Something I thought I'd toss in here since we're cussing the US Senate. It's high time we did away with direct election of US Senators and restore the state legislatures' powers to elect them. That's the way it was originally set up and that's the way it should have remained. Direct election has just about completely decimated the power of the States and it's not good.
Right. The Senate was supposed to represent the interests of the States as government entities, not individual state residents. For the latter, folks had US House Representatives. It was a balance of legitimate interests that the Founders carefully worked out. The Seventeenth Amendment thew that delicate balance completely out of whack, and we've been seeing the consequences.
PS The same folks who pushed for the Federal Reserve and the Income Tax were the ones pushing for the Seventeenth Amendment, i.e., big money.
