Should The House Of Lords Be Abolished?

I don't remember the last time the House of Lords met on two consecutive Sundays. But yesterday it was to vote on the conference report for a huge ($1.1 billion) appropriations bill. The bill passed 57-35, 5 obstructionist GOP opponents and 3 Democratic supporters out of town (the 2 kooks from Oklahoma, Coburn and Inhofe trying to start riots in København). Although Lieberman voted with the Democrats, passage was helped along by Thad Cochran (R-MS), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Dick Shelby (R-AL). Two afraid-of-their-own-shadow ConservaDems, Evan Bayh and Claire McCaskill, joined the Republicans in opposition as did Russ Feingold (who ritually votes against earmarks). Harry Reid had ended the filibuster of the bill Saturday early morning with a successful cloture motion which passed 60-34 (again, Bayh, McCaskill and Feingold voting with the Republicans while Shelby, Collins and Cochran voted with the Democrats).

The bill includes budgets for funding for dozens of departments and agencies, as well as for the District of Columbia, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, things the Republicans like grandstanding about to scare seniors but, of course, always oppose in the end, like they did yesterday.

Daniel De Groot has been doing a brilliant series at OpenLeft that leads one to the conclusion that it's long past time for the Senate to be abolished. Part I starts a look at the filibuster and a quote from Anti-Federalist #64, writings by disgruntled Founding Fathers George Clinton, Robert Yates, Richard Henry Lee, Mercy Otis Warren, Patrick Henry and Melancton Smith, who were partially placated by a promise to include a Bill of Rights. They never quite did get their heads around the designed-to-be-anti-democratic Senate.

I hope it is evident from reason and authority, that in the constitution of the senate there is much cunning and little wisdom; that we have much to fear from it, and little to hope, and then it must necessarily produce a baneful aristocracy, by which the democratic rights of the people will be overwhelmed.

De Groot concludes his first installment with a basic condemnation of the Senate across the board, pointing out that "the basic design of bicameralism in the US combined with the undemocratic manner in which Senators are apportioned, the unrepresentative way in which they are elected and their three times longer terms of office already creates a situation where the Senate becomes the more important chamber by virtue of being the one that is more difficult to motivate to act. If you think about choosing not to act is "policy" just as much as choosing any particular action, then you have a situation where merely by stopping legislation, the Senate is affirmatively directing the course of the US government far more often than the House. Curtailing the filibuster would largely correct this problem, though of course Senators would still be on average more conservative so it wouldn't eliminate the problem entirely."

Yesterday's episode, the third installment is the best yet and demands an end to the filibuster, concluding that "it is increasingly clear that the flaws in American democracy are most evident, and exacerbated by the Senate. In a past era, Progressives were able to muster enough democratic willpower to compel the appointed aristocrats in the Senate to agree to face the voters, in passing the 17th amendment, simply a remarkable feat. Fixing what ails the institutions will require a similar effort to curtail the Senate, or enhance the role of the House. It isn't 1787 anymore, and the founders' conception isn't working. Want to fix the Congressional/Executive power imbalance? Fixing the House/Senate imbalance is a necessary prerequisite to that. The anti-federalists called this one right." As did AbolishTheSenate.org.