On the recordJuly 20, 2011
there is a fundamental principle we have to focus on in the Senate, and I think we have focused on it; that is, we cannot default on our debt. We have 11 or 12 days until that crucial time comes. We have a number of plans that are being talked about here. We have a path forward in the Senate, we believe. There is the Gang of 6, which reported some encouraging news yesterday. We have President Obama's grand plan that has been talked about a lot. So now we return to the roots of what this country is all about; that is, our constitutional form of government. The Founding Fathers uniquely--when they finally figured out a way to do the Constitution, the breakthrough was in June of 1787, the so-called Grand Compromise, when a member of the Constitutional Convention from Connecticut came up with the idea of a bicameral legislature. No one had ever thought about that before, that we would have a system of government with three branches--executive, judicial, and legislative. No one had ever considered having anything other than a parliamentary form of government. But our Founding Fathers came up with a new idea, and that new idea was to have within the legislative branch of government two Houses; one based strictly on population and one based on the same number of Senators from each State.…





