Here’s my proximate inspiration for the prior post: Transcript for May 1 - Meet the Press
MR. RUSSERT: What happens if they exercise the nuclear option?SEN. DODD: Well, I think it’d be a sad day. You know, we’re only temporary custodians of the Senate. And the irony is, my good friend is from Virginia. The people who wrote this Constitution, many of them came from Virginia, people like Madison and Monroe and, of course, Hamilton from New York and others. And they set up a system, a bicameral system in the legislative branch. The Senate was to be a place where the rights of the minority were protected, using the vehicle of extended debate. The House is a place where the majority rules. That’s why they set this system up.
What a great pity it would be that we would strip away and destroy what has been a very critical element to bring people together. Now, we shouldn’t use extended debate, you know, in an irresponsible way, and that’s up to individual members of the Senate how they do it.
While it is true that the Senate has always been a place for extended debate, that doesn’t directly mean unlimited debate, and more fundamentally, the Constitution itself says nothing (I repeat: nothing) about the length of debate in the Senate.
The way in which the Senate was designed to be slower and more deliberative, was because the number of Senators was small (originally 26), term were three times as long as those of the House, and by the fact that Senators were appointed by state legislators and therefore were insulated from elections.
While none of these featured guranteed lengthy debate, they certainly created the conditions by which detailed debate was likely.
Yes, this whole idea of the high and mighty deliberative body of the senate is really getting on my nerves, too.
The senate’s removal from the will of the public has usually meant that graft and corruption can operate that much more efficiently. Witness the case of N.Y. Senator Conkling, Pres. Garfield’s arch-nemesis, among others.
Comment by bryan — Sunday, May 1, 2024 @ 5:59 pm