U.S. Government: Bicameral Legislature, Federalism & Texas

The Framers and the Bicameral Legislature

Why did the Framers of the Constitution create a bicameral legislature? Was part of the reason for a two-house legislature the idea that it would be more difficult to pass legislation, thereby serving as a check on a runaway legislature? What impact does this have today, and is it easy for Congress to agree on legislation?

There are three main reasons the Framers chose a bicameral design.

The primary reason was one of historical precedent. Even as the American colonists revolted against British rule in the Revolutionary War, they quietly drew many of their ideas about government from their colonial experience as British subjects. The British Parliament had two houses — an upper chamber, the House of Lords, filled with representatives of the nobility, and a lower chamber, the House of Commons, filled with representatives of ordinary people. That precedent shaped the thinking of the Constitution's framers.

The secondary reason was more theoretical. The framers' commitment to checks and balances made them wary that a unicameral legislature might concentrate excessive power in a single institution. By dividing legislative authority between the House and the Senate, the two chambers would check each other's influence, theoretically preventing either from ever achieving tyrannical supremacy (Romzek et al., 2009).

The third, and arguably most significant, reason was one of practical politics. The Constitutional Convention brought together delegates from twelve of the original thirteen states — Rhode Island chose to boycott the proceedings entirely. Those delegates came from both small states and large states. The small states, fearful of losing influence in the new government, insisted that representation in Congress be granted on an equal basis to all states, regardless of size. The large states argued just as vehemently that representation ought to be based on population; because larger states had more voters, they should have more votes in Congress. This fierce dispute over representation dragged on throughout the summer of 1787, threatening to break apart the entire Constitutional Convention. A bicameral legislature provided the opportunity for compromise — in fact, for what became known as "The Great Compromise." Small states received their equal representation in the Senate, larger states obtained their proportional representation in the House, and both sides went home satisfied (Gerber, 2009).

But was the Great Compromise actually so great? If the primary principle of democracy is "one person, one vote," then how democratic is the United States Senate? (Romzek et al., 2009). At present, the largest state — California, home to more than 36.5 million people — has a population nearly 78 times larger than the smallest state, Wyoming, with just over 500,000 residents. Yet both states have identical Senate representation: two seats each. This effectively means that one Wyoming voter carries roughly 78 times the Senate weight of one Californian. Is that fair? Is that democratic? On the one hand, the current arrangement does ensure that smaller states like Wyoming are not entirely ignored in national politics. On the other hand, it seems difficult to justify denying Californians — and Texans, New Yorkers, and residents of other large states — the right to "one person, one vote" (Monk, 2009).

Whatever one thinks about the fairness of equal representation in the Senate, the system is deeply entrenched. Article V of the Constitution ensures that no state can permanently be denied its equal Senate representation without its own consent — and Wyoming is no more likely to agree to that today than the small states were in 1787 (Romzek et al., 2009).

The Senate's power is considerable. Its one hundred members have the authority to block legislation approved by the 435 members of the House of Representatives or prevent it from becoming law. Senators also possess the filibuster privilege, which is not available to members of the House. This illustrates that true voter equality does not fully exist within the American system. Within the United States government there are three branches: the Legislative, the Executive, and the Judicial. Congress (the Legislative Branch) creates the laws; the President (the Executive Branch) implements the laws; and the Supreme Court (the Judicial Branch) interprets the laws and determines their constitutionality. These three branches, operating as checks and balances, are designed to ensure that no single part of the government becomes excessively powerful (Raskin, 2010).

Bureaucracy: Necessity, Problems, and Reform

How necessary is bureaucracy? How can we tell whether we have too much, too little, or the wrong kind?

Often tedious and inefficient purchasing and hiring rules, for example, are in place not primarily to improve administrative efficiency but to make these processes more open, fair, and inclusive. Similarly, measures that require citizen participation in administrative affairs aim not to make administration more efficient but to make it more democratic (Monk, 2009). Given this tension, bureaucrats find themselves constantly making judgments about how to balance these two sets of values.

Some scholars have called for a radically new understanding of bureaucracy — one that would enable administrative agencies to respond more effectively to a persistent problem: the relationship between agencies and the citizens they serve. In this view, the problem is not solved by efficient management alone. Rather, it stems from an existing model that treats clients primarily as irrational children and administrators as rational adults. This perspective challenges the assumption that administrative behavior is as rational or efficient as that model suggests. A "dialectical" way of thinking about bureaucracies and their clients has been proposed as an alternative (Monk, 2009).

In a dialectical model, the relationship between client and administrator is one between equals rather than being based on an adult-child or therapeutic hierarchy. The goal is not to reshape the client but to enhance the client's capacity to negotiate effectively. The administrative structure necessary to support such a relationship is non-hierarchical: roles are fluid and diverse perspectives are accommodated. While implementing such a model in large-scale public organizations raises difficult practical questions, its relevance to effective democratic governance is considered greater now than ever.

Reflecting on bureaucratic power, some scholars return to the views of the American founders. Contrary to conventional wisdom, administration was quite important to the architects of the American system — but their thinking about administration was grounded in political rather than organizational theory, making their perspective seem unfamiliar in modern eyes (Gerber, 2009).

The founders feared the potential of bureaucracy to interfere in the private lives of citizens and to upset the carefully drawn constitutional system of checks and balances. The sources of this threat lay in administrative monopoly over crucial information, in the self-interested motives of administrators, in the tendency toward "pork barrel politics" (serving individual constituents rather than the general good), and in excessive legislative control over administrative agencies (Schattschneider, 2005). Despite changes in context, the founders' concerns remain relevant. Separating the study of bureaucracy from larger political theories is dangerous — rigorous research into the workings of bureaucracy, rather than anecdotal analysis, is therefore essential.

How a Bill Becomes a Law in Texas

To introduce a bill, the sponsor must first prepare a draft in a specific format and style; staff at the Office of Legislative Counsel typically provide this service. In the House of Representatives, members or delegates place a signed copy of their bill in the "hopper," a box located next to the rostrum at the front of the chamber. Senators either give a copy of their bill to the clerk or request recognition from the presiding officer and formally introduce their legislation by speech. The clerks then assign specific identifying numbers. Once received in that chamber, a bill is assigned to one or more committees for consideration. After its formal introduction, the legislation appears in the next issue of the Congressional Record. A copy also goes to the Government Printing Office so that the text is accessible to other members and the general public (Monk, 2009).

The bill is assigned to the appropriate committee by the Speaker of the House or the presiding officer in the Senate. Quite often, the actual referral decision is made by the House or Senate parliamentarian. Controversial bills — such as those addressing abortion — may be referred to more than one committee and may be divided so that different provisions are sent to different committees. The Speaker of the House may place time restrictions on committees (Raskin, 2010). Bills are placed on the calendar of the committee to which they have been assigned, and failing to act on a bill is equivalent to killing it. Bills in the House can only be released from committee without a formal committee vote through a discharge petition signed by a majority of House membership.

The difficulties of passing major legislation are well illustrated by the failure of health-care reform. Some analysts argued that the administration's fatal mistake was not attempting to build a bipartisan centrist coalition from the beginning. In fact, White House proponents reached out to moderate Senate Republicans throughout the process. Disagreement on core substantive elements — and the limited fiscal flexibility created by the deficit — prevented the construction of a broad coalition, not any unwillingness to negotiate. The employer mandate issue illustrates this clearly: moderate Republicans who had tentatively supported such a mandate backed away under intense small-business lobbying pressure, yet the only alternative funding mechanism for universal health care was a large new tax — a political impossibility (Monk, 2009).

Abandoning universal coverage would have required the administration to break a core campaign promise, would in the view of many experts have made reform ineffective in controlling medical costs, and would have caused the defection of enough congressional Democrats to defeat the plan (Browne et al., 2005). The lack of strong public support for such comprehensive, non-incremental change was the fundamental problem. Even if the proponents' public relations campaign could have been better timed and executed, the White House could not devote singular attention to the issue that its opponents could, its resources were far smaller, and it faced a more difficult task: explaining a complex problem in a media environment hostile to complexity and selling a complicated solution to a public skeptical of government's ability to solve problems.

The office of Governor in Texas is, by design, quite weak. Following the elections of 1873, Democrats recaptured many elected offices despite pressure from the State Police. The incumbent Governor's seat was contested but was ultimately upheld by the Texas Supreme Court, whose members were all gubernatorial appointees. When President Grant declined requests to send federal troops, the Governor reluctantly stepped down. The new Texas Constitution of 1876, drafted at a subsequent constitutional convention, deliberately weakened the state government significantly.

Today, the Governor's formal powers are largely limited to appointments to more than 300 boards and commissions — approximately 2,500 positions — command of the Texas National Guard and Texas Rangers, and the line-item veto. Nearly every other office, including most boards and commissions, is filled through popular election. The Governor must therefore be an exceptionally skilled persuader to influence the Legislature — which holds the law-making and budgetary authority — because the Governor has no direct formal authority over it (Schattschneider, 2005).