and grab bars out of a house to encourage the occupants to be more careful.
I’m a little unsure how you came to this conclusion. So long as Representatives only represent their districts I imagine they’ll always push for legislation that their voters approve of whether it has a chance in hell of passing or not. After all they could still say “I tried to get this through but those bastards in Texas won’t let it pass.”
Marc
I do not see the problem this move is expected to solve. The present system seems to work. Why risk so much for a potential slight improvement?
As **BG **noted, we’ve done this before and my position hasn’t changed. See his previous thread if you’re interested. I just wanted to point out that you haven’t provided any supporting arguments for the assertion that the notion is “antiquated”. The argument you do offer was just as true 225 years ago as it is now.
IANAL, but if the senate were abolished, then every state would still have equal representation (namely, 0 representation). Could a legal argument be made that no state is denied equal suffrage, since no state is favored over any other with the dissolution of the senate?
I’m suspicious of those motivated to elimiate the Senate. I suspect the real problem they have is with federalism, which I think we need more of, not less. The Senate is one of the few bastions of federalism that the courts can’t interfere with, and even then it’s an indirect form of federalism at best.
I’ve long thought we should do away with the Senate but given the aforementioned constitutional difficulties in doing so we could settle for following the British example and just defanging our upper house. Circumventing current constitutional conventions being something of a hobby of mine, I’ve figured out how to do it.
Instead of a constitutional amendment all we need is 2/3 of the Senate to amend their rules so that the Senate automatically passes every bill passed by the House in a previous session of the same Congress unless a motion of objection is agreed to. The supermajority required to end debate with a cloture vote would also be returned to 2/3. Thus everything passed by the House in the first and second sessions would pass the Senate before the end of the congressional term unless 2/3 of the sitting Senators agreed to block it. The Senate could still pass bills sooner, assuming they could achieve cloture.
This would put the onus of legislating squarely on the House of Representatives with the Senators only able to put on the brakes if there was considerable opposition in their ranks. It would also have the pleasing side effect of encouraging more consensus judicial nominees as more bipartisan support would be needed to end a filibuster. I think it’s a good idea but I have to admit I haven’t considered it thoroughly yet so if anyone spots some holes, let me know. The big one being it won’t be easy to get 67 Senators to vote to neuter themselves. I also wonder, for instance, about Senators seeking to preserve their power by playing up minor disagreements in order to get to a conference committee. Need to think more on that.
Just my 2sense
I am a devout atheist with extremely liberal social views and moderate fiscal views.
Do you think I’m the wolf among three sheep or the sheep among three wolves?
I mean, it’s not like any of my views are even humored in government now, but I’m afraid in an absolutely democracy they’d be after me with a pitchfork.
Please tell me more about your bonobo-cracy. It sounds loaded with potential.
The Senate’s “districts” are not gerrymandered like the House’s are. This forces each Senator to represent a larger cross-section of their constituency. Maybe “circumspect” is a better adjective to describe the Senate than “deliberative”.
Yet another reason to change how House districts are determined. But until that it is done, removing the Senate would be folly.
Why do we need more federalism? Reagan had a “new federalism” policy but we got nothing good out of it.
I was speaking in class-interest terms, which are the only terms in which the “sheep and wolves” metaphor is really a compelling one. As for your particular set of views, do you think you seem them represented any better in the Senate than the House at present? If you want fair political representation for your set of views, what you need is a PR-based multiparty system (see post #20), which would be significantly more democratic than what we’ve got now.
We aren’t discussing pure democracy but representative democracy. The Bill of Rights won’t disappear if we move to a unicameral federal legislature. Looks to me as though BG is refering not to social views but rather economic interests. Assuming you aren’t one of those with enough economic clout to exploit your fellow Americans you are one of the sheep. Baa.
We can’t do away with the Senate for the myriad of reasons already mentioned, but it does need to have its power cut a bit. It is one thing to be a check on legislation and another to be an impassible roadblock. It seems to me that the relatively few number of senators gives too much power to them. Well monied interests that oppose legislation favored by eastern big city dwellers need only bribe - I mean, make campaign contributions to - senators from sparsely populated western states, whose voters are indifferent to the legislation, in order to bottle it up in committee. I don’t know how to rectify this exactly, but I’d start by saying that campaign contributions can only be made from a state’s constituents.
How about the voters paying attention and not re-electing Senators who participate in this sort of crap, if it’s that important an issue?
I mean, why is that an any more difficult process than trying to bring about the similar sea change that would be required to amend the Constitution or get the Senate to vote these kinds of restrictions on themselves?
Not so. If, for example, the “sheep” is somebody who like guns/porn/whatever and the “wolves” are busy-bodies who want to drive such eeeevil from their midst, the metaphor is compelling even if everyone involved has a net worth so equal that comparing them would come down to the lengths of their respective ball-of-string collections.
Then you would have to come up with a different metaphor. The sheep-wolf (prey-predator) relationship would not be relevant.
I think he’s right, and not just because I like his Carl Barks reference.