Scott Garrett: “And the gentleman from Utah made a passing reference to the 17th amendment earlier on, and then I will yield back to the…”

“And the gentleman from Utah made a passing reference to the 17th amendment earlier on, and then I will yield back to the gentleman from Iowa. But just to illuminate on that point, originally the Founding Fathers of course intended that the other body, the Senate, would be elected not by direct vote but by the legislators of those States. And the idea behind that was probably to address the point that the gentleman from Utah just made; that the various States, such as Utah, which is probably ahead of the curve in just about every facet of running a government that we have seen so far, based on his testimony and previous evenings, the State of Utah prior to the passage of the 17th amendment would have elected their U.S. Senators through their State legislators. That Senator many times would have come from the Utah State Legislature prior to coming to Washington, would know what Utah was doing, and would have a personal stake or a local interest in maintaining the integrity and the sovereignty of that State. Likewise, from Iowa or New Jersey as well. Obviously, the 17th amendment changed that, so now the U.S. Senators are now directly elected by the citizens of the respective States, and you break that bond between the sovereign issue that a legislature may have had.”