The Republic, As She Stands: The Senate
This is the first in probably a long series on the various aspects of the American Republic, how they got that way, what is right with them, what is wrong with them and even occasionally how they might be fixed. This will get its own tag and will cover a wide range of issues, and right now, we're gonna hit the US senate. It seemed as good as place as any to start, and talking about the senate covers a whole lot of ground that will lead to all kinds of other discussions. But, let's take a good long look at the senate, what it does and how it got all fucked up. For those who failed civics classes, the US Senate is the upper house of the legislature in America. Their powers and terms are covered in Article I Sec 3 of the US Constitution. Each senator is elected to a six year term and each one must be a US citizen for at least 9 years, 30 years old and an inhabitant of the state he or she represents. The Senate confirms nominations for the Cabinet, federal courts, senior generals and others, advises and consents on treaties and tries impeachment trials. More colloquially, the Senate is called "the country club side" compared to the House of Representatives the "saucer that cools the cup" of the House. The Senate has a reputation, and role, as being a more deliberative body, without rules for length of debate and generally more long winded. While taking on a lot of the heavier, behind-the-scenes roles of the government, they are often seen as the great obstructionists of the US government, and that's not always a bad thing.
The US Senate is based on the old Roman Senate, which was the main governmental body Ancient Rome. The Latin word was Senatus, which directly comes from the Latin word senex meaning "old man". The Roman Senate was specifically created to be comprised of members of the old patrician gens or families. These were the oldest, most prestigious families in Rome and generally the wealthiest. Consuls were elected from among their ranks, as were those who led armies in the field. Praetors, who wielded great but often very specific power, were selected and decided by the Senatus. Really, they held all the power, until one of their own decided that he wasn't ready to return to the field without trying to take care of the "the people" first; that man being Julius Caesar. By the end of the Republic, the Senate had so distanced itself from the common plebians and proletarians that Caesar was able to leverage that into class warfare between his party and the Optimates, who wanted things to stay just the way they were. The people loved Caesar, so he was killed by the Senate on the Senate floor. Octavian saw this, at age 18, and figured out a way to make his enemies the enemies of the people, manipulate the Senate into making him Consul and threaten Senators with death and ruination if they did not vote his way (called "proscription", people were placed on lists, killed and their property seized by "the state"). And from the point forward, Augustus made Rome an empire and the Senate was little more than a formality.
So, we have the US Senate, which is seen as the upper house of the US legislative branch. Of course, being the US government, nothing is quite that simple. All bills about budgets, spending and raising any kind of monies must be started in the House of Representatives. This was put in to keep the wealthy from raising undue taxes on the more common citizenry. When the Senate was created in the Constitution, it was supposed to be made up of people who were elected by the state legislatures, not the people themselves. The House of Representatives was supposed to represent the common people and the Senate was supposed to be the cooler, more deliberative heads who would not let things get too out of hand too quickly in terms of policy and law. That's why they have longer terms, it was assumed the smarter, more educated elites would keep things from getting too crazy too fast. More specifically, the Founders were concerned about untested or destructive ideals from taking hold of the national attention and electing people who would follow through on it without any kind of deliberation. The House, the branch most directly elected by the people, had the shortest terms so people could get rid of them faster if they needed to, so ideas would burn out faster. The President, next most directly elected by the people, is in for four years, and originally had no term limits. The Senators, elected by state legislatures, were in for six years and had statewide constituencies to give them a sense of the big picture when deciding things.
In that vein, they are the ones who confirm ambassadors, hold impeachment hearings, confirm appointments of generals and do the necessary but less contentious parts of government function. The entire state, now, votes for a senator, which means that person has to appeal to a larger group of people than just the representative of a narrow district. There are congressional districts that comprise little more than a neighborhood, which can mean it is a hell of a lot easier to get a small population with unitary interests behind a specific plan (which was their point, but that will be covered later). The idea of the Senate was to really talk and debate things through from another angle that might run counter to smaller minded interests. Take military appointments as an example. All ranks starting with brigadier general or rear admiral (lower half) have to be confirmed by the Senate. This means a couple of representatives with provincial interests can't hold up nominations simply because they want more locals represented at that level. Also in this, because senators are beholden to more interests of a state, they have to work together more to get things done. A representative from Los Angeles or New York can say "screw the farm lobby, farmers are getting nothing from me!" whereas a Senator from California cannot say this since, well, there are a lot of farms in California. This tends to mean less partisanship and longer debates.
Again, two senators represent each state, no more, no fewer. Why? The Senate was designed to be more deliberative, so each state got equal representation on issues like treaty negotiations and impeachment hearings. Remember, when they were drafting the Constitution, there was a lot of debate between national rights (Federalists like Adams), states' rights (Democratic-Republicans, like Jefferson) and individual rights. The Senate was created to reaffirm states' rights, hence again why members were chose by state legislatures and not directly voted in. Each state was equal, from Rhode Island to Pennsylvania because it was recognized that smaller more rural populations could get steamrolled (they probably didn't use that term) by delegations from states with larger constituencies in some severely undemocratic ways. Each state gets two votes, so it's not just one singular person representing one entire state and so deals can be made. Yes, that's a theme as well. They wanted debate, but they wanted a greater probability of a real deal being made on the key issues. This was the closest thing that remained from the Articles of Confederation, the original founding document of the US. Each state had equal say in EVERYTHING and everything had to be unanimous. Nothing got done. Negotiations broke down since one state would be a hold out, not every state would agree to the severity of the situation so some states would want to do nothing, so nothing would get done. With the Senate, every state got two votes and ratified by either simple or (for important things) 2/3 majority.
The Senate has their own debate rules specifically because they are recognized as being a different style of deliberation than the House. Probably the most famous feature of senatorial debate is the filibuster. However, it was not used until 1841, specifically during a debate on the Second Bank of the United States. Debate was had about when debate could be ended, but that vote was shouted down, and eventually the man running the filibuster got his way. A filibuster is just a fancy way of saying "talking to limit debate on an issue and not stopping". It's mostly used to shout down other forms of debate and to prevent a vote. Note, all a senator had to do was keep talking without leaning, sitting, giving up the floor, eating, leaving the chamber for any reason or generally stopping for anything. This means you had tactics like Sen. Huey Long reading out his favorite recipes in order to prolong debate. Other senators have read Shakespeare, the phone book and other such tactics just to delay a vote on an issue. Senator Strom Thurmond holds the longest filibuster on record when he went on for over 24 hours straight. He was filibustering against the Civil Rights Act of 1957, which was passed by a massive margin. However, in 1979 the rules of the Senate were changed so that a "two-track" system was put into place so that the Senate could move on with other business in the face of a filibuster.
This rule, along with the cloture rules, that call for a final end to debate if 3/5 of all serving senators agree, changed the nature of the American Senate forever. At some point, if you stopped talking, the debate would end and things would get done. Now, you just need to declare that are going to filibuster something, as opposed to anonymous hold something or other forms of holding things back, and now it requires 60 votes to end debate. . .which generally means it passes. So now, any vote that gets close, one side or the other does that and bam, you need 60 votes. The gamesmanship has increased, the tactics have gotten nastier and there are all kinds of things that need doing that are not getting done. One of the best examples has been federally appointed judges. Right now, there are 61 vacancies on district courts (those are federal courts at the lowest level, so they see the most work) and there are 25 nominees pending. The first thing you see is that there are not enough nominees but the second thing is that those nominees tend not to move as fast as they should. Why? The Senate decided to fully politicize judicial nominations.
The first best example of this was a guy named Robert Bork, whom Reagan nominated for the Supreme Court (the seat eventually went to Anthony Kennedy) despite being extremely controversial. He had been a key player in Nixon interfering with special prosecutors and believed that privacy rights were limited only to the specific things written in the Constitution. He had a very strict view of the Constitution and this scared a lot of the liberal senators serving, especially in regard to abortion and other privacy rights. He was really the first time the Senate set out on a campaign to vilify someone to make them unconfirmable; his name has even become a verb meaning that. The Democrats destroyed that nomination, and ever since the Republicans had vowed vengeance, so as soon as they took the Senate in 1994, they held up all kinds of other federal judicial appointments of those who didn't meet their ideological standards. The most recent time was when President George W. Bush nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court when Sandra Day O'Connor stepped down. Before that even, Democrats were holding judicial nominations (in revenge for Republicans holding up ones under Clinton, which itself was revenge for Bork) to the point where there was discussion of banning the filibuster in the Senate just so nominations could get a vote. Of course, nominations were also placed on anonymous hold, which is a Senate specific rule that says any senator, without divulging whom, can place something on hold so it can't get out of committee or voted on by the main body. Basically, it kills anything. There have been dozens of attempts to kill the anonymous hold which, yes, have been subject to anonymous holds and died. Right now, the rules have been amended such that an anonymous hold is only good for two days, after which both the hold and the senator doing it get placed in the congressional record. So now, "tag-team" holds have come up, where two senators will go back and forth to make sure something is held for a long time. So, judicial nominees still get held up since presidents are afraid to put up controversial choices for fear of undue scrutiny by the other party. And people up for judicial nominations have to all but put their lives on hold while under consideration for fear of rocking the boat.
Ok, all these problems of parliamentary procedure (that's "parli pro", to you) and why the Senate go to be so elitist, now what? Well, first and foremost, make the filibuster physical. Make it so that if you want to stop something, you gotta talk and fight off debate cloture votes (votes designed to end debate with at least 60 Senators). Make it so nothing gets done until that is dealt with and the number of filibusters will drop. Get rid of anonymous holds in any form. This is one is naive because sometimes you want to be able to just stop something without putting your name on it, but it's starting to get in the way of real work. Make judicial nominees HAVE to come up for a full floor vote within a give number of days after being questioned by appropriate committee. Or, make nominations like vote-a-rama, which is applied to Budget votes (all amendments must be germane, and you can't filibuster or hold). These tend to be bloody, but, well, a little bloody is good; it keeps us all honest. The nice trend is that Senate rules have been updated to allow for more open and honest debate, even if slowly but surely. It used to be a bill could be left on "the desk" (the rostrum where the President of the Senate presides) for days just so new signatures can be added. No more, so things can go faster. Holds are getting tighter, people are working out deals to avoid filibusters and there is movement in the right direction despite people like Mitch McConnell and Jim DeMint. It's getting better, slowly but surely, and that's how you know it lasts.
So stands the Senate, the great debater and deliberater.
So it is written, so do I see it.
The US Senate is based on the old Roman Senate, which was the main governmental body Ancient Rome. The Latin word was Senatus, which directly comes from the Latin word senex meaning "old man". The Roman Senate was specifically created to be comprised of members of the old patrician gens or families. These were the oldest, most prestigious families in Rome and generally the wealthiest. Consuls were elected from among their ranks, as were those who led armies in the field. Praetors, who wielded great but often very specific power, were selected and decided by the Senatus. Really, they held all the power, until one of their own decided that he wasn't ready to return to the field without trying to take care of the "the people" first; that man being Julius Caesar. By the end of the Republic, the Senate had so distanced itself from the common plebians and proletarians that Caesar was able to leverage that into class warfare between his party and the Optimates, who wanted things to stay just the way they were. The people loved Caesar, so he was killed by the Senate on the Senate floor. Octavian saw this, at age 18, and figured out a way to make his enemies the enemies of the people, manipulate the Senate into making him Consul and threaten Senators with death and ruination if they did not vote his way (called "proscription", people were placed on lists, killed and their property seized by "the state"). And from the point forward, Augustus made Rome an empire and the Senate was little more than a formality.
So, we have the US Senate, which is seen as the upper house of the US legislative branch. Of course, being the US government, nothing is quite that simple. All bills about budgets, spending and raising any kind of monies must be started in the House of Representatives. This was put in to keep the wealthy from raising undue taxes on the more common citizenry. When the Senate was created in the Constitution, it was supposed to be made up of people who were elected by the state legislatures, not the people themselves. The House of Representatives was supposed to represent the common people and the Senate was supposed to be the cooler, more deliberative heads who would not let things get too out of hand too quickly in terms of policy and law. That's why they have longer terms, it was assumed the smarter, more educated elites would keep things from getting too crazy too fast. More specifically, the Founders were concerned about untested or destructive ideals from taking hold of the national attention and electing people who would follow through on it without any kind of deliberation. The House, the branch most directly elected by the people, had the shortest terms so people could get rid of them faster if they needed to, so ideas would burn out faster. The President, next most directly elected by the people, is in for four years, and originally had no term limits. The Senators, elected by state legislatures, were in for six years and had statewide constituencies to give them a sense of the big picture when deciding things.
In that vein, they are the ones who confirm ambassadors, hold impeachment hearings, confirm appointments of generals and do the necessary but less contentious parts of government function. The entire state, now, votes for a senator, which means that person has to appeal to a larger group of people than just the representative of a narrow district. There are congressional districts that comprise little more than a neighborhood, which can mean it is a hell of a lot easier to get a small population with unitary interests behind a specific plan (which was their point, but that will be covered later). The idea of the Senate was to really talk and debate things through from another angle that might run counter to smaller minded interests. Take military appointments as an example. All ranks starting with brigadier general or rear admiral (lower half) have to be confirmed by the Senate. This means a couple of representatives with provincial interests can't hold up nominations simply because they want more locals represented at that level. Also in this, because senators are beholden to more interests of a state, they have to work together more to get things done. A representative from Los Angeles or New York can say "screw the farm lobby, farmers are getting nothing from me!" whereas a Senator from California cannot say this since, well, there are a lot of farms in California. This tends to mean less partisanship and longer debates.
Again, two senators represent each state, no more, no fewer. Why? The Senate was designed to be more deliberative, so each state got equal representation on issues like treaty negotiations and impeachment hearings. Remember, when they were drafting the Constitution, there was a lot of debate between national rights (Federalists like Adams), states' rights (Democratic-Republicans, like Jefferson) and individual rights. The Senate was created to reaffirm states' rights, hence again why members were chose by state legislatures and not directly voted in. Each state was equal, from Rhode Island to Pennsylvania because it was recognized that smaller more rural populations could get steamrolled (they probably didn't use that term) by delegations from states with larger constituencies in some severely undemocratic ways. Each state gets two votes, so it's not just one singular person representing one entire state and so deals can be made. Yes, that's a theme as well. They wanted debate, but they wanted a greater probability of a real deal being made on the key issues. This was the closest thing that remained from the Articles of Confederation, the original founding document of the US. Each state had equal say in EVERYTHING and everything had to be unanimous. Nothing got done. Negotiations broke down since one state would be a hold out, not every state would agree to the severity of the situation so some states would want to do nothing, so nothing would get done. With the Senate, every state got two votes and ratified by either simple or (for important things) 2/3 majority.
The Senate has their own debate rules specifically because they are recognized as being a different style of deliberation than the House. Probably the most famous feature of senatorial debate is the filibuster. However, it was not used until 1841, specifically during a debate on the Second Bank of the United States. Debate was had about when debate could be ended, but that vote was shouted down, and eventually the man running the filibuster got his way. A filibuster is just a fancy way of saying "talking to limit debate on an issue and not stopping". It's mostly used to shout down other forms of debate and to prevent a vote. Note, all a senator had to do was keep talking without leaning, sitting, giving up the floor, eating, leaving the chamber for any reason or generally stopping for anything. This means you had tactics like Sen. Huey Long reading out his favorite recipes in order to prolong debate. Other senators have read Shakespeare, the phone book and other such tactics just to delay a vote on an issue. Senator Strom Thurmond holds the longest filibuster on record when he went on for over 24 hours straight. He was filibustering against the Civil Rights Act of 1957, which was passed by a massive margin. However, in 1979 the rules of the Senate were changed so that a "two-track" system was put into place so that the Senate could move on with other business in the face of a filibuster.
This rule, along with the cloture rules, that call for a final end to debate if 3/5 of all serving senators agree, changed the nature of the American Senate forever. At some point, if you stopped talking, the debate would end and things would get done. Now, you just need to declare that are going to filibuster something, as opposed to anonymous hold something or other forms of holding things back, and now it requires 60 votes to end debate. . .which generally means it passes. So now, any vote that gets close, one side or the other does that and bam, you need 60 votes. The gamesmanship has increased, the tactics have gotten nastier and there are all kinds of things that need doing that are not getting done. One of the best examples has been federally appointed judges. Right now, there are 61 vacancies on district courts (those are federal courts at the lowest level, so they see the most work) and there are 25 nominees pending. The first thing you see is that there are not enough nominees but the second thing is that those nominees tend not to move as fast as they should. Why? The Senate decided to fully politicize judicial nominations.
The first best example of this was a guy named Robert Bork, whom Reagan nominated for the Supreme Court (the seat eventually went to Anthony Kennedy) despite being extremely controversial. He had been a key player in Nixon interfering with special prosecutors and believed that privacy rights were limited only to the specific things written in the Constitution. He had a very strict view of the Constitution and this scared a lot of the liberal senators serving, especially in regard to abortion and other privacy rights. He was really the first time the Senate set out on a campaign to vilify someone to make them unconfirmable; his name has even become a verb meaning that. The Democrats destroyed that nomination, and ever since the Republicans had vowed vengeance, so as soon as they took the Senate in 1994, they held up all kinds of other federal judicial appointments of those who didn't meet their ideological standards. The most recent time was when President George W. Bush nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court when Sandra Day O'Connor stepped down. Before that even, Democrats were holding judicial nominations (in revenge for Republicans holding up ones under Clinton, which itself was revenge for Bork) to the point where there was discussion of banning the filibuster in the Senate just so nominations could get a vote. Of course, nominations were also placed on anonymous hold, which is a Senate specific rule that says any senator, without divulging whom, can place something on hold so it can't get out of committee or voted on by the main body. Basically, it kills anything. There have been dozens of attempts to kill the anonymous hold which, yes, have been subject to anonymous holds and died. Right now, the rules have been amended such that an anonymous hold is only good for two days, after which both the hold and the senator doing it get placed in the congressional record. So now, "tag-team" holds have come up, where two senators will go back and forth to make sure something is held for a long time. So, judicial nominees still get held up since presidents are afraid to put up controversial choices for fear of undue scrutiny by the other party. And people up for judicial nominations have to all but put their lives on hold while under consideration for fear of rocking the boat.
Ok, all these problems of parliamentary procedure (that's "parli pro", to you) and why the Senate go to be so elitist, now what? Well, first and foremost, make the filibuster physical. Make it so that if you want to stop something, you gotta talk and fight off debate cloture votes (votes designed to end debate with at least 60 Senators). Make it so nothing gets done until that is dealt with and the number of filibusters will drop. Get rid of anonymous holds in any form. This is one is naive because sometimes you want to be able to just stop something without putting your name on it, but it's starting to get in the way of real work. Make judicial nominees HAVE to come up for a full floor vote within a give number of days after being questioned by appropriate committee. Or, make nominations like vote-a-rama, which is applied to Budget votes (all amendments must be germane, and you can't filibuster or hold). These tend to be bloody, but, well, a little bloody is good; it keeps us all honest. The nice trend is that Senate rules have been updated to allow for more open and honest debate, even if slowly but surely. It used to be a bill could be left on "the desk" (the rostrum where the President of the Senate presides) for days just so new signatures can be added. No more, so things can go faster. Holds are getting tighter, people are working out deals to avoid filibusters and there is movement in the right direction despite people like Mitch McConnell and Jim DeMint. It's getting better, slowly but surely, and that's how you know it lasts.
So stands the Senate, the great debater and deliberater.
So it is written, so do I see it.