Taxation and Representation
James Madison
James Madison
Questions of taxation were inexorably bound with issues of representation. Although the Constitution sanctioned an executive branch of unprecedented capacity, the legacy of the Revolution insured that the tax power would not stray from legislative control. Much of the debate centered on how representation in Congress was to be apportioned. The design of James Madison's "Virginia Plan" clearly meant to correct the inequities of the "one state-one vote" Confederation system that had frustrated active government by granting all states, regardless of size, an equal vote (and equal veto power). Madison proposed a bicameral legislature in which representation in both houses depended on the size of the member states; larger states would be afforded more representatives, and thus more influence. In response, delegates from smaller states rallied around William Patterson's "New Jersey Plan." Like Madison, Patterson meant to strengthen the powers of the national government, but he sought to preserve the equity among states that had existed under the Articles. Ultimately, the delegates voted to amend the Virginia plan, creating an upper House with equal state representation and a lower House where seats would be apportioned on the basis of population, determined every decade by a national census. The authority to initiate money and tax bills, however, resided exclusively with the lower House, although the Senate did reserve the right to revise such bills. Since the people would vote for House legislators directly, the federal government, in theory, derived its authority to tax from the sovereignty of the people, not the states.
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