Senate Reform

Photo from Senate.gov

The senate… is dumb.

Not the members, but the institution. It was designed as an elite body to keep the masses in check.

That is not what we need for this time.

We need an organization that moves quicker and with less institutionalized racism, a body that doesn’t block progress in the name of maintaining norms no one believes in.

So a few fixes:

1. The most important thing is to expand the number of senators. A simple way to increase representation, reduce the power of an individual senator, and to give the body more flexibility is to increase the number of senators to 120. How do we do this?

1A. We do this by creating 10 regional seats . Half of the seats must go to women and all of the seats have to go to a person of color. This would drastically increase diversity and representation in the senate. It’s also not as radical or partisan as you might guess. Other countries guarantee seats by gender and guarantee minority representation Norway, Iraq, and S. Africa are some examples. Even if every seat went to a black woman this would only increase their representation to 20/120 = 16% so this would be a great start. Long term we cannot stop with this proposal, because the U.S. has a tendency to treat our floors as ceilings, there would be pressure to push all of our black representatives to run for these seats instead of the traditional seats. However at the moment there are so few minorities in the senate that this problem would be unlikely to come up for a few years. The regions could be broken up a few different ways, the most important thing when we are designing this system is to remember the point of expanding the senate. Giving yet more representation to Wyoming and North Dakota does not increase democracy. So if it were up to me I would split Texas, California and FL up for the purposes of determining regional districts. South FL could be put in the same region as Colorado for example. Or maybe it would be more fair to have the natives of Hawaii in the same region as Maine. Maybe we could set up a truly regional system and have a nationwide at large seat. As you can see there are a lot of options.

1B. Give all of our territories and the District of Columbia 1 senator if they remain territories and 2 if they vote for statehood. This increases representation and also pushes the senate away from upholding U.S. imperialism. We could also guard against further imperialism by automatically granting territory occupied by the U.S for more than 10 years statehood with full voting benefits, debt cancellation and an automatic aid package — would we still be fighting in Afghanistan if we had to grant them statehood or would we have scrambled to come up with a peace plan a decade ago?

2. Get rid of the filibuster. This one keeps coming up in the news, with good reason. The filibuster is a Jim Crow relic that serves no valid purpose. Its stupid, it does not increase debate- the senate hasn’t debated anything since the reconstruction, why do we pretend otherwise? It does not force compromise, it forces inaction and a hail Mary flurry of activity to tack on everything a senator can sneak into a defense bill before the midnight deadline. Get rid of the Byrd rule too, it is just a watered down filibuster that deserves to die.

3. Limit debate/ “advice” and grant automatic “consent” to every single cabinet nominee except the Secretary of State, Defense, and Attorney General. Okay fellow political nerds, I hate to break it to you but most people don’t know what the Department of the Interior does or why they should care who runs it. I’ll go even further, most of the senators don’t either… The Senate thinks they are holding great power by insisting on meeting every single nominee for every single cabinet position. I think they are actually giving up all of their power by being reduced to an impediment to progress, they spend so much time on confirmations that they do not do much else. The senate should be given more power to impeach heads of departments who fail to give them information that they are legally required to give — looking at you AG Barr- but the issue is almost always with the head of the executive branch not their staff. The senate would function if they were more independent of the executives staffing decisions- especially when the senate has the power to subpoena each and every one of these cabinet heads at a moments notice, they just opt not to. Need more of a reason? There is absolutely nothing stopping the president from simply creating a new position called OMB2 and putting his rejected appointee there to do the exact same job. I mean Steven Miller and Steve Bannon both served in the Trump administration without being confirmed, were they any less powerful than Ben Carson?

3. Automatic consideration of a bill if it passes the House and 1/4 of the senate votes to take it up. Having two separate houses was an interesting idea 200 years ago, it’s a bit annoying today. We can keep the separation, but they shouldn’t be able to ignore each other. The Senate should be forced to consider a bill if the people’s house passes it. The Senate shouldn’t be at the whims of the majority leader — not a position in the constitution by the way. Each Senator should have to take a position on everything passed in the house not hide behind the leader. Take the power to kill bills away from the leader.

4. Bar senators who refuse to hold townhalls from running for reelection. If you do not meet with your constituents for six years, who are you representing? Senators should have to visit every Congressional District in their state by the first day of their fifth year of their term or be automatically barred from the ballot. Looking at you Marco Rubio. Sure this gives small states an advantage — the senators of Wyoming for example only have to make one stop while the senators in CA have 53. That’s fine they have 5 years, people running for president do it in weeks.

5. Give local government officials speaking rights in the Senate. How do you give local leaders more power and make the senate more responsive? Change the floor rules to have specific days for mayors, city council people, county commission to speak (maybe via Zoom since we see that has worked during Covid ) about issues in their cities. As it stands the senate has no reason and perverse disincentives to ever call on locally elected officials unless there is a scandal. I imagine that the Senate would have been quicker to act on the 2008 mortgage crisis if they knew there was a housing crisis happening, and why didn’t they know? Because the only institutions that look at mortgages, low income housing, land acquisition and the cost of living are Mayors and the senate — but they never talk to one another. Mayors at the moment also don’t have a way to bypass Governors which was an issue before Covid, and has been shown to be a crisis of its own. Particularly on gun control, water rights, climate change, healthcare access, wage reform — these are issues that Mayors feel the pressure to address but need the resources of the Federal government to fix. Why the senate and not the House? The Senate is the institution that was supposed to consult with other people in power to protect their power (originally land owning white men, but eventually graduating to protecting racist governors in the south to now finally to protecting presidents who try to overthrow their own government form prosecution) they can meet with other people in power to get their viewpoints fairly easily.

6. Raise their salaries. Senators are not poor by any means, but they do have a job with a lot of responsibility, risks and are sensitive to corrupting influences. Bumping their pay up to $250,000 makes sense to me. We should give a $10,000 bonus to new senators who earned less than $100,000 the previous year as well, being a senator requires a wardrobe upgrade, multiple homes and increased transportation costs. Its reasonable to suggest that as it stands only those who are already wealthy or those who have friends to subsidize their first few months in congress can afford to be a senator.

7. Limit their ability to earn income outside of their senate salary. No more owning stocks, even after leaving office- they regulate the stock market. Their money should be held in government owned banks until a year after their last term- they regulate the banks and confirm the people who determine interest rates. Any speaking fees need to be capped at $50,000 per event and taxed at 50% after the first speech (reset annually) for the first five years after they leave office. They need to be barred from joining any corporate boards for five years- they regulate corporations. They shouldn’t be allowed to earn any income from renting homes — for so many reasons, why would we think the people who regulate the housing markets should be able to profit from a system while ignoring homelessness? Basically lets limit them to earning money from their senate salary, any pensions they may have and their own personal creations -if they write a book for example. If they want to quit congress to open a Restaurant or be a CNN commentator they are welcome to do so at any time, they just can’t do both at the same time.

8. Increase the salary of senate staffers to a minimum of $80,000. Bar them from owning stocks as well. I see no reason for anyone who works to pass laws to have their decisions determined by the stock market.

9. The senate should vote at the start of each session on the order of legislative topics and have deadlines. For example in 2021 it was clear that Covid relief needed to be first, then any other crisis, any other priorities from the majority, then the minority, then open floor-that’s when you could invite the local official’s in. So for 2021 we could have: Covid Relief, Recession proofing our economy (economic reform — including taxes, minimum wage, wealth tax, student loans, etc. ), Climate change, Housing reform, and criminal justice reform by April 30th. Then Healthcare reform, Covid Relief part two, and education reform ( also urgent but not timely) by June 30th. Foreign aide, defense bill, and anything conflict related should be done by July 31st. Infrastructure, energy production and transportation may take a while but better be done by August 31st. The government budget could be done by October 31st. The majority and Minority priorities that haven’t already come up could take place in Nov, and Dec. without the pressure of elections, budget deadlines or undefined priorities coming up. The weeks before Christmas could be open floor. Bills should automatically come up for consideration a week before the deadline, a working group (maybe all from the regional delegation) could write bills that would automatically be considered if another bill is not proposed. Think Obama’s nuclear option but less nuclear, an infrastructure bill that gives funding to projects that reduce traffic and CO2 emissions could automatically be up for consideration if no alternative is proposed, this would lead to senators actually doing the jobs they spent millions of dollars trying to get.

10. Judicial vacancies should be filled within two months of nomination. Our problems with the judicial system isn’t really the judges — yeah there are really bad judges — it’s the laws… The supreme court gets to chip away at the 1965 voting rights act, because it hasn’t been updated since then. The senate can overwhelm the courts with action — courts are still fighting over Obamacare, could they really strike down Medicare for all AND the AHCA before the market adjusts to accept universal healthcare? There should also be a senate judiciary review board that can view complaints on judges as they come up, not when they are being confirmed for the Supreme Court.