The Future of the Senate

The Future of the Senate
by Chris Boundy

Over the last year or so, the Senate has lost three of its most well regarded and longest serving members: Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, and of course our own Senator Kennedy. At the same time, some of those seeking membership to Congress’ upper chamber are openly disdainful of the deliberative nature and the bipartisanship that are the sine qua non of the Senate. What does this change mean for the bodies future?

The influence of any three men in a body of a hundred should not be overestimated. But included in these three are the longest serving Senator in history, the fourth longest serving Senator in history, and the longest serving Republican Senator in history. Together they represented nearly a hundred and forty years of legislative knowledge and experience.

More important than simple longevity, however, is that each man had a deep love for the Senate as an institution. Each understood its history and, indeed, had been a member long enough to shape a large part of that history. Each had an impressive knowledge of parliamentary procedure, gained over decades of experience, and was fiercely protective of his home states’ interests. And, perhaps most importantly, over a long career each had the opportunity to work with colleagues from the opposing party and to understand the importance of maintaining working relations with people they might work with for years to come.

None of these men were saints. From Chappaquiddick to the Bridge to Nowhere to a youthful membership in the Klu Klux Klan, each man suffered personal and professional travails. But they each shared a common, vital idea of what the Senate was and the role it should play in American society.

We often forget, but the Senate is something of an oddity in our democratic system. What, after all, is the explanation for giving a state with the population of Delaware the same representation as a state the size of California? At the Founding, smaller states argued that they needed protection against larger states. If this argument once had some validity, it is difficult to argue any survives. States interests align along many axes—business interests, populations, geographic region---but size qua size is not one of them.

The true benefit of the Senate lies not in each state having an equal number of representatives, but in the Senate being a smaller chamber. Whereas Representatives in the House have only two-year terms and over four hundred colleagues, Senators, over the course of their six years, have ample time to get to know their less than a hundred colleagues. When disagreements arise, Senators are in a better position to understand and discuss issues with the opposition.

Indeed, the filibuster, a uniquely Senatorial creation, is a perfect example of this difference. The rule was originally meant to allow full and free debate. Although the lower house might impose time restrictions, it was thought that in the Senate each member should have enough time to fully speak his views. While allowing a Senator to speak at length incidentally impeded Senate business, this was believed to be an acceptable trade off for allowing Senators whatever time they might need to argue issues of national import.

In more modern times, the situation has exactly reversed and the filibuster has become a means to stifle debate. Accordingly, a movement has begun to abolish it. But, as proponents of the rule correctly point out, the problem is not in the rule itself, but in how it is used. Any tool can be a weapon if you hold it right, and there is not shortage of parliamentary maneuvers for blocking Senate business. The larger problem is the discord within the Senate itself.

And that discord is a problem that seems unlikely to abate anytime soon. To the contrary, a group of conservative Senate candidates, including members of the Tea Party, have made disdain for the collegiality and deliberative nature of the Senate part of their campaigns. Of course, it remains to be seen how successful these conservative candidates will be in the general elections in November. Regardless, collegiality and deliberation are central to what the Senate is, and the United States has little use for an upper body that is equally rancorous, but otherwise only a smaller and less democratic version of the House. And that is something that Senators Kennedy, Stevens, and Byrd each understood only too well.