Rethinking the Senate

There are two particular harms today that derive from the fact that the existing allocation of representation in the Senate provides small population states what we all understand to be disproportionate power relative to their populations. The first is that the Senate systematically and unjustifiably redistributes wealth from large population states to small population states. Secondly, the Senate, systematically and unjustifiably, affords large population states disproportionately little power, relative to their shares of the nation's population, to block federal homogenizing legislation. The Senate will help provide the blocking power, but the problem is the allocation of that power: the large population states will be at a disadvantage relative to the small population states in protecting their own minority viewpoints in this way. Here, Baker go into some detail now about each of these aspects of the Senate.