I still find it very odd that in the US, you don’t actually have to filibuster to have a filibuster.
Banzai
1658
Us too. And that they last forever. More a minority veto than a filibuster.
There needs to be more of a intermediate between the minority being powerless and being able to effortless obstruct everything
I don’t really know why the minority can’t be powerless, assuming a reasonable constitution and a functioning judiciary. Elections are supposed to have consequences, and the winning party ought to be able to, you know, govern. The constitution does not require a supermajority in the Senate to enact legislation, and the founders would probably be surprised to learn that anyone thinks it ought to.
Do you really want the majority party to be able to pass literally anything they want with no way to stop them? I certainly don’t. That’s no better than the current situation (where the minority can stop anything). Part of governance should be to work with the other party (I know, I know. I’m an idealist, shoot me)
House is voting on the Covid Relief bill.
Why not? Isn’t it that way in pretty much any other democracy? There are plenty of checks and balances in a system that requires passage in two chambers plus endorsement by the independent executive; and which backstops that with a Court that has the mandate to strike legislation that violates the constitution.
Anything else means the minority can simply prevent the majority from governing and — by doing so — sabotage them electorally. As we have found.
gonna be…close. We have one Democratic nay vote. There were two when the bill went through the House the first time.
Eh, it’ll be one vote better on passage this time than it was the first time around, it looks like. Jared Golden in Maine appears to be the only Democratic Nay vote.
And to me, this is one of them. No, it isn’t in the constitution, but it seems like a reasonable thing to me IF it isn’t trivial to use, as it is now.
Sure, that’s your opinion, but it’s hardly demonstrably bad for a legislative body not to require a supermajority for legislation, and almost none of them do. It’s most definitely an outlier, and there isn’t any reason to think it makes things better, and there are lots of reasons to think it makes things worse.
Maybe I would understand better if you explained how to give the minority ‘power’ without also giving them a veto on any legislation?
Might have a Republican Yea in the House…
EDIT: nope, he made an oopsie.
He was for it before he was against it lol.
And passed, 220-211.
Biden will sign it into law on Friday.
Beautiful! Dems in glorious array!
The great Fourth Estate doing their usual incisive and informative job here:
Indeed, where is the cat?
Menzo
1671
Nice! Do we know if unemployment benefits changing to being untaxed for 2020 got into the bill? I guess I’ll have to file an amended return to get some money back if so. I wonder how that’ll work with Turbotax.
For a second I feared it was gonna be a Seuss question…
Yep, up to $10,200 in UI benefits in 2020 are tax exempt if your AGI is under $150k that year.
EDIT: I imagine that big tax software platforms like Turbo Tax, Jackson Hewitt and HR Block will have millions of folks who filed and are now eligible for these tax breaks. If they’ve not worked up a solution yet, I’d imagine one will be coming, but it probably doesn’t hurt to send them an email to inquire about their plans.
The other fallout for Senate Republicans. They wanted to try to hold this up for at least another few weeks.
Wow. I’m thrilled for America that the Dems got this through.
On a personal level, everything pretty much came up Milhouse for me. The UI tax break doesn’t suck even a little bit.
There’s honestly so much good shit in this bill that I keep going “Oh yeah, that’s in there too…” when I read a news story about it again. The billions for opening up more vaccine centers – and getting vaccines into communities where it needs to be taken almost to the doorstep. The money for schools to make necessary modifications to classroom areas. More money for testing. Not just more and bigger subsidies for health insurance bought through the ACA, but also more/bigger tax breaks on ACA healthcare premiums.
