Posted on 07/25/2010 11:40:12 AM PDT by Big Bureaucracy
At the beginning there was the desk. Actually 48 desks that New York cabinet maker Thomas Constantine made for the Senate Chamber at newly reconstructed Capitol building in 1819. The US Senators actually did their work on that desk. They were all together in the Senate Chamber...In 100 years the space for books was doubled and ventilation was added to the work space.
The things really got out of control at the beginning of the twentieth century. The tiny red mahogany desks were the Senate primary working space until the first Senate office building opened in 1909. ...in 1941 on the eve of the World War II Senators voted themselves a second office building. The Federal Bureaucracy was going global and more and more staffers needed desks and offices... Bureaucracy’s main product is… more bureaucracy and US Senate outgrew the two buildings office space by 1970.
Hart Senate Office Building was finished in 1982. The offices floor plans were the same as the one in Dirksen Senate Building. The number of staffers in between the construction of the two buildings grew from 2500 to 7000 bureaucrats in need of desks and office space...
As I drink my tea I wonder if we can leave the Senate Office buildings to the staffers and drag the Senators back to their original work space: the tiny red mahogany desks in the Old Senate Chamber.
They can have a phone and a computer – there is enough space for that. They can sit again all together in one room – shoulder to shoulder – look each other in the eye and talk, debate and sometimes fight like in the good old days.
(Excerpt) Read more at bigbureaucracy.com ...
Both my Senators are Dems...so what's the point of two.
Or make them stay at their own states to be closer to their constituency and vote from there.
We already pay for their state offices - in the modern time there is no need for them to be physically present in Washington DC.
KILL THAT G*D DAMMNED 17th Amendment!
An heir and a spare...
Everyone knows you need a second to fight a duel.
Do YOU have any IDEA what the 17th is?
Yes, I do. Have you any idea what the consequences of repealing it would result in ? Nearly half the states in this country (more than half at the moment) would never elect a Republican Senator again because of the makeup of the state legislatures (not to mention the states with GOP legislatures would elect people more like Lindsey Graham and Olympia Snowe rather than Jim DeMint). I’ve debated this issue many times on FR, and it is an epically bad idea.
Our Founding fathers didn’t think so. I will put my lot in with THEM over Woodrow Wilson ANY DAY!
So you have no problem with a potential permanent Democrat majority in the Senate (which is what the repeal of the 17th would result in at present) ? Thankfully we have an amendment process to correct the flawed aspects of the Constitution, as the 17th provided for. I do not consider your attempts to disenfranchise my vote for Senator to be a particularly sound notion, hence my reaction to yours and other anti-17th people as a resounding “Hell, NO !”
Furthermore, why not abolish EVERY amendment? None of them were in the constitution that the founders ratified and enacted into law back in 1789. Even the bill of rights was added later on. Can you say red herring?
Not ONE of you "abolish the 17th" types who continually invoke "the founders" have ANY intention of going back to the "original" version of Constitution.
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