Re:Ohio Republicans close to imposing near-total ban on muni...
by cogman10 on Thursday June 17, 2021 @12:13PM
(#27541250)
This is a symptom of the problem.
At this point, the only bills we can pass federally are budget reconciliation bills an small token "Juneteenth is a holiday" bills.
Why? Primarily because of the senate filibuster rule. We require that 60+ senators agree on every bill passed because every bill gets filibustered. That doesn't work well when you have
A: A party that coined the phrase "do nothing democrats"
B: A senate minority leader that openly says their job is to stop any legislation from passing.
Compromise is dead at this point, because regardless of the compromises made, the minority party will filibuster.
So the end result is the only bills that get passed are budget reconciliation bills and those try and cram in everything that could possible be thought as "budgetary" into a single bill. Hence, thousands of pages long legislation.
If you want to be mad at giant bills, be mad at the party that filibusters all tiny bills. Go read HR-1 and be mad that THAT bill is being filibustered (make federal voting day a national holiday and extending early voting). Go read any of the small common sense bills that get filibustered simply because they came from the opposing party.
And if you really want to get mad, go read up on the Jan 6. investigation bill that had 24 amendments added by republicans and 6 added by democrats that was ultimately filibustered.
That's where we are at. We've got Democrats bending over backwards to try and appear bipartisan and Republicans who are playing the game of "The best way to make democrats look bad is to filibuster everything".
At this point, the only bills we can pass federally are budget reconciliation bills an small token "Juneteenth is a holiday" bills.
Why? Primarily because of the senate filibuster rule. We require that 60+ senators agree on every bill passed because every bill gets filibustered. That doesn't work well when you have
A: A party that coined the phrase "do nothing democrats"
B: A senate minority leader that openly says their job is to stop any legislation from passing.
Compromise is dead at this point, because regardless of the compromises made, the minority party will filibuster.
So the end result is the only bills that get passed are budget reconciliation bills and those try and cram in everything that could possible be thought as "budgetary" into a single bill. Hence, thousands of pages long legislation.
If you want to be mad at giant bills, be mad at the party that filibusters all tiny bills. Go read HR-1 and be mad that THAT bill is being filibustered (make federal voting day a national holiday and extending early voting). Go read any of the small common sense bills that get filibustered simply because they came from the opposing party.
And if you really want to get mad, go read up on the Jan 6. investigation bill that had 24 amendments added by republicans and 6 added by democrats that was ultimately filibustered.
That's where we are at. We've got Democrats bending over backwards to try and appear bipartisan and Republicans who are playing the game of "The best way to make democrats look bad is to filibuster everything".