4 ms·

I said it in another comment and it's in many reports, but per Senate rules they need a 3/5th majority (60 votes) to pass the funding bill. One Republican voted

I said it in another comment and it's in many reports, but per Senate rules they need a 3/5th majority (60 votes) to pass the funding bill. One Republican voted against, two Democrats and one Independent for. That brought it to 55-45. The Republicans absolutely could change the rules, and don't require that same supermajority to do so, so this is squarely on them. The same thing happened in 2018 when the previous shutdown happened, also with Trump in the White House and a Republican majority in both houses. The Senate Republicans lacked a supermajority and did not change the rules, and the government shutdown for 35 days.

godelski 1y ago
> The Republicans absolutely could change the rules, and don't require that same supermajority to do so, so this is squarely on them. Fuck that. Seriously. It isn't even a good idea for Republicans to do this. The point of a 3/5th majority is to enforce compromising. That thing that is essential to a democracy. Remember, changing the rules means all future rulers can play by those rules. The extensions of these types of powers is exactly the type of thing that leads to Turnkey Tyranny.
- School-Cotton 1y ago
  > That thing that is essential to a democracy. The US is the only democracy in the world that has this feature or anything like it.
  - Marsymars 1y ago
    Switzerland has a feature like it, in that a supermajority is required to pass a non-balanced budget. In practice, their budgets are all balanced. See their "debt brake".
    - Jtsummers 1y ago
      The US will never have a balanced budget with the two current political parties trading off. It'd require, now, raising taxes beyond what even the most high-tax friendly Democrat would want, or substantially cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Defense spending. The Democrats will never reduce the first three enough, and Republicans will never reduce the first two and Defense enough. https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder... Everything below those four is basically a rounding error, you could cut bits and pieces but nowhere near enough to balance the budget. And you can't cut interest payments without defaulting on the debt itself, which would create so many more problems. We need to raise our revenue by something like 50% or lower our spending by about 33%, or something in between on both.
      - johnnyanmac 1y ago
        We didn't unbalance the budget in a year. It won't take a year to fix it. If we had proper plans to move in the right direction I wouldn't mind that at all. Instead we're blowing it up further. Personally I'm fine with proper aggressively progressive taxes and that alone would be a huge help. But we do need to cut defense spending and yes, Social security. Because at this rate Millenials aren't getting Social Security anyway.
- Jtsummers 1y ago
  I agree. But my point is in that last clause: > this is squarely on them [the Republicans] They have the opportunity right now to end the shutdown without requiring any Democratic or independent votes. They could have offered a compromise budget. They only needed five more Democratic or independent (one available, the other already voted yea) votes. They did not choose either of those options, instead presenting an option that they knew the Democrats would vote against. That was their choice, they could ignore the Democrats and pass it anyways, or they could work with the Democrats and both can get what they don't want.
  - godelski 1y ago
    > They have the opportunity right now to end the shutdown There are a lot of other options. Namely, as implied by my comment: compromise. They can also do extensions, provisional budgets, they can better carve out ensuring more workers actually get paid? And yes, they knew the Dems would vote against and they had months to reach that compromise. The same is true in the other direction too. The problem relates to a dysfunctional government where we've created such division lines that compromise cannot be reached. Playing into the belief that it is either side (on this specific issue) just furthers that problem. Watch the rhetoric: Republicans blame Democrats, Democrats blame Republicans. Funding the government is not a partisan issue. What to fund is, but you can't always get what you want and that's a feature, not a bug.
    - miltonlost 1y ago
      > Playing into the belief that it is either side (on this specific issue) just furthers that problem. Watch the rhetoric: Republicans blame Democrats, Democrats blame Republicans. Playing into your game of "They're both at fault!" removes the fact that one has consistently reneged on their promises to the other party and acts in bad faith consistently. Or like Trump refusing to release money that COngress had already appropriated. Centrism isn't enlightened, but foolish.
      - godelski 1y ago
        > Playing into your game You may have noticed I stressed this particular issue and Funding the government There's a time and place for partisan politics but funding the government is not one of those. > Centrism isn't enlightened, but foolish. And how has this philosophy worked out? For someone who seems to hate Trump so much you really seem to like increasing this support base. There's a whole country of people with varying needs and issues. You can't put everything under one clean umbrella. So why don't you start listening to what people are saying instead of responding to what you heard?
- kemayo 1y ago
  > The point of a 3/5th majority is to enforce compromising. It's worth noting that the 3/5 requirement for most legislation is a recent development. Before around 2008 it was quite uncommon to require a filibuster-proof majority to pass legislation. There's a count of the times this has come up on the senate's website: https://www.senate.gov/legislative/cloture/clotureCounts.htm https://www.senate.gov/legislative/cloture/clotureCounts.htm
  - godelski 1y ago
    > There's a count of the times this has come up on the senate's website I don't think I'm understanding. Are there not also more bills being voted on? There definitely seems to be high variance from here[0] but also they seem to be spending far less time in session than previously [0] https://www.senate.gov/legislative/ResumesofCongressionalActivity1947present.htm https://www.senate.gov/legislative/ResumesofCongressionalAct...
    - kemayo 1y ago
      There's a fair bit of variance in the number of bills per congress, but not really in a way that correlates to the usage of the filibuster. Check out https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/statistics https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/statistics

godelski 1y ago

> The Republicans absolutely could change the rules, and don't require that same supermajority to do so, so this is squarely on them. Fuck that. Seriously. It isn't even a good idea for Republicans to do this. The point of a 3/5th majority is to enforce compromising. That thing that is essential to a democracy. Remember, changing the rules means all future rulers can play by those rules. The extensions of these types of powers is exactly the type of thing that leads to Turnkey Tyranny.

School-Cotton 1y ago
> That thing that is essential to a democracy. The US is the only democracy in the world that has this feature or anything like it.
- Marsymars 1y ago
  Switzerland has a feature like it, in that a supermajority is required to pass a non-balanced budget. In practice, their budgets are all balanced. See their "debt brake".
  - Jtsummers 1y ago
    The US will never have a balanced budget with the two current political parties trading off. It'd require, now, raising taxes beyond what even the most high-tax friendly Democrat would want, or substantially cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Defense spending. The Democrats will never reduce the first three enough, and Republicans will never reduce the first two and Defense enough. https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder... Everything below those four is basically a rounding error, you could cut bits and pieces but nowhere near enough to balance the budget. And you can't cut interest payments without defaulting on the debt itself, which would create so many more problems. We need to raise our revenue by something like 50% or lower our spending by about 33%, or something in between on both.
    - johnnyanmac 1y ago
      We didn't unbalance the budget in a year. It won't take a year to fix it. If we had proper plans to move in the right direction I wouldn't mind that at all. Instead we're blowing it up further. Personally I'm fine with proper aggressively progressive taxes and that alone would be a huge help. But we do need to cut defense spending and yes, Social security. Because at this rate Millenials aren't getting Social Security anyway.
Jtsummers 1y ago
I agree. But my point is in that last clause: > this is squarely on them [the Republicans] They have the opportunity right now to end the shutdown without requiring any Democratic or independent votes. They could have offered a compromise budget. They only needed five more Democratic or independent (one available, the other already voted yea) votes. They did not choose either of those options, instead presenting an option that they knew the Democrats would vote against. That was their choice, they could ignore the Democrats and pass it anyways, or they could work with the Democrats and both can get what they don't want.
- godelski 1y ago
  > They have the opportunity right now to end the shutdown There are a lot of other options. Namely, as implied by my comment: compromise. They can also do extensions, provisional budgets, they can better carve out ensuring more workers actually get paid? And yes, they knew the Dems would vote against and they had months to reach that compromise. The same is true in the other direction too. The problem relates to a dysfunctional government where we've created such division lines that compromise cannot be reached. Playing into the belief that it is either side (on this specific issue) just furthers that problem. Watch the rhetoric: Republicans blame Democrats, Democrats blame Republicans. Funding the government is not a partisan issue. What to fund is, but you can't always get what you want and that's a feature, not a bug.
  - miltonlost 1y ago
    > Playing into the belief that it is either side (on this specific issue) just furthers that problem. Watch the rhetoric: Republicans blame Democrats, Democrats blame Republicans. Playing into your game of "They're both at fault!" removes the fact that one has consistently reneged on their promises to the other party and acts in bad faith consistently. Or like Trump refusing to release money that COngress had already appropriated. Centrism isn't enlightened, but foolish.
    - godelski 1y ago
      > Playing into your game You may have noticed I stressed this particular issue and Funding the government There's a time and place for partisan politics but funding the government is not one of those. > Centrism isn't enlightened, but foolish. And how has this philosophy worked out? For someone who seems to hate Trump so much you really seem to like increasing this support base. There's a whole country of people with varying needs and issues. You can't put everything under one clean umbrella. So why don't you start listening to what people are saying instead of responding to what you heard?
kemayo 1y ago
> The point of a 3/5th majority is to enforce compromising. It's worth noting that the 3/5 requirement for most legislation is a recent development. Before around 2008 it was quite uncommon to require a filibuster-proof majority to pass legislation. There's a count of the times this has come up on the senate's website: https://www.senate.gov/legislative/cloture/clotureCounts.htm https://www.senate.gov/legislative/cloture/clotureCounts.htm
- godelski 1y ago
  > There's a count of the times this has come up on the senate's website I don't think I'm understanding. Are there not also more bills being voted on? There definitely seems to be high variance from here[0] but also they seem to be spending far less time in session than previously [0] https://www.senate.gov/legislative/ResumesofCongressionalActivity1947present.htm https://www.senate.gov/legislative/ResumesofCongressionalAct...
  - kemayo 1y ago
    There's a fair bit of variance in the number of bills per congress, but not really in a way that correlates to the usage of the filibuster. Check out https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/statistics https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/statistics