There has been some grumbling of late over how the U.S. Senate is constituted. The source of the grumbling is the allocation of seats in the Senate. Every state, regardless of population, gets two seats in the senate. One issue that has been causing resentment is the perception that the Senate can be
subverted by senators from small states adept at obtaining federal
dollars for their state far out of proportion to their population. "From
highway bills to homeland security, small states make out like bandits"
said George Washington University political scientist Sarah Binder. This is because every piece of legislation passed in Washington must have the consent of
at least 51 senators. Most of those senators are from states with
relatively small populations. Their job, like every senator's, is to
make sure their state is tended to. It is with that in mind that they review legislation as it comes across their desk.
The item that is
generating grumbling at the moment is small states
have tended to vote republican while large states have been leaning more and more
democratic. Exacerbating the issue is large states are getting larger.
Their populations are growing, but their representation in the senate
remains frozen. Frustration grows every time a republican senator
from North Dakota (population 833,000) thwarts legislation proposed by a
democratic senator from New York (population 19,570,000). Democrats feel they have the initiative due to their recent electoral victories. When their agenda is derailed by republicans in the senate they take umbrage. What they see is a group of senators elected by relatively few, largely rural and conservative citizens unrepresentative of the nation as a whole, impeding the will of the nation. This is a thoroughly modern, and I might say, uninformed point of view that can quickly be cleared up with just a little study.
Under the Constitution, the Senate was not designed to be the House of Representatives writ small. Every state, regardless of its population, gets two seats in the senate. That means Wyoming with its 576,000 residents gets the same representation in the senate as California with its 37,254,000. To a growing number of people, some of them politicians, it is unfair that large states are entitled to no more representation in the senate than small states. This is not a new concern at all. Indeed, it was a prominent point of contention at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Small states were concerned that under a system of popular representation, their low populations would make them vassals of the large states. More populous states felt that their higher population and more developed economies gave them greater stakes in any new government and believed that they therefore deserved greater representation. Giving each state two senators was a pragmatic concession made in order to obtain the consent of small states by assuaging their fears that they would be trampled by large states in a new union. (Prior to the ratification of the XVIIth Amendment to the Constitution, the selection of senators was delegated to state governments. The adoption of the XVIIth Amendment providing for the popular election of senators contributed mightily to the erasure of the distinction between popular representation and state representation). Large states, in turn, were calmed by ceding them greater presence in the House of Representatives where the preponderance of legislative power would reside. The people of the states were to be represented in proportion to their numbers in the House of
Representatives. The states were to be represented as equal bodies in the Senate. The
nation was to be represented by the president. It was not a perfect compromise, but it was good enough to satisfy the competing interests and get the Constitution ratified. The democratic ideal of "one man, one vote" had to be sacrificed in order to bring about the founding of this nation.
In his argument for the ratification of the Constitution, James Madison sought to allay concerns regarding the allocation of legislative power. He wrote in Federalist 62 that "No law or resolution can now be passed without the
concurrence first of a majority of the people, and then with a majority
of the states." Why would Madison have written that? Aren't the states simply groups of people? No, they aren't. At the time Madison wrote that, each state was a sovereign entity. To bypass the states and grant national legislative power to the people alone would diminish the power smaller states by undermining their ability to affect legislation in the new government being put forward. They risked being subordinated to the political concerns of larger states. The solution put forward by Madison was the creation of the senate. In the senate, all states were to be represented equally. Every state, no matter how large or how small, no matter how rich or how poor, would have
two senators. The compromise was a "constitutional
recognition of the portion of sovereignty remaining in the individual
states." There was an added benefit to the creation of the senate according to Madison. The senate would serve to impede passage of bad legislation. No
law or resolution could be passed "without the concurrence first of a
majority of the people [speaking through the House of Representatives],
and then of a majority of the states [speaking through the Senate]."
Without equal representation in the Senate, states with small populations would be in danger of becoming little more than provinces to be administered by federal government in Washington. Representation simply on the basis of population would leave states like New Mexico, Montana, and Idaho, with only token representation in Washington. The most populous states would be free to plunder the least populous. Without equal representation in the Senate, a handful of well populated states would dominate the nation and be able to impose their will and sensibilities on it. The fantastic growth in size and power of the federal government has made this an even greater danger today than it was in 1787.
Madison went on to write that the Convention had to
sacrifice the principal of democracy to the forces of what he called
"extraneous considerations". We might call them "political
considerations" today. He continued, "To the difficulties already mentioned, may be added the interfering pretensions of the larger and smaller states. We cannot err in supposing that the former would contend for participation in the Government, fully proportioned to their superior wealth and importance; and that the latter would not be less tenacious of the equality at present enjoyed by them. We may well suppose that neither side would entirely yield to the other, and consequently that the struggle could be terminated only by compromise." The compromise of splitting representation made possible the founding of the United States of America. It is that compromise that is being challenged in a struggle for political power by a growing number of Americans today.
Everything that is in the Constitution is there for a reason. People should make an effort to understand why a provision is in the Constitution before they start tinkering with it. A bargain was made in 1787. We are obliged to stick to it. As for me, I am more confident in relying upon the political acumen of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison than what passes for most political thought today.
