1741

Technically, you have a third that likes it, a third that doesn’t like it because it doesn’t go far enough, and a third opposed entirely. Not that it makes it any better, but it points to different implications than “two thirds don’t want reform.”

“Reid should have pushed harder to make the Democrats have party discipline like Republicans” is a good observation.

Zero evidence of this elsewhere in the world. If anything, the ability to promise shit to supporters without every having to actually deliver thanks to our clogged-up system encourages disagreement.

1742

That works both ways. How many who say it will get better can articulate that?

1743

How many here know what the chuffing hell they’re talking about and aren’t regurgitating party line stands? How many in this thread have actually downloaded and read the pertinent parts of the bill themselves, even if just to take things being stated in blogs, argued on TV, etc. and gone in and tried to find the actual relevant content in the bill?

1744

Sadly enough, both of those scenarios are better than average. I like to think that at least having seen all the Sunday shows, read some in this thread, and listened to all of the Planet Money productions on the issue have taught me SOMETHING. Not everything, but something.

1745

This.

1746

This is exactly right. Our political process is completely broken for this reason. The old adage “Talk is cheap” has never been more true. Everyone promises the world and when it doesn’t work, we are trained to just point our finger at the other side, and vote them away. Rinse and repeat. It’s a kabuki show. All the laws that do make it out of this process manage to never really benefit the voters. If it does, it’s always indirectly.

1747

Of course that’s the job. But you’re just taking that in a vacuum. Reid’s job is to get sixty votes when he has 58 Democrats plus two independents, one of whom is a bona-fide ratfucker. You’ll note that when he had the 60 votes he got his bill passed.

So I’ll ask you again - what can Reid do to get to 60 in the Senate? Take it for granted that 41 will oppose everything he wants.

By the way - are you really all for eliminating the cloture rules? Are you willing to allow the Republicans to pass their agendas when they have 51?

Very much so. If the American people see fit to elect a Republican to the White House and Republican majorities to both houses of Congress, I think that’s a clear signal that the American people want Republican policies.

The filibuster sets up a very poisonous dynamic. In a majority rules system, the majority sets policy. If it does well, it gets to keep its majority. If it screws up, it loses it.

The minority has no real power in this system. Its only option to return to power is to a) hope the majority screws up or b) make the affirmative case for why they’d do a better job.

B is the crucial option there. With majority rules, the minority has no option but to present the public with a clear choice. In our system, the minority doesn’t do that. It just obstructs the majority so nothing gets done, people get fed up, and vote the bums out. Then the process repeats itself. This isn’t government - it’s a farce.

1748

This.

A few points:

  1. When you ask people “do you approve of the healthcare bill in Congress,” they say no.
  2. When you ask people “can you confidently explain what’s in the healthcare bill in Congress,” they say no.
  3. When you describe the bill in Congress and ask people if they like such a bill, support ticks up significantly.

People who cite polling are being ignorant at best.

1749

Huh?

The filibuster gives the minority the power to extort compromise from a narrow majority. It’s an EMPOWERING tool, dude. If it weren’t for the filibuster, we might have a health care bill passed right now, but you also might have an armed march on the freaking capitol. Why shouldn’t the minority have to make the case that a change is better than the status quo to inflict a change to the status quo? That’s been the standard for policy debate pretty much for as long as it has existed.

1750

You’re displaying that you have pretty much no grasp of political science or the history of the US Senate. The filibuster was never meant to be used as any of these things - it was just a way to ensure lots of floor debate (at a time when floor debate wasn’t just these bozos preening for the cameras). Furthermore, it’s never been used as a way for a minority to “extort compromise from a narrow majority,” it’s been used as a tool of obstruction.

If it weren’t for the filibuster, we might have a health care bill passed right now, but you also might have an armed march on the freaking capitol.

OK, you’re nuts. Good to know!

1751

Huh. Wow. A revelation. I’m amazed to hear that the Senate Democrats didn’t scuttle the public option to avoid a filibuster. I guess it makes the righteous outrage against them a whole lot more sensible.

This has been covered extensively in a lot of places, but in a system where simple majority rules and you’re divided into two groups pretty much down the middle, one of two things will happen:

  1. Laws will flip back and forth and on and off before they have any opportunity to be effective, the business and political climate will become unstable, and the state will fail; or

  2. An issue so divisive that the two sides will never be able to agree (like, I dunno, slavery or something) splits the union.

JUST JUMPING UP AND DOWN AND DOING SHIT IS NOT MORE IMPORTANT THAN CONSENSUS-BUILDING. IF YOU CAN’T GET NINE MORE PEOPLE TO AGREE WITH YOU, YOU’RE PROBABLY DEALING WITH A BAD IDEA.

1752

Or people who would rather kill you politically than get anything done.

1753

Have you even read a history book? Ever?

  1. Plenty of stable systems have majority rule in their legislatures. They’re doing fine. Better than us, arguably. They exhibit none of the things you’re so worried about (laws flipping back and forth, etc).
  2. The US experienced the civil war despite the presence of the filibuster.
  3. The idea that the filibuster is all that stands between the United States and OMG TYRANNY OF THE MASSES is ludicrous on its face. There are already tons of checks and balances built into the system. Oh, and the country didn’t even have the filibuster for the first part of its existence.

Why is sixty the magic number Brian? What’s so special about 50+10? Why not 2/3 of the Senate (66, a true supermajority?) If consensus is so important, why not 95? 100?

1754

Doesn’t matter. If they can’t safely vote for it, there’s a reason. If they can’t vote for it and get reelected, that’s a pretty damn good indication that you’re going to deal with a lot of public resistance. This would be why I favor cloistered debate for complex issues like this. If we imagine that the Democrats didn’t need to get 60 votes and we had a health care bill right now, we’d probably have a public option baked into it and a number of more radical changes. Then the Republican machine kicks in, they take back the Senate (it’s going to happen eventually, probably sooner rather than later), and they start dismantling every bit of it that they can get to, because there’s no way that you can launch a program like that and get it into full public use (a la Medicare) before your opponents would have a chance to stop it. We might get change, for a little while, but then we would get change back, and the only net effect would be adding a lot of language to health care law and making it more expensive for insurance companies to do business (which, and I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here, would end up getting passed on to consumers).

The problem with politics right now is that there’s too much gamesmanship and marketing. Getting those influences out of the system would be great (ergo my burn all political reporters sentiment), but changing the current cloture rule doesn’t do a whole lot to affect that.

1755

You seem to be hanging your hat a lot on this farsical belief that shit will flap back and forth. It’s not going to happen. How long have people been saying the Republicans would dismantle Social Security/Medicare/Some Hated Program Ad Nauseum. And guess what? It never happens. There are the things in the margins politicians can get away with because they are too obscure/difficult to understand and then there is the stuff you can’t touch without the populace freaking out. HC"R" would likely become one of the latter.

The problem with politics right now is that there’s too much gamesmanship and marketing. Getting those influences out of the system would be great (ergo my burn all political reporters sentiment), but changing the current cloture rule doesn’t do a whole lot to affect that.
I think you are partially right here to an extent, as it is treating a symptom and not the problem, but it is a major flaw in the functionality of the Government. Once any system’s flaw is exploited in a majorly detrimental fashion, it has to be addressed or it’ll take a life of its own. The filibuster has gotten to that point. It was never intended as a brake on law making. And even worse it is being used as a brake on ALL congressional business. If it doesn’t get fixed, this system is going to break down. It’s only a matter of time.

1756

A few, yes, but let’s not get into a dick measuring contest here - I had to go through all the same college courses you did, I’m sure.

Those places are not the United States, where we have an ingrained two party system and a very deeply divided population on a lot of issues. If it makes you feel better, all of that shit that you can’t get because it will get filibustered, you can’t get because it’s controversial with all those other smelly useless stupid people sucking up perfectly good air. It’s not because the other party is plotting the deliberate and intentional end of the world. As much as they’re generating a desire through their campaigning and advertising, they’re also serving one.

The U.S. experienced a civil war because it was becoming apparent that the more populated northern states were going to start imposing things on the southern ones that they did not want. Lincoln didn’t repeal slavery until the confederate states decided to all be dicks about stuff and start a war. That’s what happens when a slim majority starts screwing around with a slim minority’s interests. I don’t know that there’s any issue short of abortion that could spawn an armed reaction, but it’s not an unprecedented thing.

The nation also operated without so much as a cloture option from 1806 to 1917 and it seems the world didn’t end, either. Removing the filibuster does nothing to fix the problem that you have - that politics has become a mess of pandering, narrow interests, and the permanent preservation of “issues” being more valuable than the implementation of solutions. Narrow majority approval does absolutely NOTHING to fix that but it DOES introduce several potential harms. That’s the definition of a bad idea.

66 is just as good as 60. 51 is bad. I don’t see what the confusion is here. 60 is the rule because it’s the rule - the founders had some kind of weird boner for the fraction 3/5. If you want to increase that to 66, go freaking nuts, but 100 doesn’t divide evenly by 3. If you have to get 3/5 of the senate to vote for something, chances are pretty damn good that you’re going to get buy-in from both sides of the issue (meaning that each side is at least partially responsible for this thing that the government is now doing) and you’re not going to be able to institute any radical change just because it’s the current flavor of the month. It encourages compromise, contemplation, deliberate action, and, ultimately, unity of endorsement of the actions taken by government.

1757

Remember when everyone watned Obama to speak up for Health Care Reform to the Senate?

President Obama told ABC News today that the Senate will not attempt to pass health care reform before Sen.-elect Scott Brown (R-MA) is sworn in.

“Here’s one thing I know and I just want to make sure that this is off the table. The Senate certainly shouldn’t try to jam anything through until Scott Brown is seated,” Obama said. “People in Massachusetts spoke. He’s got to be part of that process.”

He also urged people to look at the “substance” of the health care bill.

“It is very important to look at the substance of this package and for the American people to understand that a lot of the fear mongering around this bill isn’t true,” he said.

“I would advise that we try to move quickly to coalesce around those elements of the package that people agree on. We know that we need insurance reform, that the health insurance companies are taking advantage of people. We know that we have to have some form of cost containment … Those are the core, some of the core elements of, to this bill,” Obama said.

Asked about Obama’s comments, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the White House still doesn’t have a concrete plan on how to move forward with health care.

“There are a lot of different paths forward. We’ll get an opportunity in the coming hours or days to know exactly what that path is,” he said.

Democratic leaders said this morning they would not try to pass a merged health care bill before Brown is sworn in.

There are other options: The House could pass the Senate bill verbatim, and then lawmakers could make changes through a budget reconciliation process. And at least one Democrat, Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-MA), has suggested breaking the health care bill into smaller pieces of legislation and vote on them one by one.

Obama also said that his election and Brown’s were the products of the same public sentiment.

“The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office,” he said. “People are angry, they are frustrated. Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.”

http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/01/obama-senate-will-not-vote-on-health-care-before-brown-is-seated.php?ref=fpa

Lets see what Brown has to say

“We already have 98% of our people insured here already in Massachusetts, so we do not need the plan that’s being pushed upon us,”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8470187.stm

Awesome.

1758

Yup. According to him, because they already have a system in place, the rest of the country can go rot. He’s a hypocritical fucktard.

1759

Yeah, yay for them. What about the rest of us?

1760

It’s interesting to look at how this thing plays out in Canada, which has majority rule (and practically no other checks and balances compared to the US system). The Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney introduced a Federal VAT called the Goods and Services Tax in 1991. People hated it, the opposition Liberals vowed to reverse it and (partly becuase of the tax but for many other reasons as well), the Progressive Conservatives were almost annihilated in the next election and the Liberals won a majority.

Well, this is the perfect example of how the law will flip back and forth, right? The Liberals will score some easy political points by getting rid of the tax. Not quite. See, the tax is still with us. The Liberals professed complete shock at the state of Federal finances and decided that the tax was needed to control the deficit (which they did).

Now the opposition Liberals complain that the governing Conservatives were fiscally irresponsible when they knocked a couple of points off the tax. No one talks about getting rid of it.

So anyway, flipping back and forth is not as likely as you might think. I honestly don’t know if fewer obstacles to getting things done would be good for the US or not. You’d think it would be good, but I’m starting to wonder if the politics-as-bloodsport movement in America has passed the event horizon.