Fixing the Senate: Equitable and Full Representation for the 21st Century

March 18, 2019

Some of the most pressing challenges of our time—inequality and climate change—require bold proposals to set the United States and the world on a new trajectory. In Fixing the Senate: Equitable and Full Representation for the 21st Century, Todd N. Tucker explores five ways to realign the body with the functions it was meant to serve:

  • Abolishing (or fundamentally weakening) the Senate;
  • Undertaking filibuster reform;
  • Splitting California up into seven states;
  • Enacting statehood for DC and Puerto Rico; and
  • Providing representation to the nonstates.

Tucker focuses specifically on the last option, a proposal he developed and calls Full Representation. This constitutional amendment would add eight senators to the Senate, representing the federal district, overseas territories, and Native American tribes.

The US Senate’s inherent inequities are real, and they are greatly impacting our nation’s ability to have an inclusive economy and democracy. This latest paper builds on a number of Roosevelt Institute publications that argue for structural interventions to US policy and politics, in order to achieve federal rules, and an economy, that are more democratically responsive to the American people.