America’s wacky Senate

America’s weirdly undemocratic Senate has been a preoccupation of mine for years. It was on display once again with last week’s stimulus debate.

Two Senators from Maine, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, together represent a total of 1.3 million people — roughly as many as live in the Buffalo NY metro area.

Yet they managed to dramatically reshape one of the most important pieces of legislation in postwar U.S. history.

Here’s Sen. Collins’ description of her importance, during the lead-up to the vote, from the Washington Post.

Just before Christmas, Susan Collins, a moderate Republican senator, was driving alone on that road, headed to her parents’ home near the Canadian border in the tiny town of Caribou, when her cellphone rang. It was Joseph R. Biden Jr., the soon-to-be vice president, calling to talk up the Obama administration’s economic stimulus plan.

The call kept getting cut off. Once. Twice. Three times. But Biden kept calling back.

“I was very impressed with his persistence,” Collins recalled in an interview.

On ABC’s This Week, California Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters pointed out some of the urban-focused cuts to the stimulus, demanded by those Maine lawmakers.

“Do you know we reduced the neighborhood stabilization program by a couple of billion dollars? We reduced Head Start, Early Start, school construction.”

So what do you think? Is the tail wagging the dog?

Is it appropriate that lawmakers who represent a about .5% (not 5% but 0.5%…) of America’s population wield this much power?