Political Science

Bicameralism in the legislature means having two legislative Chambers or Houses. In the United States, the legislature is composed of the Senate (Upper House) and the House of Representatives (Lower House). The rationale behind the practice of bicameralism is to provide different representation for each chamber. The Senate has all states of the union represented equally while the House of Representatives is represented by the population. The concept of bicameralism was patterned after Great Britain which provided for a parliament that would unite the aristocrats  of the upper house to moderate the actions of the democratically elected commoners in the lower house (Goodin  Klingemann, 1996). The pros and cons having a bicameral system can be observed clearly with the passage of a groundbreaking bill such as the Health Care Reform Bill being lobbied by the Obama administration. The most salient weakness of bicameralism is the slow pace of the passage of laws and the inevitable deadlock between the two chambers.

Obamas health care agenda was made public in February 2009 and the planned overhaul of the trillion-dollar industry was met with criticisms left and right along partisan lines. After amendments were proposed and voted down, the Lower House passed its 1 trillion health care bill on November 7, 2009 with a slim margin 220-215. The Senate passed its 871 billion version of the health care bill voting 60-39 on December 24, 2009 (MEDScape News, 2009). The road towards the bills enactment is still long and time-consuming.

Before Obama could sign the bill into law, the Senate and the House must harmonize the two versions of the legislation and come up with a single bill that will be voted upon by both houses. Despite this weakness, the bicameral legislature is a necessary safeguard against despotism or tyranny of a single party and provides the checks and balances crucial to a democracy. United States Congress, although currently dominated by the Democrats, could not unilaterally railroad the passage of possible hasty, ill-considered and intemperate legislation (Goodin  Klingemann, 1996). Although the legislative initiative for the health care reform bill came from the Democrats, they had to contend with the issues and arguments raised by the Republicans on the practicability and usefulness of the passage of this important legislation.