Comment by ike2792
1 year ago
This is the crux of the issue. Executive power has been gradually expanded since at least the end of WWII, but things have accelerated since the early 00's. Think GWB's "signing statements" or Obama's "phone and pen." Trump I, Biden, and now Trump II have continued to push the limits, in part because of a desire for more power but also because Congress hasn't functioned as an institution in decades. Congress has passed a budget on time only 4 times since 1977, the last time being in 1997.
Presidents are elected based on promises made to various parts of the electorate, and if/when Congress won't act (often even when Congress is controlled by the president's party, nearly always when controlled by the opposition), no one generally makes a fuss if the president pushes through a popular-ish thing by executive authority. Republicans may be happy now but they won't be when a Democratic president ups the ante in a few years, just like Democrats were perfectly happy with Obama and Biden's overreaches but are furious at Trump's.
Congress needs to be expanded to do its job, and drop the filibuster. We need more, proportionally allocated representatives. Representatives that come from more than one of two parties. Representatives that spend more time at home than on the campaign trail or in DC.
I think filibusters just need to go back to how they used to be. If you feel strongly about something you better be prepared to blab for hours on end, on your feet. If you can't physically do that... well, maybe that's a sign in and of itself.
All for reps expansion. Remember that we haven't expanded in nearly 100 years because "we were out of room in the building". Meanwhile we have 435 people representing 330 million people (average of 760k people per rep), when the population representation was roughly 250k/rep the last time it expanded.
We should have at least 1000 reps by these numbers.
> If you can't physically [philibister for hours/days] ... well, maybe that's a sign in and of itself.
And reason has prevailed again.
But sarcasm aside, its a difficult question who controls parlaments, when democratic participation is not enough. Maybe oversight or veto rights by randomly picked citizen councils are a better way then blindly trusting anything that happens in-house.
Representatives with term limits. It blows my mind that someone can be a career congressperson. It creates precisely the same adverse incentives as being a career president. Your whole focus becomes making sure you stay in power. Which for congresspeople means toeing the party line.
Term limits lead to institutional knowledge and skills being concentrated in unelected staffers and lobbyists. Effective legislating involves building relationships, negotiating skills, and deep subject matter knowledge in at least some areas.
Yes, we have tons of bad legislators: some just not good at their jobs, some actively harmful (leaving that vague on purpose—I think all partisans can agree that they exist, even if we disagree on who they are). In theory, they can be excised via the ballot box. However, we don't want to kick out the good ones just as they're getting to be their most effective—not only do we lose their direct skills, but we lose their ability to mentor the promising up-and-comers.
I place more blame on the way we do primaries and general elections: in most districts, the only thing that matters is the primary, and that produces some truly rotten results.
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> It blows my mind that someone can be a career congressperson.
Related gripe: How both houses of congress prioritize "seniority", so that changing a representative indirectly harms the interests of the people being represented. (Though possibly not as much as keeping the wrong representative in office.)
In other words, State X benefits more when their seats are _not_ competitive and subject to turnover, the quality of candidates being equal.
if the voters can't keep someone they like in office, there must also be strong restrictions on time served as congressional / governmental aides, or else those people will become even more powerful than they already are. far too many elected officials already appear to be nothing more than fronts for their unelected staff.
https://represent.us
I was reading a rocking history book (Dark Continent), and it argued that Germany had already lost democracy before Hitler, as basically all rules were done by the executive. Sent a shiver down my spine when I applied it to recent US presidents. (The book was written in 1998 fwiw, so not contaminated by current events).