Every other Tuesday, the team behind Civics 101 joins NHPR’s All Things Considered host Julia Barnett to talk about how our democratic institutions actually work.
This week, Civics 101 host Nick Capodice and Julia take a look at why the framers of the Constitution designed Congress the way they did — and if its design still makes sense 250 years later.
Transcript
So let’s get right to it, Nick. Why is Congress set up the way it is?
Before I talk about why the framers did what they did, I have to point out that there are positives and negatives to interrogating the thoughts of these guys. I love — more than anyone — learning about what James Madison and others thought when determining our new system of government. At the same time, I got to say, there were a lot of people who had completely different desires and philosophies involved in this, so anyone can go through all their writings and cherry-pick what they like to make a political point.
That caveat aside, it was conventional wisdom at the time that a successful legislature would be a bicameral legislature: two different chambers of Congress that had slightly different operations and powers.
Why was it conventional wisdom, though? Why opt for a bicameral congress?
Well first off, lots of states had their own constitutions at this point, and the majority of them had two chambers in their congresses. Second, the United States had been running under a tremendously unsuccessful system of government for a while, through the Articles of Confederation, our first constitution. And that was a one-chamber congress: It was unicameral. So we didn’t want it to be like that.
And finally, a two-chamber congress was pretty similar to where [the framers] came from, England, which had the House of Commons and the House of Lords. But what the framers then had to figure out was, if there are gonna be two chambers, how will they be different? What will they represent?
So what did they finally decide?
Well, this decision was one of the most hotly contested debates in the Constitutional Convention, and it was all about representation. And this is a classic Civics 101 story.
The big states backed the Virginia plan, which said both chambers should have a number of representatives dependent on the state’s population. And [there was] the New Jersey plan, which said each state should have an equal number of reps. The "Great Compromise" reached was that the House has representatives based on population of the state, and the Senate comprises two representatives from each state, no matter how small. This is why a state like Wyoming has one senator representing 290,000 people, and California has one senator of equal power representing about 20 million people.
So here we are, 250 years later. How has Congress held up? Is there anything going on today that might surprise the framers? Something that would shock James Madison?
I asked a Madison scholar, Jack Rakove, that exact question. And he said two things stood out. First, that the average time a member of Congress serves right now is much longer than in our first two centuries. Until 1900, the average number of years a member of the House served was three years: one or two terms. And a senator wasn’t that much more! Nowadays, an average congressperson serves 10 years and a senator, 16 [years].
Also, the makeup of Congress was, in the 1800s, people who came from other professions, [like] doctors, lawyers, priests, tavernkeepers, farmers, etc. Very few people came to Congress from other political positions. Nowadays, the largest former occupation of members of Congress is…politician. And Madison would have thought that very odd indeed.
