Ben Sasse’s Senate Reforms Won’t Help Anyone



Ben Sasse’s Senate Reforms Won’t Help Anyone

by Jonathan Bernstein, bloomberg.com

September 10, 2020 06:40 AM

On the wrong track.

Photo by: Photographer: Andrew Harnik/Pool/Getty

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Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse is now labeling himself a Senate reformer, perhaps in an early bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. As a means of drawing attention to oneself, ideas are good! Certainly better than, say, demonizing the other party or some demographic group. Unfortunately, the ideas offered in this case aren’t good at all.

Sasse laid out his reform agenda in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Sept. 8. Half of the piece is devoted to changing Senate rules, for example on budgeting, to advance conservative policy goals. I’ll leave those to partisans, because they’re basically partisan proposals.

The other half, which is about the Senate’s design, is what troubles me. Sasse wants to repeal the 17th amendment and return Senate elections to state legislatures; limit senators to a single 12-year term; and eliminate standing committees. (While he’s at it, he also wants to ban cameras at Senate hearings in favor of transcripts and audio.)

To begin with, this is a formula for weakening the Senate. Yes, some members of Congress stick around too long. But on the whole term limits are a way of removing expertise from the chamber, leaving senators at the mercy of those with more experience — the White House and the bureaucracy, interest groups and political parties. The same goes for eliminating standing committees, which are one of the ways that lawmakers acquire specialized knowledge. Like it or not, public policy is complicated. Learning even one broad area — foreign policy, the military, banking, agriculture, civil rights, education and so on — takes time and effort. Sure, any first-year senator can handle voting with his or her party. But to become a real legislator requires experience and specialization. 

What’s more, the committee system limits the influence of party leaders precisely because it gives a subset of senators strong influence within their policy areas. Take that too far, as was the case with the very strong committee system in the middle of the last century, and parties become too weak. But currently it’s the committees that are relatively weak in both chambers. For Congress to reassert itself, committees need to regain some of their old autonomy — not be eliminated altogether.

Sasse’s worst idea, however, is to elect senators to a single long term, which would subvert the entire concept of representation. Representation is a process: It involves making promises during an initial campaign, governing with those promises in mind, and then, crucially, returning home to explain one’s actions and renew one’s promises in the next campaign. Sasse is worried that re-election concerns may encourage senators to duck responsibility for their decisions. But surely they’d have little reason to care what their constituents want if the process of representation is eliminated. It’s simply naive to think that without electoral incentives politicians would be public-spirited and work for the common interest. What’s more likely is that instead of caring what their current employers (the voters) want, they’d care about what future employers (generally with narrow private interests) want instead.

Finally, while there’s nothing inherently wrong with the indirect election of some officials, returning Senate elections to state legislatures is a terrible idea. State elections have already become strongly partisan and nationalized; putting U.S. Senate seats on the line would only accelerate that process, thereby further crowding out state issues and hollowing out the federalist system. 

Hey, I do agree with Sasse’s call to build some housing for senators (I’d build some for members of the House as well). I don’t think it would reduce polarization much, but it would make it easier for less-wealthy politicians to run for national office, and it might help keep them in Congress a bit longer than is the case now. What I’d really like is to restore the habit of lawmakers moving their families to Washington. But okay: I’ll call this one good idea. Now if Sasse could just learn a little more about the process of representation.

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Jonathan Bernstein at jbernstein62@bloomberg.net

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