However, if the 17th Amendment hadn't been passed then it might not be the case right now.
If the voters of a state knew that whoever controlled the state houses would determine who their senators were, then they might vote differently. Just like we conservatives are cajoled into voting for inferior Republican candidates just so we can control who ends up in the Supreme Court, Democrats would be cajoled into supporting undesirable candidates to make sure that the state's Senators were Democrat.
Also, the real problem is not who chooses the Senators. The real problem is that the Feds are the only branch of government that can run deficits indefinitely. Over time our state governments have willingly ceded powers over to the Fed because they can't afford to pay for all the goodies their constituencies beg for. The states let the feds write the checks and then follow the mandates set by the feds.
There is some grumbling, but no real change.
Remember it was individuals that fought for Bundy's rights not the state of Nevada.
ping
Amendment 17 changed the Senate into a more-exclusive, more-expensive version of the House.
Yeah, let the socialist state bosses of pork and regulations choose the senators. They’ll finish crushing what little remains of the true private sector.
Since the probability of repealing the 17th amendment is near zero, time spent even discussing the subject is a waste.
There aren’t enough truly conservative voters, but truly conservative politicians in state assemblies are rare indeed.
Horrible, it tipped the form of our government from representative republic towards representative democracy. Not good.
“Bring out your dead (horses).”
It’s whipping time.
I believe that it was an incredibly bad idea, intended by the “progressives” to move the type of American government from a constitutional republic, with strong limitations on what the government can do, to a democracy, which would eventually devolve into the sort of progressive utopia that have never worked.
Mark
Are you aware of the Founding States division of federal and state government powers evidenced by the 10th Amendment?
But more importantly regarding 10th Amendment-protected state powers, are you aware that a previous generation of state sovereignty-respecting justices had clarified that Congress is prohibited from appropriating taxes in the name of state power issues, essentially any issue that Congress cannot justify under its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers? This is evidenced by the following excerpt.
”Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” -Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
And regarding constitutionally justifiable federal taxes, are you aware that one of the very few domestic services that the states have constitutionally authorized Congress to regulate, tax and spend for is the US Mail Service (1.8.7), the states having never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to establish other well-known federal government social spending programs, Social Security and Medicare as examples.
The bottom line is that the constitutionally limited power federal government is not working as the Founding States had intended, the 17th Amendment being the main reason that we now have an unconstitutionally big federal government on our backs imo.
More specifically, corrupt, post-17th Amendment ratification senators are not doing their job to protect the interests of the states in Congress as the Founding States had established the Senate to do as previously mentioned. Corrupt senators are actually hurting the states that they are supposed to be protecting by helping to pass bills which not only steal 10th Amendment-protected state powers, but also steal state revenues uniquely associated with those powers in the form of unconstitutional federal taxes. Again, Social Security and Medicare are examples of unconstitutonal federal spending programs imo.
And the main reason that the corrupt feds establish constitutionally unauthorized federal social spending programs is to buy votes from low-information citizens imo, citizens who are clueless to the fact that the feds have no constitutional authority to establish such programs.
The ill-conceived 17th Amendment needs to disappear, and corrupt senators who hurt the states that they are supposed to be protecting by helping to pass vote-winning but unconstitutional bills which steal state powers and state revenues associated with those powers along with it.
The 17th Amendment basically created a second House of Representatives where pandering to the people became more important than protecting the states’ rights.
When Tom Foley was speaker it was reported that he received 90 % of his contributions from outside the state. I am guessing senators receive significant money from outside the state, and they then become beholden to them. In such instances they do not remotely represent the interests of their states.
A wretched and horrible amendment to the Constitution. For every Jeff Sessions we get saddled wth 25 John McCains.
We would get a better CONgress if we selected the members at random. But all of this discussion of how we pick the people who lord it over us misses a much more important question:
Should we have a CONgress at all?
At no time in my memory has CONgress been an effective institution. It’s rife with corruption, anti-freedom sentiments, and sheer incompetence. At no time in my memory has CONgress acted as a meaningful check on executive power.
So why do we preserve this institution? What do we get from it of value?