The framing of the House and Senate are, I think a rather brilliant method of putting gutter guards on the American bowling alley. Rather than installing big powerful walls on American governing power that would likely have become out of date and frayed over time, the framers of the Constitution relied on good old fashioned human nature to force our lawmakers into their lane.
As I explain in the attached video, the House of Representatives is meant to be a bit of a mad house: what C.J. Cregg of West Wing fame described as “someone perceived by the American people to be irresponsible, untrustworthy, partisan, ambitious, and thirsty for the limelight.” By creating a number of small districts across states, the House was ensured to represent, at least in part, a rural population even when voting was limited to landowners. By contrast the Senate has always been an aristocracy. Today its selection by an entire state population ensures that Senators appeal mostly to population centers and fancy big-city folk, no matter the state.
In the end we have two very different groups of people that manage to geographically represent each corner of the country while simultaneously hating everything about each other. And then, we force them to agree before we allow any legislation to proceed. The simplicity of the system is somewhat brilliant, relying on the hatred implicit in the rural/urban divide to ensure that compromise is hard fought and truly even.
This could not be more apparent than in the application of the Byrd Bath. Even with a decided majority in all three branches of government, the Senate will not advance the President’s agenda because of a gentleman/woman’s agreement that it refuses to break. Its own “Byrd Rule” requires that only budgetary proposals may be approved by 50% vote, and an appointed third party will decide whether each proposal is or is not budgetary.
The Senate is not required to follow the recommendations of this appointed parliamentarian. But this is the Senate. We do things a little differently here. And so as Donald Trump fumes at the White House, his legislative agenda is stripped by a woman who was appointed by Harry Reid, because no one in the Senate (with the exception of Tommy Tuberville) will violate the sacred oaths of America’s most storied fraternity.
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