Thank you for this thread. I’m eager for people’s thoughts. To an outsider, this just seems like lazy government (a failure of the opposing parties to prepare solid policies, so all they can do is blackmail the government for concessions in return for Supply).
Thank you for this thread. I’m eager for people’s thoughts. To an outsider, this just seems like lazy government (a failure of the opposing parties to prepare solid policies, so all they can do is blackmail the government for concessions in return for Supply).
it's not that at all.
it's performance from the right wing, who have zero interest in policy. They just want to break things.
Thank you for this thread. I’m eager for people’s thoughts. To an outsider, this just seems like lazy government (a failure of the opposing parties to prepare solid policies, so all they can do is blackmail the government for concessions in return for Supply).
It’s the MAGA crowd doing everything possible to create chaos and make Biden look like he’s not up to running the country. Make no mistake, they may seem stupid or not knowing what they’re doing, but they’re doing everything possible to make Biden look bad. It’s all part of their plan for getting trump re-elected. Doesn’t matter if the country goes down the drain, these people are dangerous.
Thank you for this thread. I’m eager for people’s thoughts. To an outsider, this just seems like lazy government (a failure of the opposing parties to prepare solid policies, so all they can do is blackmail the government for concessions in return for Supply).
I'll offer a framework. Cribbing to some degree from this and similar ideas I've come across before.
You can broadly think of the United States as dominated by two competing cultures -- a more egalitarian one tracing back to the New England colonies, and a more hierarchical one tracing back to the southern colonies. In New England, the settlement pattern was towns and democratic governance, while in the south the settlement pattern was a kind of neo-feudalism with the plantation owners larping medieval baronial lords.
The struggle for power between these two informs a lot of American history, and arguably carries through to today. If you conceive of yourself as a lord of the manor, what you want from government is a police force to zealously protect your property rights, and to not waste money on the poor -- first, because they don't deserve it, and second, because in a hierarchical society that's a role for private charity where the lords can show off their largess, not a matter of any kind of common good.
The Republican party in the post Civil Rights era has it's base increasingly in this hierarchical culture, so of course they're always wanting to slash government spending.
I'll note this is painting with a very broad brush -- there's a lot more nuance and a lot more cultures and subcultures than just these two. And it comes off as giving the northern tradition probably more benefit than it deserved -- the puritans were a bunch of religious fanatics, and while they were more egalitarian compared to many of their peers, like many "democratic" societies that generally extended only to those who were "inside". Anyone "outside" they often treated quite viciously. Ask the Wampanoag or Narragansetts. Or, while acknowledging New England as the center of Abolitionism, reflect too on Boston's reputation among African Americans. America's a complicated place.
Parliamentary systems tend to have someone external to the elected government (a Governor-General, a High Commissioner, a monarch perhaps) that can keep the Members & Senators from acting like spoilt children. If they truly can’t reach agreement, especially on Supply ($$$), then they notify this person who calls for dissolution of Parliament and a new election.
One can’t, Willy-nilly, stop government funds. All the bills need to be paid, all wages, benefits, rents etc. If you slow or stop anything without proper planning there are shocking repercussions at community levels for several months. But you don’t have the non-elected objective ‘brake’. You just seem to have people very eager to be remembered for doing something so they’ll be stubborn in extra-long sessions, get nowhere and make life very complicated for civil servants and tellers.
Peter Dutton and Pauline Hanson from here get it. I don’t.
Parliamentary systems tend to have someone external to the elected government (a Governor-General, a High Commissioner, a monarch perhaps) that can keep the Members & Senators from acting like spoilt children. If they truly can’t reach agreement, especially on Supply ($$$), then they notify this person who calls for dissolution of Parliament and a new election.
One can’t, Willy-nilly, stop government funds. All the bills need to be paid, all wages, benefits, rents etc. If you slow or stop anything without proper planning there are shocking repercussions at community levels for several months. But you don’t have the non-elected objective ‘brake’. You just seem to have people very eager to be remembered for doing something so they’ll be stubborn in extra-long sessions, get nowhere and make life very complicated for civil servants and tellers.
Peter Dutton and Pauline Hanson from here get it. I don’t.
Presidential systems, in general, are more prone to break down since, as you note, there's not many mechanism for breaking out of true deadlocks. Most political scientists would not advise a presidential system if you were setting up a democracy from scratch -- notice how the US helped set up parliamentary system in post-war Europe.
Of course, we're not starting from scratch here, and we're not about to rewrite the constitution to trade in our presidents for a PM. For at least the foreseeable future, it's a safe assumption that a Republican House and a Democratic president means a very high chance of at least one government shut down. But there are changes we can make without overhauling the constitution, as I've sometimes noted on these boards -- fair redistricting, multi-member districts, ranked choice voting, supreme court reform. Here's an article that notes some of this that I came across while doing some web searching to refresh some of my memory on this while writing this post:
I think Democrats need to decide between "OMG we're so excited we got literally everything we wanted, lol" and "today was a dangerous and immoral gift to Vladimir Putin and a complete treasonous abandonment of our national duties." It really can't be both. pic.twitter.com/wL58vVj8jE
A stand-alone bill for Ukraine funding passed the House a few days ago, with bipartisan support. So, it should pass again.
I am proud to announce that my bill to support Ukraine has passed the House of Representatives with overwhelmingly bipartisan support.
This legislation includes key transparency and accountability requirements to ensure taxpayer dollars are being best utilized in the fight… pic.twitter.com/Tys9GlvcKc
Any guesses as to what will happen.
The last one happened because T**** wanted a lot of money for border wall funding. The previous one was the Republican not wanting to fund Obamacare,
This one seems mostly to be with the extreme right having issues with McCarthy.