Ask anyone, Republican or Democrat, and they will tell you that Washington is dysfunctional.
President Trump echoed this when signing the 2,232-page, $1.3 trillion omnibus bill. His frustration with Congress was obvious during remarks in the stately Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House. He called for the rules of the upper house of Congress to be reformed by eliminating the filibuster, thus reducing the threshold for passage of bills from 60 votes to 51, a simple majority of the 100 senators.
Trump is right, but his proposal doesn’t go far enough. Congress should take reform a step further by addressing the dysfunction — caused by the popular election of senators — through an American version of what the British have with the Parliament Act 1911.
That act allows the popularly elected House of Commons to overrule the unelected House of Lords, the upper house of Parliament, in specific cases such as a government budget bill. It came after the opposition party, which controlled the Lords, blocked the budget passed by the Commons, controlled by the governing party.
While widely accepted today, senators were not elected until the ratification of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution in 1913. Previously, they were chosen by state legislatures while members of the House of Representatives were popularly elected every two years.
Ever since then, senators can claim a small-‘d’ democratic mandate. No longer can the House exclusively claim to solely represent the will of the people. In fact, one could even argue that the Senate has a greater mandate, as senators are elected statewide.
What is needed most is is a legislative mechanism to resolve the deadlock caused by a Senate that rejects, delays, obstructs, or otherwise fails to consider bills duly passed by the House.
As a conservative, I am inclined to oppose reform simply for the sake of reform. However, it is clear that only something as radical as the Parliament Act could end the dysfunction in Congress: The House needs a way to overrule a Senate that doesn’t act on or rejects budget bills that have passed the House. That might mean the House can pass a budget or appropriations bill if the Senate hasn’t acted in a given period of time (perhaps three months). Alternatively, perhaps a super-majority of the House could vote to send a budget or appropriations bill straight to the president’s desk, without any Senate action.
The Founding Fathers recognized the legitimacy of the popularly elected House of Representatives, as the Constitution requires budget bills to originate in the lower house. Yet for years the Republican-controlled House has passed budget bills only for them to die in the Senate, where minority Democrats can obstruct and block the GOP from enacting the political program that gave them a majority at the ballot box. (The dysfunction is only worse when a different party controls each house.)
This has forced the federal government to budget through stopgap measures, be it continuing resolutions or the recently enacted omnibus bill that runs through the end of September. It has also denied the majority, with its unified control of the legislative and executive branches, the right to govern.
Yes, Trump achieved his long-held goal of an increase in defense spending, but he was also forced to sign something that actually delivered major political victories to the minority Democrats — you know, the party that lost in 2016. So much for the old adage that elections have consequences.
This is unacceptable — and I’m not even being partisan. I would say the same if minority Republicans were obstructing a Democratic majority.
It is beyond time to end the dysfunction by reforming Congress and allowing the majority to do what the voters elected them to do: Govern.
Dennis Lennox is a public affairs consultant and a political commentator.
