Repealing the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

James Madison, the man who is known as the father of our constitution, once wrote: “[In government] the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other.” Our government was originally designed to be small and constrained. As long as the government is constrained, the chances stay unlikely that it will become corrupt and overbearing on its citizens. Our founding fathers set up this government as a limited entity, and our constitution was created to keep that government limited. The main way that it has been kept limited is through the government checking itself. These checks and balances were created and drafted in our constitution, and the seventeenth amendment to our constitution has cut away at many of those balances.

As we have seen throughout history, power corrupts. This usually happens when sole power is invested in one person or entity: a king, an emperor, or a monarch or group of monarchs of some sort. The founders understood that a federal government was necessary, but they also understood that a federal government would become corrupt if so much power was invested in it. That is the importance of local government: once again, when the government is small and limited, it is less likely to be corrupt. The founders understood that the federal government ought not have so much power to control and regulate the small matters and the little problems that happen locally in a community setting, so they allowed the local and state governments regulate and control those matters.

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people,” the tenth amendment declares. The states must be sovereign, and in order for this to happen, their interests must be remembered and acknowledged. The federal government must be checked and balanced by the state governments so that it does not become corrupt, and the state governments cannot do this without Congressional representation and power. Under the original constitution, the state legislators appointed U.S. Senators, and this gave balance to the government of the United States. We must get back to this system of checks and balances so that our government does not become corrupt as so many other governments have. I plead for your vote. Thank You.

A Resolution to Repeal the 17th Amendment to the United States Constitution

RESOLVED, By two-thirds of the Congress here assembled, that the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several states within seven years from the date of its submission by the Congress:

ARTICLE XXVIII

SECTION 1: The seventeenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

SECTION 2: The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote. If Vacancies happen by Resignation, or otherwise, during the Recess of the Legislature of any State, the Executive thereof may make temporary Appointments until the next Meeting of the Legislature, which shall then fill such Vacancies. 

SECTION 3: This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.

SECTION 4: This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several states, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

SECTION 5: The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.