Can someone justify the role of the senate?

[TheCoxwain]

Democratic senators represent 88% of the US population .... why then does the minority have almost a veto power?


Why does Alaska have the same number of votes as California?


I am sure there is a good reason. Something other than - "But that is way it has been !!!"


Educate me.

[Glorfindel]

1. I can't - I believe it to be more archaic than the UK House of Lords

AND less democratic.

[Geoff R. Casavant]

2. It was designed that way

A bicameral legislature, one chamber with proportional representation based on population, and the other with each state given the same number of votes regardless of size. It was specifically designed that way to the larger states would not be able to steamroll the smaller states.

[valerief]

3. The Senate funnels tax money away from the electorate. At least, it seems that's its role. nt

[kenny blankenship]

4. It was believed that rich men should possess the right to veto anything the unwashed proposed

Grade school children are taught this phrase: the House proposes; the Senate disposes. It seems like an inequality or injustice, but we know of course that our system is perfect and therefore incapable of injustice. So the justice of the arrangement resolves itself in the schoolchild's mind as a Great Mystery. We know not how, but we know it to be so. But who is it that gets this mysteriously final, power to dispose of what other people want? Originally you simply bought your Senate seat. This part the grade schoolers are never taught! For over a hundred years, common people weren't allowed to vote for their Senators. A rich man who fancied a Senate seat spread patronage money around in his state's legislature and got himself appointed by them. The voters were not consulted. Truly it was said throughout the 19th century that it was easier for a rich man to gain entrance to the Kingdom of Heaven than it was for a poor man to be admitted to the Senate.

By design, the Senate exists as an elite check on the more democratic (small d) House of Representatives. Of course there was already a check on the voice of the people in the form of the Presidency and the courts. But the thing about the President was he was voted on by all the eligible voters of the states, with the assumption that the electoral college electors would almost always vote the same way as the nasty smelly unwashed masses who went to the polls. That wasn't good enough. The institution of the Senate allowed 2 rich men, drawn from among the rich men of their state, each to have nearly the same power of veto as the President of the United States. They even were to have a longer term of office than the President. Senators had a right to unlimited debate, while in the House of Representatives the schedule of debate and voting moves directly according to the wishes of the leader of the majority party. One self-appointed Senator talking interminably could stop any measure which 435 directly elected Representatives had voted to approve unanimously.

As a reaction to periods of national frustration with its high handed ways, there have been a few reforms of the power of the Senate. Senators are now directly elected instead of appointed. The power of a Senator's right to unlimited debate has had some limits put on it. But it is still the venue of choice for elite interests to squash movements from below and to strangle change. Moneyed interests obviously can magnify their power "undemocratically" by plying the Senators of small states with cash and making a long term alliance with a sectional party. So it is that you see the Senators of a majority party, who represent an even larger majority of the population than their Senate numbers would suggest being thwarted by a minority party that is adamantly protecting the interest of the insurance rackets. But since the Constitution says you cannot reduce any state's Senate representation without the consent of that state, there is no way to avoid this potential minority faction veto short of abolishing the Senate altogether.

100 Veto Pens
Our Senate was created to give the resourceful few a way to veto stuff desired by the many, and it's only working as intended. If you look at the men who participated in our Constitution's creation it may seem as if they created the Senate for people just like themselves. By nature, it was originally an institution only open to the rich. And today despite reforms it is still the branch of government that is "by and for" the rich, not the people. It takes much more money to win a seat in the Senate than the House and the Senators themselves still resemble a millionaire's club although the wealthiest citizens are mostly content to pull its strings from above rather than join in the legislative fracas directly. The basic character of the Senate endures: if you can reserve for one class of people the power to say what cannot be done by government, you effectively control what the government can do and what kinds of terminology and concepts it can use to discuss reality. Procedurally this is analogous to rhetorical "framing". The Senate acts as an invisible hand drawing brackets around what the House may debate and silently discarding what it may not debate. By exercising 100 veto pens over what the government cannot do, cannot imagine, and cannot talk about, one class in the United States effectively dictates what the government must do, think, and say.

[DonCoquixote]

5. The reason

Because, if we only had a congress based on population, Washington would not need to listen to smaller states to get things passed. People would only need to campaign in certain areas.

I realize the Dixiecrats have spoiled the Senate, but keep in mind, the same Senate that throws up the Dixiecrats is the same one that ensured that people like Howard Dean got listened to. If there were no Senate, Dean would be just another guy in New England.