Window or Mirror?

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

Simple sentence and we’ve even messed this one up. Read it again. Which powers? The ones contained herein! And no more!

So, back to high school Civics (I’m fumbling through some old books myself on this one)… what’s “Legislative Branch” mean? Basically, it means “branch that creates laws”. There’s not a pile of information in this short sentence to discuss, but there IS a story to the creation of ‘two sides’ of the Legislative Branch, and it goes a little like this…

Once upon a time, there was a federation of states; – some small, and some large – that desired to make a more formal union and become a country. The larger states were concerned that the smaller states would have too large a voice, and the smaller states were concerned that they would have none. Two solutions to this ‘split’ were proposed, and the Connecticut representatives to the Philadelphia Convention in 1787 (Ellsworth and Sherman) proposed the bicameral legislature that was voted in.

In favor of the larger states, state representatives would be apportioned to the states by state population. All spending and tax bills would be brought by this “House of Representatives”. Membership in the upper house, however, would consist of two senators per state, regardless the size of the state and this “Senate” would approve / reject treaties and would bring presidential nominations for governmental office.

In this way, the smaller states would have equal representation in the matters where their voices were most likely to be pushed down, but the larger states would have the power they needed to handle the larger voting electorate.