Posted by
Rickey Braddam on Thursday, September 11, 2008 1:39:20 AM
From the Constitution:
The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.
The Senate shall chuse their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the Absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States.
From the 25th Amendment:
Section 1.
In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.
Section 2.
Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.
Section 3.
Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.
Section 4.
Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
Go ahead, look it up for yourself. You won't find anything anywhere else in the Constitution or any of the amendments that assigns other duties or responsibilities to the VP! That brings up some interesting questions.
Why did the framers of the Constitution assign only two specific duties to the Vice President? The first one, to become the President or Acting President under specific circumstances is obvious, but why President of the Senate, and why not more additional duties?
- Did the framers just assign a job to the VP to justify his position until such time as he/she had to assume the Presidency?
- Did they think that President of the Senate was an important job requiring someone's full attention and the VP just happened to be idle? After all, the VP has nothing else to do unless he/she's being the President.
- Did they just want someone from the Executive Office there to keep tabs on what the Senate was doing (and perhaps provide input as requested from the President's office)?
Or maybe it was for some other reason. Regardless of their reason, perhaps there could be some advantage to us, the citizens of the United States, if the VP was to actually preside as President of the Senate. I'll have to spend more time watching CSPAN2 to see what the President actually does. But could the President of the Senate...
- ensure that all the Senators were present in the Senate chambers when a bill was being debated.
- arrange for the clerk to post the proceedings of the Senate directly to the Senate web site for access by the public. It would be easier than it is for me to write this essay.
- if all the Senators were in the chambers when a vote was called, with electronic voting the vote could be completed in less than one minute. Guess how much that would expedite the proceedings in the Senate.
- Initiate investigations into corruption (or the appearance of corruption).
- Publicise the actions of lobbiests on the Senate web site.