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Needed Structural Reforms (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Maurile Tremblay
- Start date
Rich Conway
Footballguy
To be fair (insert Letterkenny reference here), "campaign finance reform" itself isn't unconstitutional. Most/many of the methods attempted so far to implement campaign finance reform have been, but that doesn't mean that there is no possible method ever that would be constitutional. For example, I think one could classify "immediate, mandatory, public recording of all dollars and their source" as "campaign finance reform", and I don't believe such a requirement would be unconstitutional.
Rich Conway
Footballguy
I don't know. I'd prefer to take a more step-wise, logical approach.
If we take a step back and think about the intent of filibuster, I think it's pretty clear that the original intent was to encourage bipartisanship. Before we say "filibuster is bad" and dump it, let's evaluate whether the intent was worthy. I think encouraging bipartisanship is a worthy goal. I'll assume for the moment that you do as well (feel free to correct me if I'm assuming too much).
So, let's next evaluate whether the filibuster actually does encourage bipartisanship. In practice, I'd agree it doesn't. Why? I'd suggest in part, it doesn't because the minority party believes that rather than cooperate now, it can simply wait until it becomes the majority party in the next election. But getting rid of the filibuster doesn't resolve that issue, it exacerbates it by encouraging the minority party to become even more intransigent. Sure, you say, but at least the majority party would be able to get something/anything done, if they only need 51 votes instead of 60. I'd agree, but by doing so, we've essentially given up all hope at bipartisanship and instead will devolve into a never-ending cycle of each party pushing through everything it can during a 2-4 year window, lose majority status and sit on the sidelines, regain majority status after 2-4 years, undo everything the previous majority did, and repeat.
Maybe we should instead consider whether there's a different method to encourage actual bipartisanship?
This harkens back a long way, possibly even all the way back to Ol' Yeller, but I have a vague recollection of @Maurile Tremblay or @Yankee23Fan (or maybe is was you?) posting an idea that perhaps the path to bipartisanship is to require that ALL legislation require a 2/3 majority, while simultaneously only requiring a simple majority to repeal legislation. Maybe we need to consider more out of the box thinking like that instead.
IvanKaramazov
Footballguy
There was never any original intent for anything behind the filibuster. It's a historical loophole in senate rules that got codified over time because people realized that it was there and started abusing it as a way to win matches. It's like a known glitch in a multiplayer game -- you can keep changing the rules to accommodate the glitch if you want, but a better solution is to patch the game.
Rich Conway
Footballguy
Fair enough. Maybe the appropriate patch isn't to eliminate the filibuster but to require 2/3 supermajority for all legislation (or some other idea)?
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IvanKaramazov
Footballguy
I'm not opposed to something like this as a matter of principle. My gut says that that's going too far in the counter-majoritarian direction on the spectrum (and I say that as somebody who is a big fan of certain flavors of counter-majoritarianism), but that's really just an immediate intuitive reaction with nothing empirical behind it at the moment.
As long as our highly polarized and fractured media and social network ecosystems continue to persist, reforms at the government level will be ineffective. I have no idea how we come back from where we are on that front though.
politically, in my mind the two most effective tools to fix our government’s inability to address big issues would be the elimination of gerrymandering, making more house seats competitive, and a return of earmarks that historically drove compromise.
how did the civil rights act get passed? Because a NASA research facility at Purdue was authorized in the bill, in House GOP leader Halleck’s home district.
politically, in my mind the two most effective tools to fix our government’s inability to address big issues would be the elimination of gerrymandering, making more house seats competitive, and a return of earmarks that historically drove compromise.
how did the civil rights act get passed? Because a NASA research facility at Purdue was authorized in the bill, in House GOP leader Halleck’s home district.
fatguyinalittlecoat
Footballguy
Change the order of succession so that no matter how many people die/resign/get impeached, the President comes from the same party.
Mister CIA
Footballguy
fatguyinalittlecoat
Footballguy
Well it’s probably true but I wasn’t really trying to suggest that. Just that “Trump-Pence-Pelosi” is an absurd line of succession and creates bad incentives for would-be-assassins.
Mister CIA
Footballguy
fatguyinalittlecoat
Footballguy
I’d like the House and Senate to change their procedures to make it easier for the minority party to put a bill up for a vote. I know there’s some sort of arcane parliamentary procedure to force a vote but I don’t know exactly how it works and it can’t be that good because it’s seldom used.
This would change the stranglehold that McConnell (and now Schumer) have over what gets considered. It would also greatly increase transparency because members would then be forced to vote on difficult bills instead of being protected from doing so by the majority leader.
I think the Democratic majorities could change these rules on their own. And because it would actually be giving up some power to Republicans I think it could be something that helps unify rather than divide.
This would change the stranglehold that McConnell (and now Schumer) have over what gets considered. It would also greatly increase transparency because members would then be forced to vote on difficult bills instead of being protected from doing so by the majority leader.
I think the Democratic majorities could change these rules on their own. And because it would actually be giving up some power to Republicans I think it could be something that helps unify rather than divide.
fatguyinalittlecoat
Footballguy
I haven't thought TOO much about this so maybe someone can persuade me I'm wrong but:
The number of positions appointed by the President that must be confirmed by the Senate should be reduced from about 1200 to around 20.
ETA: I mean administration positions not judicial appointments. Those should still go through the confirmation process.
The number of positions appointed by the President that must be confirmed by the Senate should be reduced from about 1200 to around 20.
ETA: I mean administration positions not judicial appointments. Those should still go through the confirmation process.
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JAA
Footballguy
fatguyinalittlecoat
Footballguy
Well, for one thing we've just seen what happens when a President can't get his nominees confirmed -- he just uses them anyway without Senate confirmation. So I really fail to see any way that the process promotes good governance. But more importantly, the process is just broken. The minority party tries to drag out the confirmation process, even of relatively uncontroversial nominees, just to chew up Senate time. Presidents nominate people to less-than-ideal positions based on their likelihood of getting through the confirmation process. From my perspective, confirming over 1000 people has lots of downsides and virtually no upside.
I'd be more inclined to give Congress fewer powers to stop appointments and greater powers to remove people that are clearly incompetent/corrupt/etc.
ETA: And just for a personal anecdote, I have a good friend from high school that just had a Senate-confirmed position in the Trump administration. This guy should not have been controversial at all. But it took many months for him to get his Senate confirmation. Because the Senate rule is that there can be up to 30 hours of debate on any nominee. And there was no way Mitch McConnell was going to use up 30 hours of Senate time just so he could get my buddy confirmed as the deputy secretary of some agency. So, like most nominees, he had to wait until Schumer and McConnell negotiated a deal about the amount of debate time, etc. Of course, meanwhile, he was basically doing the job before he was even confirmed. So how does any of this make any sense?
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JAA
Footballguy
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