The US Senate: Long Overdue for Reform
by Matt B. on February 3, 2010
James Fallows’ cover story in The Atlantic this month illustrates yet again why the US Senate is long overdue for a series of structural reforms and reconsiderations:
“When the US Senate was created, the most populous state, Virginia, had 10 times as many people as the least populous, Delaware. Giving them the same two votes in the Senate was part of the intricate compromise over regional, economic, and slave-state/free-state interests that went into the Constitution. Now the most populous state, California, has 69 times as many people as the least populous, Wyoming, yet they have the same two votes in the Senate. A similiarly inflexible business organization would still have a major Whale Oil Division; a military unit would be mainly fusiliers and cavalry. No one would propose such a system in a constitution written today, but without a revolution, it’s unchangeable. Similarly, since it takes 60 votes in the Senate to break a filibuster on controversial legislation, 41 votes is a blocking minority. States that together hold about 12 percent of the U.S. population can provide that many Senate votes….
“”The Senate is full of ‘rotten boroughs,’” said James Galbraight, of the University of Texas, referring to the underpopulated constituencies in Parliament before the British reforms of 1832. “We’d be better off with a House of Lords.”"
Galbraith’s probably being tongue-in-cheek here, but the plight of Senate politics raises real questions. While Fallows is probably right that reforming the two-votes-per-state structure won’t be possible anytime soon, the same isn’t necessarily true of the filibuster. I don’t have data to justify this view, but my general impression is that senators’ willingness to use or threaten the filibuster has exploded during the past decade. (And yes, both parties are guilty.) The question, then, is what can be done to limit the use of a tactic that escalates far too many debates into legislative arms races or shuts the legislative process down entirely.
An idea: perhaps the Senate could create a set of guidelines for filibuster use – a kind of “sense of the Senate” resolution that describes the broad circumstances under which the filibuster becomes a legitimate parliamentary tool. While the resolution wouldn’t be binding, it would be a meaningful way for the Senate to create and affirm a new set of norms – to say loud and clear that the filibuster shouldn’t be used for power plays or pure political purposes. (The resolution should also steer clear of re-instigating the fruitless battle about which party has abused the tactic more.) Finally, the resolution could take effect in, say, 2011 or 2013, so that Republicans wouldn’t need to feel threatened that passing the legislation now would put them at an unfair legislative disadvantage.
The US Senate: Long Overdue for Reform
by Matt B. on February 3, 2010
James Fallows’ cover story in The Atlantic this month illustrates yet again why the US Senate is long overdue for a series of structural reforms and reconsiderations:
“When the US Senate was created, the most populous state, Virginia, had 10 times as many people as the least populous, Delaware. Giving them the same two votes in the Senate was part of the intricate compromise over regional, economic, and slave-state/free-state interests that went into the Constitution. Now the most populous state, California, has 69 times as many people as the least populous, Wyoming, yet they have the same two votes in the Senate. A similiarly inflexible business organization would still have a major Whale Oil Division; a military unit would be mainly fusiliers and cavalry. No one would propose such a system in a constitution written today, but without a revolution, it’s unchangeable. Similarly, since it takes 60 votes in the Senate to break a filibuster on controversial legislation, 41 votes is a blocking minority. States that together hold about 12 percent of the U.S. population can provide that many Senate votes….
“”The Senate is full of ‘rotten boroughs,’” said James Galbraight, of the University of Texas, referring to the underpopulated constituencies in Parliament before the British reforms of 1832. “We’d be better off with a House of Lords.”"
Galbraith’s probably being tongue-in-cheek here, but the plight of Senate politics raises real questions. While Fallows is probably right that reforming the two-votes-per-state structure won’t be possible anytime soon, the same isn’t necessarily true of the filibuster. I don’t have data to justify this view, but my general impression is that senators’ willingness to use or threaten the filibuster has exploded during the past decade. (And yes, both parties are guilty.) The question, then, is what can be done to limit the use of a tactic that escalates far too many debates into legislative arms races or shuts the legislative process down entirely.
An idea: perhaps the Senate could create a set of guidelines for filibuster use – a kind of “sense of the Senate” resolution that describes the broad circumstances under which the filibuster becomes a legitimate parliamentary tool. While the resolution wouldn’t be binding, it would be a meaningful way for the Senate to create and affirm a new set of norms – to say loud and clear that the filibuster shouldn’t be used for power plays or pure political purposes. (The resolution should also steer clear of re-instigating the fruitless battle about which party has abused the tactic more.) Finally, the resolution could take effect in, say, 2011 or 2013, so that Republicans wouldn’t need to feel threatened that passing the legislation now would put them at an unfair legislative disadvantage.