“The House of Representatives remains the most democratic part of the national constitutional system.”
The American people reconfirmed on Nov. 6 that they are content with divided government. While President Obama had an impressive electoral victory and the Democrats picked up seats in the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives remains under Republican control.
Although some public officials and commentators are downplaying the significance of the fact that Republicans held onto the House, this response to the election flies in the face of the constitutional status of the House as the most important “democratic” part of our national governmental system.
Leading Founders like James Madison may not have wanted a pure democratic system of government for the United States, but they understood that to be legitimate a government must be based on the consent of the people, and it must be committed to protecting the fundamental rights of the people. What they devised for the American people was a democratic republic or a representative form of democracy.
Evidence of the Framers’ commitment to creating a democratic form of government, even if not a pure democracy, can be found in the very first article of the Constitution, and specifically in their decision to make the legislative department, composed of the greatest number of representatives of the people, the preeminent department of the government.
Not only is the legislative branch the recipient of a larger number of formidable governmental powers (see Article 1, Section 8) than the executive and judicial branches, but Congress is given the power to remove through impeachment the highest officials of the other two departments of the national government while at the same time retaining the power to discipline, to the point of removing, its own members.
What is often lost from sight today, however, is that the Framers entrusted the House of Representatives, or the most democratic part of Congress, with the power that many early Americans feared most of all: the power to initiate revenue/tax legislation.
Even at a time when constitutional illiteracy is a major problem, many American school children are familiar with the insistence of colonial Americans that there be “no taxation without representation.”
Colonial Americans knew what Chief Justice John Marshall knew about the power to tax, that is, that it is the “power to destroy.” What it destroys, of course, is property, and property rights were sacred in colonial America.
The decision to entrust the initiation of tax legislation to the House was a purposeful and significant decision by the Framers. They understood that the part of our governmental system that was closest to the people should have special influence over the power to tax and thus to destroy property.
It was not by chance that House members have two-year terms, compared to four and six years for presidents and senators. Keeping House members on a short leash is an effective way to promote attentiveness to the will of the people.
The House of Representatives remains the most democratic part of the national constitutional system. Americans are more likely to meet their Congressman or congresswoman than either one of their U.S. senators or a president. They are more likely to be able to engage a member of the House than the Senate in a serious conversation about national policy and, not surprisingly, we instinctively look to our local congressman or congresswoman for assistance in matters involving federal agencies (e.g., VA benefits).
The constitutional status of the House, and the “mandate” that can be claimed by the party that controls the House, warrants proper attention if we are serious about being a “constitutional people” and if we are intent on preserving the bona fides of our “constitutional republic.”
If, for example, we embrace the argument that a popular mandate claimed by a president trumps Constitution-based institutional considerations, then we are effectively abandoning “constitutional politics” for the dangerous “power politics” that we properly condemned in the Declaration of Independence.
Affirming the constitutional significance of the House is not the same as declaring that the Framers intended this legislative chamber to call all the shots when it comes to crafting policies for the nation or that members of the House are not obligated to exercise good judgment.
It is to say, however, that the Framers understood that the opinions of the people reflected by their representatives in the House deserve to be taken very seriously and that the most democratic part of the national government should have considerable influence over tax policy.
The fact that the country has changed since the Founding should not justify abandonment of constitutional reasoning. Mechanisms for appropriate constitutional reforms have been built into the system. What is not desirable or beneficial is the substitution of “power politics” for contitutional politics,” or the substitution of public opinion polls for constitutional reasoning.
Constitutional politics, unlike power politics (represented in the modern era by the excesses associated with racial segregation), is rooted in both the ends of the American republic and the institutional arrangements designed to assist us in achieving those ends.
The American republic is constructed the way it is (e.g., two-year terms for members of the House, six-year terms for senators, a federal system with power divided among national, state and local governments, etc.) for good reasons.
Political strategies that involve depreciating the constitutional significance of any part of our governmental system, including the role of the House of Representatives, are at odds with a civic culture that values constitutional reasoning and that validates our claim to be a “constitutional people.”
Source: David Marion, Elliott Professor if Government and Foreign Affairs and director of the Wilson Center for Leadership at Hampton Sydney College. Op-Ed, Richmond Times Dispatch, December 3, 2012