I don’t have a problem with the filibuster, except as it’s used now. One of two things has to happen:
The filibuster should delay, not ultimately stop, an up or down vote. If it’s possible to completely prevent a vote, then it’s broken. Filibusters have always been meant for delay only, although it’s supposed to work to block if the other side doesn’t want to waste floor time. In that case, they didn’t want the legislation bad enough anyway.
The filibuster should be used for extraordinary circumstances, when the stakes are high and the changes made by the proposed law likely permanent and hard to undo. It should not be used to block routine legislation, like spending bills, or small changes to existing programs.
It’s not corruption if it doesn’t benefit the representative personally. Getting a new water treatment plant for his district is not corruption, it is bipartisanship.
If no legislation is passed, there is no government.
How do you define “existential threat”? No, Al Queda never had the capability to vaporize the entire United States with nuclear fire. But create an atmosphere of fear and paranoia that undermines the fundamental American principles of freedom? Cause the US to lash out in a manner that strains our military capabilities and hurts our credibility as a global leader?
Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say it gives the appearance of bipartisanship? It’s not like this is actual negotiation - it sounds more like extremely polite blackmail.
Things that would not be meaningful anytime recently, or anytime soon, by your definition:
Minimum wage legislation
Climate change legislation
Technical fixes to the ACA
Gun control legislation
DACA/Dreamer legislation
LGBT rights
etcetera, ad infinitum.
We’re not in a world where the parties see the same problems, but are arguing about what solution is best, with compromise possible. We’re in a world where the two parties disagree on what the problems are in the first place, and what one party regards as a positive, the other regards as a negative.
If this were 1986, I’d agree with you. But it’s 2018.
Well, as soon as you can make people use it differently, we’ll be in good shape. But the problem is, the filibuster as it exists can be used ‘as it’s used now,’ and will certainly continue to be used this way as long as the cloture rules are what they are.
I agree that a filibuster whose use required a major commitment of time from dozens of Senators would not only be better than the filibuster as it is now, but would be better than no filibuster at all.
But that’s an even harder place to get to than simply getting rid of the filibuster. It might be possible to get the Dems to agree on getting rid of it, the next time they control both houses of Congress, but if you introduce a debate over what to replace the existing filibuster with, everything snarls up, and we’re stuck where we are.
The problem is not that it’s 2018. The problem is that, in the US, fear has taken over the majority of the political system. Fear of losing votes, fear of foreigners, fear of trade imbalances, fear of the guy across the street, fear of certain guns being sold, fear of certain guns not being sold, fear of looking like you’re agreeing with the other side, fear that the president won’t do what he said, fear that the president will do what he said, on and on and on.
The fear problem can’t be solved by replacing it with decisive action, because if all that fear was replaced with decisive action, you’d have “Civil War II”.
The solution is to ditch ideology and actually be reasonable. However, it appears that the US system as it stands may leave no room for the current participants to be reasonable. A lot of what goes on in day-to-day US politics is designed so that “there have to be two opposing ideologies, that’s how our system works” is a de facto requirement.
I would also add personal connections to the list. A politician who has had someone close to them die of condition X, may take particular interest in funding research into that area. Also if a family friend has a get together on the deck in the back yard and complains of burdensome unnecessary regulations to his Hog business, that may carry more weight than 100 EPA studies showing the importance of those regulations.
The problem of course is that society now is very stratified, so the average politician is going to have a very skewed list of friends in which bottom 50% are going to be almost entirely absent.
The Soviet Union was an existential threat to the US. The US was an existential threat to Saddam Hussein’s regime, as it threatened the continued existence of that regime.
Our reaction to Al Q didn’t substantially strain our military capacities I say, though it did hurt our credibility as a global leader. But while the latter hurts us, it doesn’t directly threaten the constitution.
Yes, the declaration of martial law or repeated tightening of the Patriot Act could pose an existential threat to the US. But the Patriot Act was just one ratchet in the direction of tyranny: an existential threat would involve more than a couple of them.
More generally what poses an existential threat? Put in another way, How do democracies die? According to political scientists Levitsky and Ziblatt, it involves the erosion of democratic norms: two of the most important are “Mutual tolerance” and “Institutional forbearance”. Put another way, each party has to accept the other’s legitimacy and act accordingly. Terrorist organizations have far less ability to undermine such norms than hostile foreign powers conducting information warfare.
Representatives can have a “pay to play” policy, and be pretty open about it. Want an earmark? Make a campaign donation. Few earmark receipients got their earmark for free.
Sure there is. We have 230 years of laws to enforce.
I don’t know. I think indirectly turning the US’s own current leadership into the terrorists’ fifth column has been Al Qaeda’s best trick ever. No idea if they did it by accident or on purpose though.
(My reasoning for that statement: The current US government is a complete contradiction of the American rhetoric on September 12, 2001. A government that believed the rhetoric of 9/12 would say “Terrorists? foreigners? Who cares? There’s no need for us to obsess over our safety and sovereignty - let’s get on with life, on with improving our country, on with trade, etc etc”. Instead, what’s on offer is “We have to protect ourselves against threats, hunker down, cut down trade, cut down immigration, etc etc”.
Exactly what the American rhetoric on 9/12 said would never ever happen, here it is, in spades.
Maybe if you’re going to quote me as if you’re responding to me, you could respond to what I was actually saying, which was a response to Kearsen’s definition of meaningfulness. That’s what the 2018-v.-1986 business was all about.
You see these as being in conflict. Why? And like it or not, anyone who thinks about politics more than trivially has an ideology, some mental framework for determining what things about America are features or bugs, and what are the best ways of addressing the bugs.
Tell me about the Democrats’ unreasonableness since Obama’s election.
The unreasonableness comes from continuing over and over, through decades, to agree to work under such a fatally flawed system as if it’s a given. Where does complicity end and collusion begin?
I’m not a huge fan of the filibuster either, but only being able to pass meaningful legislation under rare and exceptional circumstances - I see that as a feature!
The R’s have a tiny majority in the Senate and without the filibuster they could continue with their direction of making law without even bothering to talk to those who probably represent more than half the American population (due to the number of low population red states).
The major concern of a legislature is the tyranny of the majority. Congress needs mechanisms to prevent that - to require there to be meaningful negotiation of legislation.
