Save the Senate: Repeal the Seventeenth Amendment!

By Rich Kozlovich

The Washington Examiner posted the article, "How to save the 'post-nuclear' Senate" on April 08, 2019 saying:

"In 2013, former Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., invoked the so-called “nuclear option.” That is, with a simple majority vote, he and his Democratic majority changed Senate rules to make it easier to confirm certain executive and lower court nominees. No longer would supermajorities be required to confirm judges, as they had been under President George W. Bush. Now, a simple majority would do."

Well, now Mitch McConnell has done the same thing, but once this Senate rule was capriciously changed by Harry Reid, it gave McConnell the authority to invoke the nuclear option.  Not only allowing for a majority vote for appointments, but to reduce the debate time over these appointments from thirty hours to two. 

McConnell had been against this rule change from the beginning warning Reid and the Democrats it's going to come back to haunt them, and it has.  As for this latest expansion and use of the nuclear option by Senate Republicans, this was forced on them as an act of exasperation.

Why?

The Democrats were using the debate time to stall every one of Trump's appointees, including minor appointees just to prevent Trump from being able to govern.  The article goes on to state:

 "Democrats have ridiculously dragged out completely uncontroversial nominations in an effort to run out the clock and prevent Trump from governing, and even having a governing team in place. In addition to inoffensive lower-court nominees, they have taken up maximum time dragging out nominations for even the most obscure executive offices. For no good reason, cloture votes have been required to confirm Trump’s ambassador to Luxembourg, his commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, his comptroller of the currency, his undersecretary of Transportation for policy, and the general counsel for the Department of Agriculture — to name just a handful of dozens of similarly low-profile positions identified by McConnell’s office. Never before had the nominees for any of these offices required a cloture vote, until this administration."

Under these circumstances this expansion had to be expected, and now the Democrats are grousing about it.  They believed they were going to control the Senate after the 2016 election and they let it be known they would evoke the nuclear option to get what they wanted.  But now, all of a sudden, I'm reading how this is damaging the integrity of the Senate. The article states:

"The Senate’s slow and deliberative processes, and senators’ lengthy terms in office, have long kept the nation’s laws stable and constant in the face of populist fads. This is why, as resourceful as Democratic obstruction has been in the Trump era, it’s hard to think of anything the nation needs less than one more escalation to destroy the traditional curbs on the power of the Senate majority."

The Senate's "slow and deliberative processes, and senators’ lengthy terms in office, have long kept the nation’s laws stable and constant in the face of populist fads." Really?  Tell you what.  We'll come back to that.

This "weaponization" of the Senate the writer talks about is what the Senate was created for.  A weapon that allowed the States to prevent the central government from becoming an overpowering and unyielding tyrant.  That ended with the passage of the 17th Amendment. 

Before 1913 Senators were appointed by their States to be de facto ambassadors to the central government, representing the States.   The House of Representatives were directly elected by the people because they represented the people of their states.   Senators were chosen by the states because they were to represent the States.   The 17th Amendment to the Constitution destroyed the balance of power in America and States Rights ceased to exist, irrespective of anything the 10th Amendment says, and that was the intent of those who promoted this change.

So, this "weaponization" of the Senate the writer is so worried about isn't anything new, and make no mistake about this.  This isn't the end, and maybe it shouldn't be the end. The writer worries:

"Or it could be the Republicans who pack the court, or pack it further. Or perhaps they’d just abolish the filibuster and privatize Social Security (or abolish any number of Great Society social programs) in such a way that there will be no funds available to reconstitute it later. On either side, the sky is the limit once the escalation reaches a certain point."

When you look at what the Congress, with approval of the Senate, imposed on the nation with unending regulations, taxes and such massive spending that we're now over 22 trillion dollars in debt, does anyone really think the Senate protected the nation?

The old system was largely based on shared values and belief in America and the America Way.  There were differences, but none of those differences would destroy the American identity, the American culture, the American economy and the Constitution.  That's no longer true.  One party wants to turn the United States into a socialist state.  Tell me how there can be a meeting of the minds when one party treasures America as we've known it and one party wants to destroy America as we've known it. 

That's like saying anti-abortionists and pro-abortionists can find common ground.   One side believes abortion is murder and the other not only doesn't think it's murder, they think it's women's right to slaughter their children, at will.  How can there be common ground? 

The writer delusionally believes it's possible for:

 "Senators [to] establish a new and more sound, durable framework for Senate rules, to take effect at a time when no one knows who will be in power.  Senators from both parties should gather now and derive a new consensus-based set of written rules which, excluding all unwritten precedents, will apply to all Senate action beginning after some future election (perhaps in January 2021, 2023, or 2025), when no one knows for sure who will control the Senate or the White House. Perhaps the new rules will look like they do now, or like they did two weeks ago, or even perhaps like they did in 2012."

To be a leftist is to be insane.  Leftists promise utopia and never fail to deliver dystopia.  That's history and that history is incontestable.  To continue to promote their leftist schemes in face of all that history is clearly insanity.   There can be no consensus between the insanity and sanity.  If he wants to return to a more sound, durable framework for Senate rules, let's start by repealing the 17th Amendment, and go from there.