Legend has it that, shortly after returning to the states as ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson asked George Washington, who had presided over the constitutional convention, “Why the Senate?” Washington in turn asked Jefferson, “Why do you pour your coffee into that saucer?”
“Why, to cool it,” Jefferson responded.
“Even so,” explained Washington, “we pour legislation into the Senate saucer to cool it.”
That anecdote probably comes closest to the truth as to why the Framers created our bicameral national legislature. Delegates were worried about the prospects that a populist House would enact radical measures, putting the nation on a dangerous course. The Senate’s creation was part of the “Great Compromise” that probably made the union possible. The Senate was designed to represent the interests of the states and thereby slow down and cool any wild schemes the House might concoct.
The Senate is often referred to as “the upper chamber.” Senators think it’s because they are a more elite body — older age qualifications, longer terms, fewer in number and with weightier responsibilities. In fact, it is because the Senate was physically located on the top floor of Federal Hall in New York City, where the First Congress convened, while the House was on the main floor.
Whether the Senate has lived up to George Washington’s ideal is an unfair question. There was much in the Framers’ overall expectations that did not play out as intended. As for Washington’s anecdote about the Senate, there has been many a slip between cup and saucer.
The current government shutdown is a paralysis among the branches. It is perhaps an atypical example to cite how the Framers’ hopes have come undone. As mentioned last week, the House and Senate have underperformed while the president has stepped into the vacuum and overreached with little or no pushback from his party majorities in either chamber. What if this is the new normal?
Precedents are simply an accumulation of similar practices that come to be accepted as the new way of doing things. A summary volume of House precedents is titled, “House Practice,” and is subtitled, “A Guide to the Rules, Precedents and Procedures of the House.”
Precedents are a clear guide to shifting powers, practices and directions in government, and how its various entities play off against each other in reshaping the look and importance of these players.
This is significant if we are to understand the current controversy taking place on and off the Hill and the power shifts they portend. What is happening to and within the Senate is a central piece in this shifting jigsaw puzzle. It would be wrong to place the entire blame on the Senate. However, there are four things to focus on to discern how much the Senate has derailed from its originally planned track.
First, the Senate is not, as it might claim, the world’s greatest deliberative body. Deliberation has gone the way of the dodo. What passes for debate today seldom involves parties on both sides of an issue who argue about problems and solutions. Instead, Senate oratory has devolved into party name-calling and blame-gaming.
Second, the Senate has lost its role as an important counterbalance to the more volatile and impetuous House. When it is not imitating the ways of the House, it is trying to upstage it for the sake of attention.
Third, the Senate is supposed to be the bastion of forging-game changing compromises. Instead, it is playing one-upmanship in contriving more outrageous demands.
Fourth, the Senate is supposed to be the overseer of the executive branch, holding in its hands the fate of presidential nominees, treaties, political agendas, and spending priorities. Instead, it has been forfeiting the initiative to the president on all of these fronts.
These differences are not necessarily all in play simultaneously, but they are increasingly present in higher-stakes controversies.
If we take a holistic view of the current crisis in governance, the House and courts face similar criticisms as the Senate in their failures to live-up to the Framers’ expectations. Even George Washington would blanche at how much our carefully designed balance of powers architecture has tilted.
Don Wolfensberger is a 28-year congressional staff veteran, culminating as chief of staff of the House Rules Committee in 1995. He is author of, “Congress and the People: Deliberative Democracy on Trial” (2000), and, “Changing Cultures in Congress: From Fair Play to Power Plays” (2018).
