Government by serial crisis

That blithering idiot from Tennessee, McConnel, announced that the first priority of the republicons in congress would be to be sure that Obama would be a one-term president.

So, yeah, it is all their fault. The only thing that the Democrats could do to get the slightest cooperation out of the wrong wingers is to give them ever bloody thing they want and scrap what little is left of the New Deal.

Not worth it.
 
Drachasor said:
No, it's no way to run a government.
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Why not? While I would agree that there are inefficiencies in having multiple spending bills every few months, I can't point to anything that says it is untenable. The funds are appropriated and the government hasn't shut down yet.

It is bizarre, absurd, but not literally dysfunctional.
 
They are simply conditioning us for the actual shutdown. By then we won't be paying attention when it happens...
 
I don't think the government will shut down. The Democrats will always give in at the end rather than let the government shut down, and the Republicans know it. The Republicans can get anything they want by threatening to shut down the government every few months and counting on the Democrats to govern responsibly. I guess the situation is as much the Democrats fault as the Republicans because the Democrats keep insisting on acting responsibly.

-Bri
 
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nvidiot said:
Why has this kind of governmental crisis been allowed to go on so long? Is it just partisanship taken to extremes on both sides?
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Its allowed to go on because the US consitution doesn't really allow you to do otherwise. The consitution basicaly assumes that it will be possible to obtain broad agreement on any important matter. This hasn't been the case for quite a while but a series of kludges has kept things going. These do however require that there are a significant number of people on all sides who behave. This is no longer the case. There are various reasons for this. Not least of which is that politicians are now more in touch with voters who don't like compromise deals conducted behind closed doors. The republicans in particular are aware that their supporters want them to act in ways that will break the system.

In fairness this isn't unique to the US system. Most systems require a fair bit of people following unwritten rules. The 1975 Australian constitutional crisis and the recent difficultly in forming a budget in Belgium being two obvious cases.

The US is though at a particular dissadvantage. The 1975 Australian constitutional crisis could be resolved by an outside agency and the Belgium thing appears to have been mostly a single issue disspute which allowed a caretaker goverment to get on with running the country.

To consider the UK case. Probably the closest equiverlent is that you can in theory fillibuster a bill in the house of lords although convention says you shouldn't. Labour tried this recently with the AV bill.

There are a number of problems with this:
1)It has to be a real fillibuster
2)The house of lords is full of people whith nothing better to do than disscuss word etymologies at 3am
3)the bar doesn't close
4)as long as the goverment has a reasonable majority in the house of commons (and they almost always do) they can use the parliment act to force the bill through or just flat out abolish the house of lords.

So the US has things worse because stalling is less problematical and there is no overide option.
 
leftysergeant said:
That blithering idiot from Tennessee, McConnel, announced that the first priority of the republicons in congress would be to be sure that Obama would be a one-term president.
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I remember being flabbergasted by that statement. Talk about acting like a bunch of children! Fighting over a toy, but that toy is a country of 300+ million people. It's unbelievable, dangerous and stupid.

Apparently the republitards are also trying to sneak in some provision on Keystone XL, which would force Obama to make a decision within 60 days instead of putting it off until 2013 as he's already done.

I don't know where the republitards got this dangerous habit, but I hope they break it.
 
geni said:
Its allowed to go on because the US consitution doesn't really allow you to do otherwise.
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That's not true. For example, many (most?) of the procedural problems that arise in the Senate have nothing to do with the Constitution. The Senate itself set the rule that 60 votes are required to break a filibuster. Hell, it used to be 66. That rule could be eliminated without even looking at the Constitution. The rule that individual Senators can put an anonymous hold on any Administration appointment is not based in the constitution at all. A similar situation exits in the House. For example, nowhere in the constitution is the speaker of the house given the power to prevent motions from coming up for a vote.

We have a dysfunctional federal governing system but that problem cannot be laid at the feet of the constitution.
 
SezMe said:
That's not true. For example, many (most?) of the procedural problems that arise in the Senate have nothing to do with the Constitution. The Senate itself set the rule that 60 votes are required to break a filibuster. Hell, it used to be 66. That rule could be eliminated without even looking at the Constitution. The rule that individual Senators can put an anonymous hold on any Administration appointment is not based in the constitution at all. A similar situation exits in the House. For example, nowhere in the constitution is the speaker of the house given the power to prevent motions from coming up for a vote.

We have a dysfunctional federal governing system but that problem cannot be laid at the feet of the constitution.
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At the present time you have a republican majority congress, a democratic majority sentate and a democratic president. The constitution requires that 2 (and realisticaly all three) of these bodies agree to any bill. The result once people stop following unwritten rules is deadlock.
 
If conservative voters weren't so stupid, the Republicans wouldn't be able to get away with this behavior.
 
geni said:
At the present time you have a republican majority congress House, a democratic majority sentate and a democratic president. The constitution requires that 2 (and realisticaly all three) of these bodies agree to any bill.
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Congress refers to both the Senate and House.

geni said:
The result once people stop following unwritten rules is deadlock.
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I have no idea what you are trying to say here. We have deadlock because the Republicans are following the written rules.
 
The republicons are going to campaign on the meme that government is broken and bankrupt and will count on people's being too stupid to notice that it was the republicons that broke it.

The Democrats have a great campaign issue right there. I hope they use it.
 
SezMe said:
I have no idea what you are trying to say here. We have deadlock because the Republicans are following the written rules.
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Not speaking for Geni, but:

The House, Senate and President (cabinet) are each chosen in seperate elections. So the House can be Republican while the cabinet and Senate are Democrat, and vice versa. That requires both parties to cooperate.
It means the only way the system can work is if people follow an unwritten rule which says you're not allowed to always be obstructionist. If people ignore that and follow only the written rules, the result is deadlock.

In most European systems the cabinet is a coalition of parties with a majority in the House, so the cabinet always has a parliamentary majority on important issues. And the Senate has less power.
 
SezMe said:
I have no idea what you are trying to say here. We have deadlock because the Republicans are following the written rules.
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Exactly. Your constitution is written to make it hard to get things through without broad agreement. Checks and balances. In the real world rather than the post revolutionary fervour in which is was written this is a problem so people introduce various unwritten rules to work around the problem. Once people stop following them you have a mess.
 
I think I still disagree but it depends on what these unwritten rules are. egslim stated one as "you're not allowed to always be obstructionist". Is that right, egsliim? Is that one of the rules you are referring to? geni and egslim, you use the plural of "rule" so what are the other unwritten rules that have created what geni calls a "mess".

Mind you, I am not arguing that there isn't a complete mess in Washington; I'm just trying to get at the root of why.
 
SezMe said:
I think I still disagree but it depends on what these unwritten rules are. egslim stated one as "you're not allowed to always be obstructionist". Is that right, egsliim? Is that one of the rules you are referring to? geni and egslim, you use the plural of "rule" so what are the other unwritten rules that have created what geni calls a "mess".
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The unwritten rules have not created a mess its the failure to follow them.

Trying to identify them would of course be difficult. The US has a fairly young system of goverment so many things that are unwritten are really unwritten. Where as in the UK they generaly are written down if not actualy enacted in law.

In the case of the US they would tend to be things along the lines of:
1)You will pick your battles. That is to say you will generaly get into fights on specific issues rather than across the spectrum
2)Filibusters will not see general use
3)Issues that are seriously important will either be delt with in an adult manner or via a civil war
4)You remember that the rhetoric is for the voters. As individuals you genuinely get on quite well (this one fell apart when modern transport facilities made it possible for representatives to get back to their constituencies at the weekends).
5)You do not take too many sweets from the Candy desk in the senate.


If you've ever been part of a large or longstanding institution this is how they tend to work. Things have gone wrong if people start digging out the actual written rules.
 
SezMe said:
In the short run, very well. In the long run, not so much. So, you cite one example from 50+ years ago. And?
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Well it appears to work for the ruling familily north korea and untill fairly recently various arab leaders.

Within US politics you would probably be looking at McCain supposedly fathering a mixed race child and the suggestion that Al gore claimed he invented the internet.

However politicians have been doing this routinely since at least 1920 (and on and off before that) and countries have managed to survive. Whats different is that politicians are increasingly acting as if they are listening to voters which closes the loop.
 
SezMe said:
I think I still disagree but it depends on what these unwritten rules are. egslim stated one as "you're not allowed to always be obstructionist". Is that right, egsliim? Is that one of the rules you are referring to? geni and egslim, you use the plural of "rule" so what are the other unwritten rules that have created what geni calls a "mess".
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The urban dictionary defines an 'unwritten rule' as: A rule, usually concerning social behavior, which is known by all but spoken by none. This rule is neither official nor written down. It just is.
For example, when a cop in the US pulls you over, you stay in the car and keep your hands on the wheel. That's no official law, nor is it customary in most countries, but in the US that's how it goes.

Unwritten rules are very hard to pin down, precisely because they're not official. I don't know what the specific unwritten rules in Congress were, before it reduced to its current state of deadlock. But there must have been some unwritten rule or rules that amounted to "you're not allowed to always be obstructionist".
 
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