[Part 1 of a 3 part series]
In so very many respects, from separation of powers and checks and balances to the gerrymandering of Congressional districts, state-sanctioned efforts to suppress voting by ordinary citizens, and the roles that unlimited sums of money and influence-peddling now play in American politics, the government of United States increasingly resembles that of banana republic, ill-equipped to meet the needs of its citizens in the twenty-first century. The U.S. Senate is a case in point.
The concept of a Senate - whose members before the adoption of the
Seventeenth Amendment in 1913 were appointed by the state legislatures
- was created by the framers of the Constitution as a device that would
serve as a check to control the popularly-elected House of
Representatives and to ensure that the interests of property owners
would be protected. Article 1, ยง 3 of the U.S. Constitution guarantees
each state two senators, irrespective of population. This peculiar and
patently undemocratic provision was originally included in the
Constitution as a compromise to protect the interests of property-owners
in the original slave-holding colonies and to persuade them to accept
the Constitution.
James Madison defended the idea of a
Senate and disguised his personal investment as a slave owner in that
"peculiar institution" by addressing his appeal for a new constitution
to the broader interests of commerce. As he explained in The Federalist No. 62:"....great
injury results from unstable government. The want of confidence in the
public councils damps every useful undertaking, the success and profit
of which may depend on a continuance of existing arrangements.... What
farmer or manufacturer will lay himself out for the encouragement given
to any particular cultivation or establishment, when he can have no
assurance that his preparatory labors and advances will not render him a
victim to an inconstant government?....No government, any more than an
individual, will long be respected without possessing a certain portion
of order and stability."
Today, the Senate, despite the
adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment, is a deeply dysfunctional entity
that primarily serves the moneyed interests and their army of lobbyists
who benefit from the existing gridlock.
Over the course of
past 220 years since the Connecticut Compromise was negotiated at the
Constitutional Convention, the composition of the Senate has become
increasingly less representative. At present voters in rural America and
in the less urbanized areas of the country exercise disproportionate
political influence over this country's policies and priorities. For
example, the rural and almost uniformly white state of Wyoming, with
some 530,000 citizens, has the same number of U.S. Senators as the
ethnically and economically diverse state of California which, as of
2012, had a population of about 38,000,000 citizens.
The
Senate's arcane and anti-majoritarian rules have further exacerbated the
dyfunctionality of that body. The ability of a small minority of
Senators to impose its will and to prevent colleagues from voting on
proposed legislation is illustrated by the case of former Massachusetts
Senator Scott Brown. In 2010, in his first vote as a newly-elected
Senator, Brown voted to sustain a filibuster that prevented the Senate
from even taking a vote on one of President Obama's nominees to the
National Labor Relations Board, Craig Becker. Becker, a former lawyer
for the AFL-CIO, had been chosen to fill one of the two open seats
which, as a matter of policy, only a member of Democratic Party may
hold. Becker's nomination was opposed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
and the National "Right To Work Committee" which claimed that he was
too pro-labor.
More recently, Tea Party supporters, Senators
Rand Paul and Ted Cruz respectively, were each able to tie the Senate
up knots as they held the floor to demonstrate their opposition to the
killing of suspected terrorists abroad and the Affordable Health Care
Act.
Sadly, the House of Representatives, because of
gerrymandering by GOP controlled state legislatures, has become even
more dysfunctional. A report for Al Jazeera-America on October
13, 2013 by Sanford Levinson observed that the primary cause of U.S.
government may be traced to the "basic structural features of the
American political system established by the U.S. Constitution in 1787.
In fact, the current impasse is exactly how a system of representation
based on partisan gerrymandering functions."
Levinson further
noted that "Partisan gerrymandering is not an ingenious aspect of the
American system, meriting pride. It undermines democracy. It creates a
situation in which political officials choose their electorates; only
the naive can really believe it is the other way around. Partisan
gerrymandering makes the distribution of voters more consequential than
their raw number. It explains why Republicans were able to win a 34-seat
majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2012 despite trailing
Democrats by approximately 1.4 million votes overall. Similarly,
President Barack Obama carried Pennsylvania with 52 percent of the vote,
and Democratic Sen. Bob Casey Jr. won more than 53 percent, but due to
partisan gerrymandering, Republicans won 13 of the 18 congressional
seats."
In Federalist Number 52, the author -
either Hamilton or Madison - expressed the Founders' skepticism to a
popularly-elected legislative body and their intention to hold it in
check. Hence, the House of Representatives " ... will possess a part
only of that supreme legislative authority which is vested completely in
the British Parliament; and which, with a few exceptions, was exercised
by the colonial assemblies and the Irish legislature. It is a received
and well-founded maxim, that where no other circumstances affect the
case, the greater the power is, the shorter ought to be its duration;
and, conversely, the smaller the power, the more safely may its duration
be protracted. In the second place, it has, on another occasion, been
shown that the federal legislature will not only be restrained by its
dependence on its people, as other legislative bodies are, but that it
will be, moreover, watched and controlled by the several collateral
legislatures, which other legislative bodies are not. And in the third
place, no comparison can be made between the means that will be
possessed by the more permanent branches of the federal government for
seducing, if they should be disposed to seduce, the House of
Representatives from their duty to the people, and the means of
influence over the popular branch possessed by the other branches of the
government above cited. With less power, therefore, to abuse, the
federal representatives can be less tempted on one side, and will be
doubly watched on the other."
As a result of constitutional
impediments and gerrymandering, a significant number of current GOP
Congressmen who have been elected to the House of Representatives in
recent decades would have been suitable candidates for commitment to the
asylum in centuries past. In an opinion piece in The New York Times
("The Crackpot Caucus," August 23, 2012), Timothy Egan described the
comments of Representative John Shimkus of Illinois, chairman of a
subcommittee that oversees issues related to climate change, toward the
issue of climate change. Egan reports that at a 2009 hearing Shimkus
sought to assuage the concerns of citizens who worried about
environmental catastrophes with a biblical reassurance: "The earth will
end only when God declares it to be over," Shimkus stated, and then
quoted passages from the book of Genesis.
Egan also reminded
us that GOP Congressman Joe L. Barton of Texas, who has defended the
interests of oil companies on Capital Hill for decades, is a member of
that same committee. In 2010, Congressman Barton apologized to the heads
of BP after the Obama administration demanded that the company agree to
immediately compensate victims whose livelihoods had been destroyed
because of oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. At one point, Egan reports
that Congressman Barton questioned whether producing energy from wind
turbines would contravene God's own energy plan remarking that "wind is
God's way of balancing heat" and that energy from turbines "would slow
the winds down" and thus could make the earth even warmer. "You can't
regulate God!" Barton also declared, in a rebuke to the former House
speaker, Nancy Pelosi, during a debate on global warming.
A
third GOP Congressman, Jack Kingston of Georgia, a 20-year veteran of
the House, serves as a member of the subcommittee that oversees labor,
health and education issues. During an appearance on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher"
in January of 2011, Representative Kingston stated clearly that he does
not believe in the process of evolution. "I believe I came from God,
not from a monkey so the answer is no," he said, laughing, when asked if
he subscribes to the theory. Later in the segment he added, "I don't
believe that a creature crawled out of the sea and became a human being
one day."
In September of 2012, Kingston's colleague, Georgia
Republican Congressman Paul Broun, opined that modern science is an
instrument of the devil. During a speech before the Liberty Baptist
Church Sportsman's Banquet, the two-term congressman stated: "All that
stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang
Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell. And it's lies to
try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from
understanding that they need a savior."
Broun further
explained that much of modern science has been fabricated to hide the
true age of our Earth. "You see, there are a lot of scientific data that
I've found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a
young Earth," he told the audience. "I don't believe that the Earth's
but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we
know them. That's what the Bible says." Perversely, Broun, a physician
who somehow obtained an M.D. from the Medical College of Georgia and
received a B.S. in chemistry from the University of Georgia at Athens,
currently serves on the House Committee on Science and Technology as the
chairman of one of its subcommittees on investigations.
Equally bizarre, in the summer of 2012, then GOP Representative Todd
Akin, who was the GOP's nominee to represent Missouri in the U.S.
Senate, suggested that the female body had natural defense mechanisms
against pregnancy in the event of "legitimate rape:" "If it's a
legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole
thing down," he said.
Finally, lest anyone forget, during her
unsuccessful GOP presidential primary campaign, Minnesota
Congresswoman Michele Bachmann ominously warned that the HPV
vaccinations could cause retardation if administered to pre-adolescent
girls as the Centers for Disease Control recommended. She quoted an
unnamed woman "who told me that her little daughter took that vaccine,
that injection, and she suffered from mental retardation thereafter,"
Bachmann opined. "There is no second chance for these little girls if
there is any dangerous consequences to their bodies."
The
culmination of these assorted lunacies occurred in a vote that the House
of Representatives took in December of 2012. Members of the House,
following previous approval by the Senate, voted to expunge the word
"lunatic" from the United States Code because its stigmatizes people
who suffer from mental health disabilities. The Associated Press
reported that the lone "no" vote was cast by GOP Representative Louie
Gohmert of Texas who issued a statement that "not only should we not
eliminate the word 'lunatic' from federal law when the most pressing
issue of the day is saving our country from bankruptcy, we should use
the word to describe the people who want to continue with business as
usual in Washington."
The good Congressman did not explain
whether his use of the word "bankruptcy" referred to this country's
fiscal condition or to the current state of civic discourse, as
exemplified by his GOP colleagues and their supporters. Nevertheless,
Gohmert's comments - and his very presence in that chamber - are
conclusive evidence the legislative machinery of the United States is
now utterly paralyzed and unwilling to address the needs of ordinary
citizens.