Simpich writes: "When the Republicans walked off the impeachment cliff yesterday, it was no surprise to anyone. An utterly shameful performance. What remains a surprise is why the American people put up with the Senate anymore."
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. (photo: Alex Edelman/Getty Images)
It's Time to Impeach the Senate: Vote and Shame
01 February 20
hen the Republicans walked off the impeachment cliff yesterday, it was no surprise to anyone. An utterly shameful performance.
What remains a surprise is why the American people put up with the Senate anymore.
The British have a House of Lords – their equivalent to our Senate. The Brits still let them vote, but their vote is now merely symbolic.
The Canadian Senate – modeled after the House of Lords – almost never rejects bills passed by the House of Commons.
In most other developed countries, the “upper chamber” defers to the decisions of the “lower chamber.”
Why don’t we do the same? Then the House of Representatives could become our Parliament.
Watching these one hundred senators – Republicans and Democrats alike – showed just how divorced the whole group is from reality.
Most of them are multi-millionaires. Most of them are lawyers.
Most of them come from lightly populated states in comparison with those along the seaboard. Yet each state gets two Senatorial seats – while Washington DC and Puerto Rico get none.
Most of them are the most privileged and pampered beings on the planet.
Article 1 of the Constitution gives these people veto power over treaties and executive appointments, including the Supreme Court. The Senate has far more power than the House.
Journalist Dylan Matthews of Vox deserves a lot of credit for flagging this issue years ago: “The Senate is now a body in which white rural interests are privileged over those of black and Latino city dwellers given how much whiter the median state is than the median American voter.”
Matthews was inspired by the late congressman John Dingell of Michigan, known as the Dean of the House. He served for more than 59 years, longer than anyone in history. Dingell concluded the Senate must be abolished. In Dingell’s words:
The Great Compromise, as it was called when it was adopted by the Constitution’s Framers, required that all states, big and small, have two senators. The idea that Rhode Island needed two U.S. senators to protect itself from being bullied by Massachusetts emerged under a system that governed only 4 million Americans.
Today, in a nation of more than 325 million and 37 additional states, not only is that structure antiquated, it’s downright dangerous. California has almost 40 million people, while the 20 smallest states have a combined population totaling less than that. Yet because of an 18th-century political deal, those 20 states have 40 senators, while California has just two. These sparsely populated, usually conservative states can block legislation supported by a majority of the American people. That’s just plain crazy.
Dingell wanted a big campaign to abolish the Senate. He didn’t even get into the filibuster. At this point, forty-one Senators representing 11% of the population can prevent a bill from becoming law.
How to fix this problem? It’s a long term proposition to get 38 states to agree to amend the Constitution – especially when many of those states would be giving up their power.
Matthews suggests that the short term solution is to shame the Senators. I think he’s onto something. People of good will have to be tough-minded – remind the Senators that they are members of an undemocratic institution that is doing fundamental damage to the country.
The Senate should defer its powers to the House, which can at least claim that it is a representative body. There are many ways this can be done.
Start off with the House choosing the members of the Supreme Court – and demand that the senators rubber-stamp it.
As time goes on, just let the House make the big decisions. Tell the Senate to agree. Cut their salaries. End their perks. Slash their budgets. They’ll get the message – just like the House of Lords did.
If senators don’t comply? Vote them out of office, regardless of party. If they aren’t trusted with anything important, then it doesn’t matter.
The Senate has to go. People from all walks of life can agree that we need democracy in the USA, and this is not it. Until the Senate is abolished, the senators should be told their time is past and it is time to get out of the way.
The Senate’s main argument for its continued existence is that there were good relationships among the members. The institution promoted “comity.” Now it’s comedy.
The good old days are gone. Forever.
This impeachment fiasco is Exhibit A.
Bill Simpich is a civil rights lawyer and an anti-war activist in the San Francisco Bay Area – writing in the midst of the battle for a political revolution in the USA. Any reader who wants to form a small but mighty civic organization to abolish the Senate should contact the author at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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