I think that Ben Sasse’s ideas on reforming the Senate, expressed here in his Wall Street Journal op-ed, have merit:
What would the Founding Fathers think of America if they came back to life? Their eyes would surely bug out first at our technology and wealth. But I suspect they’d also be stunned by the deformed structure of our government. The Congress they envisioned is all but dead. The Senate in particular is supposed to be the place where Americans hammer out our biggest challenges with debate. That hasn’t happened for decades—and the rot is bipartisan.
His proposals are
- Ban cameras from Senate proceedings
- Abolish standing committees
- Reduce the time spent in committees and increase floor time, putting some of it under the control of committees
- Require senators to live in dormitories
- Change senate terms to a single 12 year term (term limits)
- Repeal the 17th amendment
- Sunset everything and start over
- Enact real budgets
I think he’s on the right track. You may notice that I have proposed #4 and #6 myself from time to time.
The Senate as presently constituted serves no real purpose—it’s redundant to the House. Abolishing the filibuster would make it even more so. As I see it the problems with the Senate aren’t limited to the Senate—the House has the same problems and those problems are party politics, the election system, the committee system, and the power of lobbyists and the permanent bureaucracy.
In addition to #4 and #6 I would suggest:
- Reduce the power of committee chairmen and the majority leader
- Get rid of the seniority rules. Make committee membership and chairmanship determined by lot. Rotate chairmanship among committee members.
- Make contacts with lobbyists while the Senate is in session an ethics violation. I also think that it should be illegal to lobby a senator unless you are a constituent of the senator, you are lobbying on behalf of a constituent, and you are physically present in the senator’s state. That would require a constitutional amendment, though.
- Senate rules should require that all bills introduced be limited to a single matter and the matter should be in the bill’s title.
Note that nothing in my list would require amending the Constitution. I also think that the members of both the House and Senate are too old. The average age of representatives is 58 while the average age of senators is 62. That is in strong contrast to the United Kingdom, France, and Germany where members of its legislatures are considerably younger. Term limits is one way of doing that but I’d prefer abolishing pensions for elected officials—they should be illegal. Either would require amending the Constitution.
“Note that nothing in my list would require amending the Constitution.”
True, and many of those things can be done by the Senate amending their own rules. But this is a chicken-egg problem since Senators are invested in the way things are.
You’ve got it wrong. First repeal the 17th Amendment, and let State legislatures appoint them. This would have the side benefit of reinforcing/restoring State’s rights. It would also help if the old rules that LBJ operated under were restored, too.
Repeal the 17th? Great! The special interests can directly name their senators rather then having to convince the voters.
Steve
If I were the philosopher king; I would augment 100 senators elected by the citizens of the State with an additional 50 senators representing the legislatures of the States.
These extra senators would be modeled after the German Bundesrat or the UN. The Senators are not “elected” to decide matters based on their individual political views, but they must vote based on the instruction of their state legislature — and can be recalled at anytime.
That should clean up the issues of State legislature elections for Senators before the 17th amendment.
Enlarging the Senate also has the side benefit of unlocking “enlarging the house”. While there is no law on the relationship between the size of the Senate vs the House, from 1791 until today the House has been kept between 4 to 5 times the size of the Senate.
‘Repeal the 17th? Great! The special interests can directly name their senators rather then having to convince the voters.’
The special interests pretty much pick who runs for Senate now, so repealing the 17th would be rather pointless. However repealing the 17th might get people to pay more attention to their local reps’ races than they have been for many years (myself included) and vote accordingly.
‘Enlarging the Senate also has the side benefit of unlocking “enlarging the houseâ€.’
I’m not in favor of adding more parasites to the swarm we already have in DC.
‘Change senate terms to a single 12 year term (term limits)’
I’m a bit reluctant to institute term limits on elected officials (yeah, I know FDR abused the unwritten two-term rule, but distant cousin Theodore probably would have broken it first in 1920 had death not got to him. And I don’t even want to talk about Madigan). I’d rather see term limits on or department rotation instituted for head bureaucrats, like they way they rotate general officers in the military to prevent them from building up fiefdoms.
I wonder how long Sass can maintain his “Mr. Smith goes to Washington†role before insiders
begin to dismiss him as a crank.
Oh, he’s still pure of heart but that’s no way to do business in DC and any of his ideas would take major influence, persuasion,
And Tip O’Neil style wrangling to actually accomplish.
I’m surprised he didn’t mention Zoom committee hearings and remote vote calls. Lots of new members can hardly afford Washington rents and are immediate candidates for influencing by lobbyists.
The Supreme Court does it remotely. Clarence Thomas lives in a a motorcoach on the road with his wife. (Or did).
Senators living in dormitories resolves that issue.
Dormitories
They’d need to have all the amenities of assisted living facilities for the group we have now.