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And the reason why they are bulked into a single bill is to utilise the budget reconciliation procedure which bypasses the filibuster. I think the filibuster h

by cm2187 5y ago

And the reason why they are bulked into a single bill is to utilise the budget reconciliation procedure which bypasses the filibuster. I think the filibuster has some merit. If you want to do something controversial (to the point that the opponents are willing to do the physical effort of making speeches 24h a day to stop it), there must be a strong majority of 60%, not just 50%. But there must be some sort of cost to filibusting.

shkkmo 5y ago
> to the point that the opponents are willing to do the physical effort of making speeches 24h a day to stop it That is a common misconception. The modern filibuster doesn't actually require legislators to work that hard and is now generally purely procedural.
- cm2187 5y ago
  I agree, it used to, and it should. There must be some sort of penalty to use it only when it really matters, and a physical penalty is one way to do it.
sofixa 5y ago
> I think the filibuster has some merit. If you want to do something controversial (to the point that the opponents are willing to do the physical effort of making speeches 24h a day to stop it), there must be a strong majority of 60%, not just 50%. But there must be some sort of cost to filibusting. In theory, yes. But in practice the US is a two party state, and parliamentarians usually vote along party lines ( because, at the very least, that party controls if they can run for re-election or not). The US needs proportional representation like.. a few decades ago.
stormbrew 5y ago
Since the Senate is not even theoretically a proportional house (like the House of Reps is supposed to be but can't be due to the cap on members), demanding a 60% member threshold to pass every single bill means the number of voters it takes to pass a bill gets into ridiculous 70-80% territory. It does not make any sense in any universe to take a legislative body that is already counter-majoritarian and then add on even more counter-majoritarian rules and procedures on top. The thing about 'real' filibusters vs. the pretend one in the US Senate isn't just that they cost something, it's that they are generally doomed to fail if that's all you have. Even endless talking has historically been rarely enough on its own to prevent a bill from passing in most legislatures. It can be an opportunity to bring attention to the issue and make legislators have to listen to their voters, or to convince other legislators to reconsider. But something else has to happen or eventually the bill will have to be tabled anyways. But I think people fail to recognize this, because the concept of filibuster in the US has been so thoroughly distorted by this broken rule. Even if the filibuster required actually doing an endless talk, it would still not be sufficiently democratic if they could simply run out a clock and the bill was defeated -- in fact, that would perhaps be even worse since it would allow any given member to exercise an unreasonable amount of control over the body as a whole that currently at least requires some degree of unity among the minority party.

by cm2187 5y ago

shkkmo 5y ago

> to the point that the opponents are willing to do the physical effort of making speeches 24h a day to stop it That is a common misconception. The modern filibuster doesn't actually require legislators to work that hard and is now generally purely procedural.

cm2187 5y ago
I agree, it used to, and it should. There must be some sort of penalty to use it only when it really matters, and a physical penalty is one way to do it.

sofixa 5y ago

> I think the filibuster has some merit. If you want to do something controversial (to the point that the opponents are willing to do the physical effort of making speeches 24h a day to stop it), there must be a strong majority of 60%, not just 50%. But there must be some sort of cost to filibusting. In theory, yes. But in practice the US is a two party state, and parliamentarians usually vote along party lines ( because, at the very least, that party controls if they can run for re-election or not). The US needs proportional representation like.. a few decades ago.

stormbrew 5y ago

Since the Senate is not even theoretically a proportional house (like the House of Reps is supposed to be but can't be due to the cap on members), demanding a 60% member threshold to pass every single bill means the number of voters it takes to pass a bill gets into ridiculous 70-80% territory. It does not make any sense in any universe to take a legislative body that is already counter-majoritarian and then add on even more counter-majoritarian rules and procedures on top. The thing about 'real' filibusters vs. the pretend one in the US Senate isn't just that they cost something, it's that they are generally doomed to fail if that's all you have. Even endless talking has historically been rarely enough on its own to prevent a bill from passing in most legislatures. It can be an opportunity to bring attention to the issue and make legislators have to listen to their voters, or to convince other legislators to reconsider. But something else has to happen or eventually the bill will have to be tabled anyways. But I think people fail to recognize this, because the concept of filibuster in the US has been so thoroughly distorted by this broken rule. Even if the filibuster required actually doing an endless talk, it would still not be sufficiently democratic if they could simply run out a clock and the bill was defeated -- in fact, that would perhaps be even worse since it would allow any given member to exercise an unreasonable amount of control over the body as a whole that currently at least requires some degree of unity among the minority party.