One
of the wonders of the American government has been a willingness to
improvise. The Founding Fathers believed that they had built a system
of checks and balances that would protect the republic against the
hysteria and occasional obsessions they knew about from classic
democracies.
One check and balance that was not foreseen was the addition of many states that duplicated the vast demographic differences found in the original thirteen states. The original thirteen states were all agrarian but had significant differences in wealth (the Carolina's and Virginia were rich) and population (Massachusetts compared to Rhode Island).
The original differences were not nearly as great as California , New York and Texas today, compared to the northern mid-western buffalo states.
Five
amazing improvisations that make our Congress even more resistant to
popular swings in sentiment were the filibuster, the American habit of
mixing the parties, the direct election of Senators, the end of
committee seniority and the Political Action Committee. The
filibuster, which was invented early but only found common usage in the
second third of the the 20th Century, has made sure that only a super-majority consensus on any issue will result in legislation.
The filibuster works particularly well when the Congress and the Executive come from different parties, as has been the case for much of the past sixty years, a habit that is now well ingrained in the American voter's psyche.
The direct election of Senators (a constitutional
amendment) did a great deal to make Senators more responsive to the
voters of their state and less to the corrupt local party machines.
The end of seniority as the determinant of committee chairmanships reduced the power of agrarian-one-party states significantly and led to greater balance of national interests.
The Political Action Committee, duly modified by the FTC in the early 1980s, created an open financing anti-corruption system system that has given much more credibility to the Congress and to the acceptability of powerful lobbies. Visible powerful lobbies are more effective in halting out of control legislation.
A little more improvisation is obviously needed on the subject to budget earmarks. But we'll get it sooner rather than later.