No, it isn’t. It’s based on the idea that citizens have a right to a say in their government. There is no assumption that they know best. And Raveman already demonstrated that U.S. democracy is designed to circumvent popular will in several ways.
I haven’t taken that position. I’m disputing Kearsen’s argument, which was that the health care law is bad because polls say people say it’s bad.
The argument you’ve stated is that the health care law was bad because the polls say that’s what people think. (Analysis shows the polls are not so clear on that point.) That’s not even an argument, it’s just an appeal to popularity. If you were arguing that Congress should not have passed the bill because a large number of people were opposed to it, that would be a sensible argument. One that’s still foolish in my opinion, but at least sensible. Democracy is based on the idea that citizens deserve a say, and that that principle will produce the best government. It does not follow that all good laws are popular, that all popular laws are good, that all bad laws are unpopular, and that all unpopular laws are bad - much less that the popularity or unpopularity of a law is what MAKES it good or bad.
No. I have never said that, and I’ve argued for universal adult suffrage every time I’ve participated in a thread like that.
Good principles, don’t get me wrong. But if I’m an elected politician they don’t actually give me any incentive to vote for a bill.
Uh, earmarks are included in funding bills that are subject to debate and amendment in both houses of Congress. Every bill that goes to the floor has a list of each and every earmark included at the request of any member of congress. The idea that earmarks are hidden, or that they aren’t contained in proposals that are fully public and subject to debate is just wrong.
To flesh this out a little further, if I’m in Congress, any vote I make can be used against me in my next campaign. So I have to think about what I might be putting on the line if I vote for something that is good and just, but potentially controversial or unpopular. (We’ll pretend for a minute that a necessary law could somehow not be popular.) Which is more likely to persuade me: voting on principle alone, knowing that a significant number of people might disagree with me later, or voting for a bill that brings something tangible to my constituents?
Earmarks were often appended late, without sponsors’ names, and to unrelated bills. They certainly often escaped the inadequate scrutiny that independent bills received.
The point, however, was that earmarking is not necessary for Congress to not “be at the mercy of what the President proposes in his budget.”
Necessary law will always be popular, which is why earmarks are unnecessary. If it wasn’t popular, it wouldn’t be necessary. Popularity in the moment will rise and fall, I will grant you that. However, popularity in the eyes of history will mark the good from the bad.
“On most major issues we’ve dealt with in the past 50 years, the public was more likely to be right -based on the judgment of history- than the legislatures or Congress.”
Then I’d posit, you shouldn’t be a politician and no one else who felt the same should be one either. Our politicians are supposed to be above it all. It might be a naive stance to take but I’d really like to see that someday.
Earlier you were arguing that popularity (of the moment) did not make for good law. Now you seem to be saying that, good or not, popular is the only realistically possible kind of law?
the Democrats changed the rules for earmarks when they took over Congress in 2007; now all earmarks are required to have sponsors’ names. So, your information is out of date.
And yes, if Congress can’t change the President’s proposals to fund things that the President did not propose, you have eviscerated the most important power that the Constitution gives Congress.
I know about the change. Notice how I used the past tense.
What are you talking about? Congress can fund anything they like, or at least they can write the appropriations bills to do so; the President would have to sign them. The Constitution gives him that power.
So you acknowledge your statements have been wrong?
Since politicians want to get re-elected, the present is of greater importance to them than history most of the time.
I have no interest, but you’re assuming I’m telling you how I feel these things should work. I’m not. What I am telling you is that there is a reason earmarks exist, however cynical that reason is. They serve a function in the political system.
It’s never happened before and it probably never will. I’m not sure why you expect more from politicians than from anyone else. I don’t think that’s reasonable.
I was arguing that a law’s popularity does not determine whether or not the law is good.
I’m saying politicians want to please their constituents. That doesn’t mean they’ll only vote for popular laws, but it means they want to show their constituents a tangible good. That’s particularly true if they’re voting on a controversial bill.
Slavery? Good or bad?
If it is an inherent bad, why did it take awhile to abolish? If it was an inherent bad why did we even have it to begin with?
In a representative republic, popular is always good otherwise you are left with some few determining the “good” from the “bad”, it doesn’t work that way.
You won’t find any politicians sticking their necks out for positions that aren’t popular, this is the real world.
I think you’ve presumed we’re talking about morality here. We’re talking about practicality and effectiveness. You need both in life and in a system of government. So far you’re not showing any appreciation for anything except the principle part. If legislators never compromise on anything and spend all their time moralizing, they might feel good about themselves, but not much is going to get done.
Then how do you account for the passage of the health care bill, which you asserted was unpopular?
That isn’t what I’ve said, I said it was unpopular NOW. It was evidently popular enough then to get passed by whatever means necessary.
It is my stance that no new legislation should happen without a wide base of support, the health care bill wouldn’t have passed in KearsenLand. Legislators (at the federal level) shouldn’t have to compromise because whatever laws that get drafted should have a pretty good chance at passing because they help lots of folks equally. If they only help a State or two, the State(s) should pass the law themselves.
Marley, I understand what you are saying about practicality but I feel that practicality has overridden common sense in regards to our legislators. Now it has just turned into a money grab where everything the “other side” wants is an opportunity to fatten themselves or a single areas constituents.
Its popularity hasn’t changed much. I think it did get a small boost in popularity when the controversy died down.
The health care law did help a large group of people equally and should have helped more than it does. I didn’t like the “cornhusker kickback” either because it comes close to buying a vote than I would like. But it’s exactly the kind of situation we’re talking about: Sen. Nelson wanted an extra incentive to vote for the bill because he supported it but knew it was going to hurt him a lot in the polls. Incidentally the “kickback” was later removed from the bill and is not part of the law that was signed last year.
But it’s pretty common for earmarks to be slipped into legislation that is rushed through in the closing session of Congress without much public scrutiny, in fact, you might say this is a hallmark of earmarks, especially the bad ones. Things like theMafia Museum which was hyped as a stimulus project, but let’s face it, it’s just another sleazy roadside attraction like all those Florida alligator wrestling farms. If you can’t propose money for an alligator wrestling park with a straight face, you can’t propose money for the Mafia Museum. I wouldn’t support money for Ripley’s either, but then, I wouldn’t support public money for ball parks of any type either.
What made me suspicious of the MSNBC response is all those commentators have had earmarks as bread-and-butter sources of outrage. If earmarks go away, so does a certain amount of easy source material.
Earmarks are submitted to debate and vote, too. The only sense in which they’re “hidden” is that most people don’t care about them enough to go looking for them. Well, at least, they don’t care about the ones they dislike: Everyone cares immensely about the pork their own representatives bring home.
If we abolished earmarks, then politicians would just pass a whole bunch of tiny little single-purpose bills for the pork they want, and would agree to vote for each others’ bacon-bit bills in inside agreements in smoke-filled rooms, and it’d be subject to all the same scrutiny as any other bill, and the people still wouldn’t care about them.
That’s a profoundly silly plan. Is your hope to reduce the work of the house to an absolute crawl? And is your intent that only the majority party gets to decide spending?
Why is either a good idea? Why is either better than what is done now?
Protip: Just because some issue is advocated by your political “side” doesn’t mean you should argue for it without regard to logic and reality.
Because it is my firm belief that less legislation we have done, the better off we all are. Unless you can convince a pretty sizable chunk of America that they NEED something, leave it alone.