More government revisions
I want to repeal the 17th amendment. While I understand the reasons that the people demanded that they have direct say in who their legislators are, I maintain that what they did was wrong, and has lead to the weakening of the federal system and balance of power that the framers of the constitution so carefully created.
In our civics and history classes, Americans are taught that the federal government has checks and balances written into its constitution, how the legislature can impeach the president, the president can veto laws, the judiciary is named by the president, confirmed by the Senate, etc. All these things are among those any highschooler knows (though i question whether or not some congresspeople do). We are also taught that the states were all given equal representation in the Senate, despite and because of the disparity between Rhode Island and Virginia (which then had roughly 10 times the population of the former).
What we are Not taught is that the three-way scale on which federal power is balanced itself sits on the pan of a greater, two-way scale, that measuring the balance of federal and state power.
The more I learn about the constitution and its effects, the more I come to appreciate the artistry with which it was drafted. Only the lower house (representing the people as a whole, in the form of the federal government) may create a budget, can spend federal money. On the other hand, it is the Senate that confirms appointments, ratifies treaties. In such a way are the states as a whole, with their different cultures and needs, allowed to have a say as to whether or not things the federal government wishes to do is in their best interests.
Now, yes, it is true that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries the Senate grew corrupt, and the people had little they could do about it, the senators being insulated by the state assemblies, and that was a problem that needed fixing. But one of the laws of politics that cannot be broken is the law of unintended consequences: there always will be some. In this case, by making senators directly answerable to the people, we all but completely removed the pan from the greater of the two balances.
By 1919, there was no sitting senator who held that position as an agent of the states. They were now answerable to no one but the fickle populace who cannot afford to take enough time out of making a living to be aware of what their senators were doing in their name. They were now glorified Representatives, agents of the states, nominally representing the will of the people, a job that was never their purpose.
In the wake of this, states rights have been eroding ever since. Treaties which were not in the best interests of the states continued to be rejected for a while (the Senate was still at that point wary enough of the federal government to cede any power to the League of Nations), but within a generation, things had changed completely. In the early 1940s, New Deal supreme court justices, confirmed by senators who had never owed as much allegiance to the states as they did the feds, ruled that the federal government could tell a farmer what he could or could not do exclusively on his own (intra-state) land, justified by a perversion of the phrases "interstate commerce" and "necessary and proper." This continues today, as the supreme court upheld Wickard v. Filburn in a ruling on medical marijuana, even as more and more states are claiming 10th amendment powers to do what they want in purely intra-state trade and commerce.
The Senate recently passed an extension of the Patriot Act, despite the valiant attempts by Rand Paul to force debate on the issue. It does nothing to interfere with the TSA, even as state after state looks to make it a crime for them to molest search passengers without probable cause, recreating protections which should be protected by the 4th amendment, if the federal government had any reason to do anything but whatever it wants.
Without anything to balance the federal government, which the Senate once was, it Can do whatever it wants. Hell, with the fall of the Soviet Union, we no longer even have a viable External force to make us question our actions.
So, to remedy that I would propose the following Federal Constitutional Amendment:
The effect of this, or at least the intended effect, is to make the Senate, once again, an agent of the states of the union, while maintaining the people's ability to remove senators who are corrupt or otherwise grossly violate the will of the people of the state they represent.
In our civics and history classes, Americans are taught that the federal government has checks and balances written into its constitution, how the legislature can impeach the president, the president can veto laws, the judiciary is named by the president, confirmed by the Senate, etc. All these things are among those any highschooler knows (though i question whether or not some congresspeople do). We are also taught that the states were all given equal representation in the Senate, despite and because of the disparity between Rhode Island and Virginia (which then had roughly 10 times the population of the former).
What we are Not taught is that the three-way scale on which federal power is balanced itself sits on the pan of a greater, two-way scale, that measuring the balance of federal and state power.
The more I learn about the constitution and its effects, the more I come to appreciate the artistry with which it was drafted. Only the lower house (representing the people as a whole, in the form of the federal government) may create a budget, can spend federal money. On the other hand, it is the Senate that confirms appointments, ratifies treaties. In such a way are the states as a whole, with their different cultures and needs, allowed to have a say as to whether or not things the federal government wishes to do is in their best interests.
Now, yes, it is true that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries the Senate grew corrupt, and the people had little they could do about it, the senators being insulated by the state assemblies, and that was a problem that needed fixing. But one of the laws of politics that cannot be broken is the law of unintended consequences: there always will be some. In this case, by making senators directly answerable to the people, we all but completely removed the pan from the greater of the two balances.
By 1919, there was no sitting senator who held that position as an agent of the states. They were now answerable to no one but the fickle populace who cannot afford to take enough time out of making a living to be aware of what their senators were doing in their name. They were now glorified Representatives, agents of the states, nominally representing the will of the people, a job that was never their purpose.
In the wake of this, states rights have been eroding ever since. Treaties which were not in the best interests of the states continued to be rejected for a while (the Senate was still at that point wary enough of the federal government to cede any power to the League of Nations), but within a generation, things had changed completely. In the early 1940s, New Deal supreme court justices, confirmed by senators who had never owed as much allegiance to the states as they did the feds, ruled that the federal government could tell a farmer what he could or could not do exclusively on his own (intra-state) land, justified by a perversion of the phrases "interstate commerce" and "necessary and proper." This continues today, as the supreme court upheld Wickard v. Filburn in a ruling on medical marijuana, even as more and more states are claiming 10th amendment powers to do what they want in purely intra-state trade and commerce.
The Senate recently passed an extension of the Patriot Act, despite the valiant attempts by Rand Paul to force debate on the issue. It does nothing to interfere with the TSA, even as state after state looks to make it a crime for them to molest search passengers without probable cause, recreating protections which should be protected by the 4th amendment, if the federal government had any reason to do anything but whatever it wants.
Without anything to balance the federal government, which the Senate once was, it Can do whatever it wants. Hell, with the fall of the Soviet Union, we no longer even have a viable External force to make us question our actions.
So, to remedy that I would propose the following Federal Constitutional Amendment:
- The seventeenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.
- At every federal election wherein the people of a state may elect members of the House of Representatives, there shall be on that same ballot a referendum for the recall of each Senator representing that state. If a Senator is recalled, their replacement shall be selected as described in Article 1 §3 of the Constitution of the United States.
- This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.
The effect of this, or at least the intended effect, is to make the Senate, once again, an agent of the states of the union, while maintaining the people's ability to remove senators who are corrupt or otherwise grossly violate the will of the people of the state they represent.