Our bicameral legislature was not created thoughtlessly. In fact, it was borne out of intense and lengthy debate on the makeup of America's government and, specifically, on how to balance the interests of small states versus large states.
Between 1789 and 1913, senators were appointed by state legislatures, as the authors of the Great Compromise had envisioned. Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution states, "The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each state, chosen by the legislature thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote."
In Federalist No. 62, the author, James Madison, explained that the appointment of senators by state legislatures gave "to the State governments such an agency in the formation of the federal government as must secure the authority of the former, and may form a convenient link between the two systems."
In 1913, the 17th Amendment was ratified, creating direct election of senators by the people. Taking away the representation of the states themselves. The rationale involved concerns over voting deadlocks and corruption in the states' process of selecting senators. In Federalist No. 10, Madison wrote about the problem of factions. "By a faction," he wrote, "I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."
Madison compared democracy with republicanism, explaining that a republican form of government can balance state power against federal power, and could control the problem of faction for both. "The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States," Madison explained.
"Let the state legislatures appoint the Senate," Virginia's George Mason urged at the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, lest a newly empowered federal government "swallow up the state legislatures." The motion carried unanimously after Mason's remarks.
So it's fitting that it's a George Mason University law professor, Todd Zywicki, who has done the best work on the 17th Amendment's effects.
Zywicki shows that selection by state legislatures was a key pillar of the Constitution's architecture, making sure that the Senate would be a wall for decentralized government. It's "inconceivable," Zywicki writes, "that a Senator during the pre""17th Amendment era would vote for an 'unfunded federal mandate.' "
Progressives pushed the amendment to stop corruption. Yet Zywicki found "no indication that the shift to direct election did anything to eliminate or even reduce corruption in Senate elections."
Indeed, "the increased power of special interests was the purpose of the 17th Amendment," Zywicki writes. "It allowed them to lobby senators directly, cutting out the middleman of the state legislatures."
Maybe that's why corporations and urban political machines support the amendment.
Combined with the 16th Amendment establishing an income tax (and by which the IRS was ruled unconstitutional without it), the 17th Amendment helped transform the states into administrative units for the federal monster.
Of course, correcting this for the Senate faces serious obstacles. It would take a constitutional amendment, which would have to be passed by two-thirds of the House and Senate, separately, and then be ratified by three-fifths of the states. Good luck with this congress, getting anything productive done.
I know that none of this will happen overnight. I know there's no switch to just make it happen. It will take more than one generation to get the people in office to make it happen. We have a congress without ethics, morals, principles, standards, backbone" and we did it to ourselves. We are the ones that put them there. We are the only ones to fix it. It is possible. But do the American people have enough honor, intelligence, ethics, morals, principles, standards, and backbone to make it happen. We will see.
(Article changed on Mar 11, 2021 at 8:33 AM EST)
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