THREE OBSERVATIONS in the wake of last week’s vote to raise the US debt ceiling: Members of the House squabbled; senators were level-headed. There is hope for those who fear government is gridlocked. And the Constitution proved itself once again a well-crafted basis of government.
The vote, you will remember, came the day before the United States was set to default, an event, economists claimed, that would cause the stock market to crash, the world economy to sink into another recession, and the United States to lose its AAA credit rating. Luckily, the United States didn’t default, with the result being that the stock market crashed, the world began to sink into recession, and the United States lost its AAA credit rating.
So much for the predictive power of economics. Still, at the time members of Congress understood the apparent gravity of the situation before them and many behaved as if they just didn’t care.
That was especially true of the House. In the run-up to the vote, the members were locked in partisan battles between Democrats and Republicans and factional battles between Tea Party adherents and moderates. To those watching from the outside, it seemed an incredible thing, as if the nation’s overall good meant nothing to those determined to have their own way. And that didn’t end even when a compromise, approved by the president, was finally struck. Just three of Massachusetts’s 10 representatives (Bill Keating, Stephen Lynch, and Niki Tsongas) voted for the deal. The rest could not yield, even understanding the larger matters at stake.
Not so the Senate. After the House had failed multiple times to come up with an acceptable agreement, one could see a shift in power, as the Senate suddenly seized control of the process. It felt as if, having let the kids mess around for too long, the adults were stepping in. And they did so effectively, crafting a proposal that quickly won support from leadership of both houses.
And sure enough, as partisan was the House vote, the Senate was bipartisan. In Massachusetts, for instance, both Democrat John Kerry and Republican Scott Brown backed the measure. Both men were able to put aside their considerable differences - and diverging political ideologies - for the greater good of the nation. It’s an apt illustration of the dramatic contrast between the ways the two bodies - the House and Senate - think, operate, and vote.
And that’s the way it’s supposed to be.
The creation of two branches of Congress in 1787 was itself a compromise on two key questions. One had to do with the nation itself: was it a coming together of a people or a federation of states? The second had to do with the proper role of democracy. One side favored a legislative branch that was entirely democratic, as directly as possible representing the people of the country. The other, fearing mob mentalities, urged a legislative branch that was more a body of wise men (women, at the time, being off the list).
We got both. The House of Representatives represented the first answer to each question and the Senate the second, which is why the two bodies are so different from each other. Members of the House, with two-year terms, have to be responsive to their constituents; reelection depends more on satisfying their demands than looking out for the nation as a whole. It also can change its political character quickly, responding to the changing whims of voters. We saw that in 2010 when the just-born Tea Party movement was able to make its influence felt in the election of a significant number of new US representatives.
Senators, on the other hand, represent broader constituencies with differing interests. Moreover, they only face reelection every six years. That allows them the latitude to rise above the parochial, making the body more conservative and slow-moving.
In truth, it’s a good and necessary mix. We need the free-wheeling political dynamism of the House to allow the people a voice as much as we need the calm, national perspective of the Senate. And for all of the ugliness and angst leading up to the debt-ceiling vote, the result suggests that, far from broken, the system still works.
Originally published in the Boston Globe.