Freepmail to jump on or off the train.
First, as I've mentioned in related threads, one of the reasons that the Founding States established the federal Senate was arguably to police appropriations bills originating in the HoR to make sure that such bills complied with Congress's Section 8-limited powers.
In fact, as I've been posting in related threads today, Justice John Marshall had officially clarified that Congress is prohibited from laying taxes in the name of state power issues, essentially issues which Congress cannot justify under Section 8.
"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.
So it was probably one of the Senate's jobs to kill HoR appropriations bills which not only wrongly usurped 10A protected state powers, but also stole state revenues associated with those unique powers.
Regarding 17A, I now argue that it is not the problem concerning today's unconstitutionally big federal government. After all, Senators take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution regardless who elects them.
The problem with 17A is that it shows how badly citizens had become detached from the Constitution and its history by the 1910s. After all, mostly rural citizens may have had a keen interest in how much a postage stamp cost, Congress's power to regulate the postal service arguably the only exception to otherwise not having any constitutional authority to regulate intrastate commerce, but I doubt it.
It makes more sense that the OWG Progressive Movement had succeeded in spooking bored, Constitution-ignorant citizens into pressuring their state lawmakers to ratify 17A. This is evidenced by the states later not working hard enough to protect their sovereignty when Constitution-ignoring socialist FDR essentially encouraged Congress to ignore its Article V requirement to petition the states for specific new powers before establishing his constitutionally indefensible New Deal spending programs.
And today's Constitution-ignorant voters still haven't been taught that candidates who run for federal office don't have the constitutional authority to tax and spend for most of the federal services that they promise to voters to get themselves elected.