Manchin was responsible for getting a lot of democratic policies made into law and a lot of democratic judges appointed to the bench. Everyone of those 51/50 votes had Manchin to thank. Considering the alternative to Manchin from W.Va, Democrats were hugely fortunate to have him in the senate.
Yeah. It’s just frustrating that the Constitution includes so many other checks and balances as it stands, yet the minority party still has veto power over widely supported legislation. Seems unnecessary at best and obstructive at worst, which is why most U.S. states and most other Democratic countries do not allow their legislators to filibuster.
Fair points, for sure.
OK but we don't. And leaving aside the issue of which makes more sense as a vote threshold for legislation, 50% or 60%, having a 60% threshold for taking a vote and a 50% threshold for something passing is idiotic. No sane person thinks the Senate, or Congress as a whole, functions well at the moment. it is a system designed to get nothing done; one that prevents us from passing legislation meant to address difficult issues facing the country. And now that the administrative state is getting dismantled, that's going to be an even bigger issue.
I was being sarcastic. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who despises the filibuster more than I do. As much, maybe, but I'm pretty sure my filibuster hate is at the maximum, or close at least.
Gotcha - sorry, I didn't detect the sarcasm.
That example always makes me cringe. McCain's objection wasn't to the substance of the bill. He didn't like the way it was pushed through the Senate. In particular, he didn't like that his committee had been excluded. And the fact that Trump insulted him probably didn't help matters. But it was not a principled stand.The Manchin examples are more numerous, but credit where credit is due, we shouldn't forget this...
ETA: I think this may be as literal an example of "The exception proves the rule" as you'll every find, though.
Here is the graphical representation. One white Wyoming vote compared to other states.
minority ruleHere is the graphical representation. One white Wyoming vote compared to other states.
Add the filibuster on top of this there is no wonder why our politics is the way it is.
It's still a bad idea no matter what. It's based on the fiction that the Senate is some great deliberative body. Maybe that was true at one point (again, doubtful), but that time was fairly long ago.
agree. just pointing out that even a 50/50 vote already greatly skews toward the GOP because of the senate representation problem.
You're somewhat correct but it was called "The Skinny Repeal" for a reason. It wasn't what the republicans said they were going to do. It was a bull shit bill.
And that exact confusion, of course, is a large part of why Republicans are so desperate to keep it - they know regular Americans don't care/understand, and so they can do nothing but obstruct and still go out on the campaign trail and blame Dems for not doing anything.
That's because of the filibuster. They could only pass the financial part through reconciliation -- i.e. the Medicaid expansion, the penalty, the marketplace funding, etc -- which left a bill that was even worse than a clean repeal. The insurers would be left with a requirement to issue insurance to anyone who asked when they asked, but without the money to keep everyone in the pool. The result would likely have been a death spiral of health insurance. It would have become prohibitively expensive for anyone. Insurers probably would have been forced to stop issuing individual policies altogether.
Republicans only care about the filibuster when democrats control the senate, house and presidency. They actively dislike the filibuster when they have all three.