Smaller States Find Outsize Clout Growing in SenateThe disproportionate power enjoyed in the Senate

[Judi Lynn]

Smaller States Find Outsize Clout Growing in SenateThe disproportionate power enjoyed in the Senate by small states is playing a growing role in the political dynamic on issues as varied as gun control, immigration and campaign finance.

By Adam Liptak

Big State, Small State

RUTLAND, Vt. — In the four years after the financial crisis struck, a great wave of federal stimulus money washed over Rutland County. It helped pay for bridges, roads, preschool programs, a community health center, buses and fire trucks, water mains and tanks, even a project to make sure fish could still swim down the river while a bridge was being rebuilt.

Just down Route 4, at the New York border, the landscape abruptly turns from spiffy to scruffy. Washington County, N.Y., which is home to about 60,000 people — just as Rutland is — saw only a quarter as much money.

“We didn’t receive a lot,” said Peter Aust, the president of the local chamber of commerce on the New York side. “We never saw any of the positive impact of the stimulus funds.”

Vermont’s 625,000 residents have two United States senators, and so do New York’s 19 million. That means that a Vermonter has 30 times the voting power in the Senate of a New Yorker just over the state line — the biggest inequality between two adjacent states. The nation’s largest gap, between Wyoming and California, is more than double that.

More:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/03/11/us/politics/democracy-tested.html?_r=0

[madville]

1. The federal government wasn't meant to be this powerful

The idea of having two Senators per state doesn't seem like such a big deal if they were just going to Washington a few months a year and they weren't involved in every aspect of our lives.

We are stuck with it though, for better or worse, the House model has its own problems as well.

[DFW]

2. That's the reason the framers provided for a Senate AND a House of Representatives

Even in 1787, the gap in clout between Virginia (including what was later to become West Virginia) and Rhode island was considerable. Though nothing like stimulus funds, or the reason for their need, could ever have been imagined back then, there was already a rationale behind not letting the big populous states run the place as if the smaller ones weren't even there.

Of course, we could always do it differently: abolish the bicameral system, and have only one national legislature consisting of two reps each from Greater California, Greater Texas, Greater Illinois, Greater New York, and the Commonwealth of Teabaggeria.

[LiberalFighter]

3. The other way would result in smaller states receiving much less and probably gangbanged.