The Senate Since Yesterday
Abrams, Elliott
"The Senate Since Yesterday" - auspices, to write a new law of the sea. Essentially, the underdeveloped majority seeks a regime which would place all deep-sea resources under the control of the UN General Assembly. Such an...
...Some of the distinctions between the House and Senate are, it must be said, of greater interest to senators than to those who elect them...
...can ever remedy...
...And with each successive move to a larger chamber, the Senate has adopted a location less conducive to debate...
...The Senate today is mired in detail...
...Bryce called the Senate the "masterpiece of the constitution makers...
...It is worthwhile tracing the development—"progress" might be an inappropriate term—of the Senate towards its present condition...
...Its political organization is more akin to that at Runnymede than that of the modern corporation, and this is a condition which not even McKinsey & Co...
...Baker's solution is simply to have the Senate meet only half the year, and resolve not to be tied up like Gulliver by a thousand little knots of detail...
...Second, as the senators waste their time with such trivia, policy decisions are in fact not made—or, too often, they are made by senators who have not devoted to them the time and attention they deserve...
...Every clause in them ties down an agency, or benefits some constituent, or both...
...If there is any basis for such concerns in Europe, should not those concerns be extended to Asia...
...In close votes, small-state senators can sometimes hold out for formulae which, instead of distributing federal funds according to need, set minimum amounts which even the smallest state will receive...
...Woodrow Wilson had written in Congressional Government that The Senate is fitted to do deliberately and well the revising which is its properest function, because its position as a representative of State sovereignty is one of eminent dignity, securing for it ready and sincere respect, and because popular demands, ere they reach it with definite and authoritative suggestion, are diluted by passage through the feelings and conclusions of the State legislatures, which are the Senate's only immediate constituents...
...For world order is much dependent on a continued will to pragmatism by this brilliant and formidable people...
...Add that the Senate, unlike the House, is a staging area for those with national political ambitions, and it may be seen that those in politics will never confound the two bodies, and think the Senate a carbon copy of the House...
...Gladstone spoke of it as "that remarkable body, the most remarkable of all the inventions of modern politics...
...As the size and role of the federal government grew, so the Senate responded by hiring the staff it needed to keep up with the press, and complexity, of business...
...The appointment of high-level bureaucrats in a country in which their power is enormous should be a matter of concern and close attention...
...By its very existence the Senate reminds us that there are other levels of government besides the national, and that there are other levels of association possible among citizens besides common national citizenship...
...There is, first, the matter of rules...
...At its inception, it was decidedly the weaker house, as had been planned...
...Senator Howard Baker, the Minority Leader, has remarked on the problem: I look on these desks, these historic desks in the Senate Chamber, and almost every day I see another bill that is 10 pages, 100 pages, sometimes more than 1,000 pages long...
...One may question whether, by 1913, this role was of very great importance, but it did mark yet another shift from the plan which the founders of the Senate had in mind for it...
...Senators now consider every detail of life because the federal government now intrudes into every detail...
...The staff member may listen to all sides, boil down arguments, gather data, and recommend a course of action, but the ultimate choice is almost always political—who gets what—and that choice a politician carefully keeps to himself...
...Nor can the increase in the size of Senate operations be attributed to a like increase in all federal government activity: From about 1880 to today, federal civilian employment grew 30 times over, but Senate employment grew more than twice as fast...
...In the 85th Congress (1957-58) there were 2,748 Senate Committee meetings, and in the 93rd Congress (1973-74) there were 4,067...
...Often there is not a distinguished man in the whole number...
...Much as we must discuss the American commitment to Japan, we must also develop a better understanding ofJapan's commitment to the world system, to "our" system of collective security and liberal economic cooperation...
...There is no excuse for this...
...And today, like the House, the Senate suffers from a condition it was, in the original plan, supposed to escape, and which constitutes perhaps the most important deviation from its original role...
...It is an enormous body, with 100 members, scores of committees and subcommittees, and thousands of employees...
...Moreover, the Senate's role as protector of small states has evolved in a manner which the Founding Fathers may not have had in mind...
...In fact, that the "Golden Age" of the Senate is over may well be cause for satisfaction, rather than regret...
...Yet, as Woodrow Wilson wrote in 1885, "The truth is, the Senate is just what the mode of its election and the conditions of public life in this country make it...
...There are two things wrong with having the Senate make decisions such as these...
...If one dates the great increase in the size of the Executive from 1933, one may say that Congress took 13 years to make up its mind to react...
...As the Senate was organized more and more around party and less around "celebrated" individuals, and as its distinct role as a check on the House was eliminated, the Senate became more and more like the two other elected branches in the government, the House and the Presidency...
...Or, sadder yet, can it be that, unlike the House of Lords, the Senate has in its much shorter lifetime lost its distinctiveness and much of its value...
...This is an important question...
...This is not so much protection of the small states as extortion by them, since there is little to be said for it as a matter of public policy...
...To ignore it is to reveal both a failure of cultural imagination and a gap in strategic analysis...
...It is ironic that in the debate over the proper role of government which has broken out in recent years, the Senate of 1850 would have played an invaluable role...
...From that time on the importance of party grew...
...But, as noted, these are differences of interest more to politicians than to their constituents...
...This is a greatly complex matter, to which I can do no more here than advert...
...For detail is politics, and politics is one subject on which senators keep a very tight grip...
...The membership of the House is so great and the volume of bills and resolutions so enormous that of necessity its whole procedure is strictly regimented...
...Equally important was the transformation of the issues the nation addressed after the Civil War...
...The debates of those years were fierce because the struggle they embodied was the worst internal conflict the nation has ever suffered...
...Can it be that, like the House of Lords, the Senate has outlived its usefulness...
...Yet quickly the Senate began to gain power...
...The Senate serves the populace in other ways...
...In 1877 the Senate had 106 employees, and in 1947 it had 1,080...
...There we find a Japan that has no real historical, cultural, or psychological stake in the western system...
...It is, overall, much more pleasant to be a senator than to be a representative, and this fact alone would attract able—though as well unable—men to seek the Senate...
...If these branches of the government are not quite what the "constitution makers" intended, it is because their contribution to the public weal is greater, not less, than had been envisioned...
...The new century brought with it the fundamental moral and constitutional clashes which culminated in the Civil War...
...A more significant change came in 1846, when the Senate began to endorse party slates, rather than elect individuals, for committee membership...
...As to presidential appointments, the Lance affair has recently demonstrated that confirmation hearings are all too often cursory...
...Nonetheless, the Senate gives life to the notion that, despite the growth of the central government, we remain a federal system...
...An additional effect of the 17th Amendment was to reduce the Senate's role as a link between state and federal governments...
...Elliott Abrams The Senate Since Yesterday Though the Senate today is quite unlike what the founders envisioned—absent so many of its original tasks and so much larger than when it first met—it maintains a distinct utility to our system...
...All to no avail...
...More and more, issues were settled not by floor debate, but in party councils...
...and they will spawn international organizations, established in the name of "equity," but functioning to the detriment of all free-enterprise democracies...
...It remains true that Senate rules permit unlimited debate, and are much more liberal than those of the House regarding floor amendments...
...By its very existence, it greatly strengthens the federal system...
...But whatever economic effects such proposals may produce, they originate in an antithesis to liberal political and economic thought...
...Yet it is not, in the end, remarkable that the Senate has changed and is so unlike the body its founders envisioned...
...So long as constituents are concerned about the precise limits of OSHA's power to regulate ladders, so will senators be...
...its role as a check on the follies of democracy is ended, and in any case would today be considered illegitimate...
...The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 marks perhaps the most significant turning point since 1913, for it began an extraordinary enlargement and bureaucratization of the Senate...
...And in addition to their role as legislators, senators act as ombudsmen, the last, best resort of the citizen run afoul of the bureaucracy...
...That the "Golden Age" of the mid-19th century is over may well be cause for satisfaction, rather than regret...
...There is no question that the ratification of the 17th Amendment made the selection of senators more democratic, but it also brought a transformation in the nature of the body...
...One can plausibly argue that today the main differences between the House and the Senate are the Senate's smaller number of rules and greater number of presidential aspirants...
...Senators write detailed instructions because they want to be sure the bureaucrats do what the Senate intends...
...14 The American Spectator February 1978...
...Carter Glass, who served in Congress for a total of 44 years, could state in mid-career that, "In the twenty-eight years that I have been a member of one or the other branches of Congress, I have never known a speech to change a vote...
...Madison stated at one point that, as he was young and ambitious, he could not afford to accept a seat in the Senate...
...On entering the House of Representatives at Washington, one is struck by the vulgar demeanor of that great assembly...
...As George Haynes wrote in The Senate of the United States, "In the history of Senate organization few periods have been of more interest and significance than the ten days at the opening of the second session of the twenty-ninth Congress, December 7-17, 1846," when party became the organizing principle in committees...
...Its rules permitted unlimited debate, and its small membership made it possible for individual senators to be heard at length, and to be heard throughout the nation...
...And it continues to enjoy certain perquisites not allowed the House, namely, the power to ratify treaties and to confirm presidential appointments...
...As the country developed a two-party system, it was to be expected the Senate would do so as well...
...It was in this period that the Senate was accused of being a "Millionaire's Club...
...No amount of reorganization of the Senate's committees or expansion of its staff, no amount of computerization, can ever lift the Senate from the slough of detail...
...Its members are almost all obscure individuals....At a few yards distance is the door of the Senate, which contains within a small space a large proportion of the celebrated men of America...
...Fundamental moral and constitutional issues, which the background of most senators well suited them to debate, were replaced by economic questions such as the regulation of industry...
...Today it has roughly 6,700...
...Here one may celebrate the theory while being less pleased with the Senate's use of its powers in practice...
...One thing the Senate can do is spring loose Veterans Administration checks that have been mismailed...
...but at the very least it can be said that the Senate remains a bulwark, as it was meant to be, against total centralization of governmental authority...
...If a greater consensus on most political issues reigns today, a duller and less powerful Senate is a price most Americans will think worth paying for it...
...It is clear that the Senate of today is a very different institution from that which its founders envisioned...
...Thus it began to grow even faster...
...We are no more likely to return to a The American Spectator February 1978 13 Senate like that of 1850 than we are to another Constitutional Convention like that of 1787...
...It won't work...
...Nor can the Senate leave detail work to staffers while senators attend to matters of high policy...
...The Progressive Era saw an enormous change in the Senate: In 1913 the 17th Amendment was ratified and senators began to be elected directly...
...Scarcely an individual is to be seen in it who has not had an active and illustrious career...
...In 1911 the Democrats, and in 1913 the Republicans, first formally elected a leader...
...The "Golden Age" of the Senate is now more than a century behind us...
...Its small, acoustically fine chamber was populated with the likes of Clay, Calhoun, and Webster, as well as many others well trained for discussion of legal and moral principles...
...Perhaps all of this was inevitable...
...Such an arrangement, or anything like it, will have major consequences for Japan—for its food supplies, for its access to seabed mineral resources...
...Of course, after 200 years of union and constant population shifts, rivalries between the states are much reduced, and sectional rivalries such as the current Sunbelt-Frostbelt contest are as much in evidence in the House as in the Senate...
...A more persuasive argument would, in my view, address such words to the Supreme Court, if not to the Presidency itself...
...In West Germany, measures taken to combatterrorism trigger speculation about the durability of democracy in the country of Goethe and Mann...
...Such views are those of an earlier century, and are seldom, if ever, heard today...
...yet the Senate is not a vestigial organ of the Consti- tution, or a smaller version of the House, even given this catalog of transformations and criticisms...
...On the contrary, it is but another example of their extraordinary foresight that the body, absent so many of its original tasks and so much larger than when it first met, maintains a distinct utility to our system...
...The prestige of the Senate declined as its 12 The American Spectator February 1978 special contribution to a national debate disappeared...
...Japan's stake is material and, as such, ultimately practical...
...We are trying to be bureaucrats....That is not our turf...
...At the recent Senate-House conference on energy, hours were spent wrangling over matters such as whether to grant tax credits for replacement of furnace boilei-s or only furnace burners, or for purchase of clock thermostats or of all automatic thermostatic devices...
...Moreover, as senators came more and more to be seen as representatives of particular economic interests, the body grew unpopular...
...Our turf is to write laws...
...Yet this would be overstating the case, for the Senate retains a good measure of distinctiveness and, thereby, of special value...
...First, they are not so much policy questions as technical ones, which data and expertise would answer once general policy were established...
...Instead, permanent committees with set jurisdictions were established...
...Such, for example, is the lesson of the SALT negotiations...
...Senate expenditures have grown from $15 million in 1955 to $120 million in 1976...
...So too with treaties: The Senate's role and its opportunity to serve the nation are unique...
...Yet the changes within the Senate are only part of the story...
...and I realize that what we are doing...is trying defensively to write rules, regulations, and guidelines in an attempt to implement the law...
...And the weakness of the Senate lasted for some years: The great debates over the War of 1812, for example, were held in the House...
...As economic issues replaced constitutional issues, stirring debate became less frequent...
...Yet even in those years the Senate had begun to change and to become more like the House and less a collection of distinguished individuals waiting to curb the occasional excesses of the other, more powerful body...
...The Senate's problems do not stem from mismanagement and cannot be cured by efficiency experts, for the Senate is not a bureaucracy and can never become one...
...For these, the Senate was the locus of national debate...
...In the 85th Congress there were 313 roll-call votes in the Senate, and in the 93rd there were 1,138...
...Ah, the good old days...
...Our turf should be setting the broad, general policies of the United States....I hope we would focus more attention on the business of the policy of the government and have a greater care for its execution by the executive department...
...Indeed, here are two excellent examples of how the Senate could enhance its value by emphasizing its uniqueness...
...If Senator Baker wishes to reduce the Senate's concern for detail and enhance its concentration on high policy, he will simply have to eliminate the cause of this condition, which is the scope of the federal government's activities...
...If this means that presidents must pay more attention to popular opinion and the representatives thereof, and less to foreign policy mandarins, it is likely that the nation will benefit...
...So the Senate grew less unique, and more like the House...
...So long as it is thought that Senate inattention to detail will enlarge the lebensraum of the bureaucracy, and perhaps damage interests a senator represents, the Senate is most unlikely to abandon those 1,000-page bills...
...Few today, to return to Bryce and Gladstone, would call the Senate the "masterpiece of the constitution makers" or the "most remarkable of all the inventions of modern politics...
...So wrote de Tocqueville in Democracy in America, and his view of the Senate was not idiosyncratic...
...The Senate no longer serves, then, as a formal link between state and federal governments, or as an intimate chamber of celebrated men insulated from the winds of popular opinion...
...Already Congress has given birth to the Congressional Budget Office, the Office of Technology Assessment, and several other minor bureaucracies in an effort to deal with the huge expansion in its responsibilities...
...it is directly elected...
...Here, there is no substitute for data...
...Senators lack this data and this expertise...
...Elliott Abrams is Administrative Assistant to Senator Daniel P. Moynihan of New York...
...But react it did...
...The Senate reached the zenith of its prestige during the years between the Missouri Compromise in 1820 and the Civil War...
...France and Italy, parts of the western world, are thought vulnerable to "Eurocommunism" or "Finlandization...
...Once the price of energy is established, homeowners will buy clock thermostats if they think it will save them money to do so...
...The real point is not that the Senate should not be deciding about clock thermostats, but that no one in the federal government should be...
...How fragile is the liberal order...
...Moreover, senators have greater stature in their home states, they have larger staffs and more office space, and, perhaps the most important difference of all, they have six-year terms...
...As George Haynes wrote: The greatest cause of differentiation between the Senate and the House is to be found in the rules and procedures under which the members of the one and the other carry on their work...
...It is a body of "elected bureaucrats," as some have said, or a "gigantic regulatory commission...
...In 1816 the press of legislative business forced the Senate to give up electing an ad hoc committee to study each bill as it was introduced...
...It consists, unlike the House, not of representatives of groups ofcitizens, but of representatives of states—if not, after the 17th Amendment, of representatives of state governments...
Vol. 11 • February 1978 • No. 4
