Restoring the Senate

In Chapter 3, Mark Levin proposes the following Amendment that would restore the Senate (p33):


Section 1: The Seventeenth Amendment is hereby repealed. All Senators shall be chosen by their state legislatures as prescribed by Article 1.

Section 2: This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.

Section 3: When vacancies occur in the representation of any State in the Senate for more than ninety days the governor of the State shall appoint an individual to fill the vacancy for the remainder  of the term.

Section 4: A Senator may be removed from office by a two-thirds vote of the state legislature.

Prior to the Seventeenth Amendment, Senators were chosen by the State Legislatures to represent their State in Congress. Perhaps when the Seventeenth Amendment was ratified was the end of the Statesman in Congress. In recent years, money is spent insanely by outside sources - on both sides of the aisle - to help elect a Senator that the National parties want to see in Congress.

Returning back to the original intent of electing the Senate returns a vital State right Perhaps if this was in place, Minnesotans would have seen their Senators vote for placing a tax on medical device companies when Minnesota is home to one of the largest and respected medical device communities in the United States.

Some may attempt to argue that keeping the Seventeenth amendment in place protects our Democracy. Trouble is that we don't live in a pure Democracy; rather we are a Republic that uses elected officials to represent our interests. And one of those interests is to keep politics local which is lost when Senators are elected by popular vote.

Levin surmises (p 46), "However, it will be opposed by the Statist, for he may pose as a democrat, but it is democratic tyranny that he favors." Levin continues (p 47), "Furthermore, state sovereignty is not a top priority for most senators because the state legislatures hold no sway over them. Therefore, situations arise where senators vote for major federal legislation over the strenuous objections of their own state." Guess that is why Sen. Franken and Klobuchar voted for the Affordable Care Act!

Source: Mark Levin's  The Liberty Amendments