DSA: Adios Senate, President, and Supreme Court

Author: Thomas Jipping, Senior Legal Fellow

TOPLINE: The DSA platform calls for abolishing the U.S. Senate and replacing the President and Supreme Court with an “executive and judiciary subordinate to Congress.”

BACKGROUND: The DSA wants to tear down our current government structure and replace it with a lone unicameral House of Representatives without any checks and balances. This would require repealing or radically revising multiple sections of Articles I, II, and V of the Constitution as well as the 12th, 17th, 20th, and 25th Amendments. This could only be done by a constitutional amendment proposed by two-thirds of Congress and ratified by three-fourths of the states.

Why Keep the Senate?

• Two differently designed houses that have to cooperate on legislation is a critical limitation on government and, therefore, an important protection for our liberty.
• A single, population-based House would mean a few large states could steamroll all the others. Equal state representation in the Senate gives smaller states a voice.
• The Senate’s unique design is an integral part of our government; eliminating it would dismantle our entire system.
• The Constitution’s checks-and-balances include giving each chamber unique powers; the Senate, for example, advises and consents on nominations and treaties, conducts impeachment trials. All these powers would have to be consolidated in the House.

More Centralized Power – Not Less

• The DSA’s scheme would further eliminate checks and balances by allowing the House to choose the Executive as well as the Judiciary.
• The DSA claims that a one-house Congress would be more “democratic,” but the heart of any democracy is the people’s power to choose their leaders. The DSA plan would shut the American people out of electing the nation’s leader.
• Making the Supreme Court a servant of Congress – in other words, putting politics in control of the law – removes any independent protection for individual rights.

BOTTOMLINE: The DSA’s scheme would create one of the most centralized power structures the world has ever seen and eliminate the critical checks-and-balances that America’s founders built into our system of government. Regimes all over the world show us that making power more important than liberty always results in oppression, corruption, and makes people creatures of the state.,