Indians and Finance Reform
by Robert Davison (Wolf)
Jack Abramoff and the Indian givers remind us once again of the byzantine fixes in support of finance reform. They are only exceeded by proposed fixes for the tax code; if such a superlative is even possible. A believer in Occam’s razor would say, "Simply repeal the 17th Amendment," but, I fear such a simplistic solution would never satisfy garrulous lawmakers.
Most people are not even aware that Senators are not seated as the founder’s intended. Few in Congress or in the press get energized about the 17th Amendment; it is a footnote in American history. "What difference does it make if Senators are elected or appointed", they cry. Well, it was important to the Founders for reasons that should be increasing apparent.
Designed Chaos
The difficulty inherent in getting two very different constituencies to concur was designed to thwart the machinations of special interests. John Dickinson, a Delaware lawyer, the delegate to the Constitutional convention who proposed selection by state legislatures wrote: "The preservation of the States in a certain degree of agency is indispensable. It will produce the collision between the different authorities that should be wished for in order to check each other." In Federalist No 51 James Madison wrote: "In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for this inconveniency is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them, by different modes of election and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and their common dependencies on the society will admit." And in Federalist No. 10, "Before taking effect, legislation would have to be ratified by two independent power sources: the people’s representatives in the House and the state legislatures’ agents in the Senate." Nathan Lehman in an article for NeoPolitique "Far-Reaching and Forgotten: The 17th Amendment" writes that "[John] Dickinson predicted that eliminating the states’ agency (representation) in the national government would be ‘ruinous,’ and would result in the national government operating as ‘one great current’ without restraint". Dickinson was clearly a prophet; truer words were never spoken.
Democracy Rejected
The Founding Fathers were deeply suspicious of Democracy. Our form of government was purposefully crafted as a collaboration of autonomous states headed by a deliberately shackled Federal government. America is not a Federal Republic by accident. It is so by design. It is no oversight that neither founding documents, the U.S. Constitution nor the Declaration of Independence, contain the word democracy.
The founders did not set out to establish a utopia. They were practical men who knew only too well the mischief of which government was capable. They set their backs to thwarting government at every turn, making it impossible for the Republic to act in haste. Article III, Section 4 of the Constitution "guarantees to every State in this Union a republican form of government.''
The Knot Unraveled
The 17th Amendment defeated those republican aims. Todd Zywicki points out that the most ardent promoters of the 17th amendment’s passage were special interest groups frustrated over their inability to influence legislation in a diffuse Senate. He makes the equally convincing argument that "it was the 17th amendment that was responsible for federal expansion, which grew exponentially after its passage." By now, it should be apparent, to one and to all, that ‘patching’ Senate rules will not mend the fabric of the republic. Because Senators are elected they advocate, not what is moral or what is best, but for that which will get them elected; and once elected they spend most of their time fund-raising and campaigning to be reelected.
Tired of scandals and the endless investigations? Opt for repeal of the 17th Amendment.
© 2005 by Robert (Davison) Wolf. All Rights Reserved.
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