I’m aware of the “great compromises” that created the 2 body system system with the senate being generally the superior with special ratification and consent powers.
Reason: Sovereign authority for the Federal government comes from the people but only indirectly thou their capacity as separate states.
The one thing the house gets of course is the originate spending bills.
Reason: Not all States are created equal in terms of money, indeed money is only produced by people and thus the larger states tend to produce and consume much more money then the smaller states, as the power to spend must be connected to the source of that spending as closely as possible it is critical that the purse starts with the House. But of course its also just as important that the Federal power to tax is equally in sync with the population. They of course broke that with the 16th amendment.
1) I don’t think a house of 10,000+ members could be convened in any one place, as a result it would be prudent to increase that number per rep a bit. Perhaps 1 per every 300 thousand so that we would have a body of approximately only a 1000.
The problem with a large house are not just the issue i mentioned above but also logistically. If the Congress is expected to act as an authorizer of action and oversea of executive orders. Then asking 10,000 people to convene in any one place to authorize war or something in the middle of a crises is to be quite frank unthinkable.
The other issue with a house of such a size is that the human mind was not build to manage that many people. Indeed one of the whole points of Representative democracy as apposed to direct democracy is the very fact that we can’t deal with numbers that large effectively and are thus forced to go with the crowd of allies more and more.
Your right in that it would be equal more expensive to buy them off but then again so would simply diverting the more expensive and valuable functions to the State legislators and local governments.
2) I certainly agree with the propose of the senate although repealing the 17th is not so much about granting the State legislator Recall ability as to keep the senators answerable to the people as it is about keeping the senators protective of state autonomy and power-interest.(thus Federalism).
The Function of the Senate is to help keep the Federal Government from going beyond its bounds in the first place, not so much to make policy as to limit federal policy to actual federal issue.
Lastly there is interestingly enough no authority in the Federal Constitution for Federal LEO’s instead Congress was suppose to be reliant upon calling up the state Militia(a volunteer force) to do that job. The reason of course(as was argued) being that the Militia is not inclined to wage war upon their own rights, nor the State which appointed their officers and conducted their training at Federal command.
As a result the Militia was presumed to be the safest possible force to execute Federal laws consistent with the consent of the governed.
It should be noted that if our States are to push Washington back into its place purging our respective National guards of Federal loyalist officer and training is a vital first step.
Just anther reason why we NEED control of our State Government more then anything else.
I enjoyed readin that last post. I wanted to ask about your thoughts. One of the FAQ questions on the 30,000 site I linked to referred to assembling all of the congressional members into a single place. I contended that the only reason that it was necessary at any point was because of the speed of connunication during that time period, and the time it took to travel to convene.
It is suggested that smaller, regional buildings (like the circuit appelate courts) could house the several hundred representatives for the region, in as much as they actually were required to convene.
Furthermore, I understand the “go with the crowd” mentality, but I believe it’ll happen to a degree, no matter what. Even in Israel’s tiny, coalition based government.
P.S. I didn’t mean to bring up the Great compromise ias an insult, but to factor in that the very purpose was out of concern for that issue. It worked well, in my opinion, but the unintended consequence of limited representatives is that no one could access their reps. (The intended consequence being a consolidation of power). In any event, we agree, the power must be restored to the states, and MUCH MORE IMPORTANTLY, to the people. That can only happen when people take responsibility for themselves and quit abdicating conscious thought for DVR’d “Dancing with the Stars” and food stamps. Liberty matters, and some of us still want it!