re-election of current Congress peeps

[jhc68]

Re: re-election of current Congress peeps

I think pork may well be the most likely sort of legislation to get a super-majority approval. And important stuff the least likely...

[jazzcyclist]

Re: re-election of current Congress peeps

I think pork may well be the most likely sort of legislation to get a super-majority approval. And important stuff the least likely...

You're probably right. No Congressman wants other people messing their pork, which only needs 51% to pass, so they know not to mess with anybody else's. On the other hand, it takes 67% of Congress to pass a balance budget amendment, which would prevent Congress from spending more money than the government takes in. If a balance budget amendment had been in place in 2003, W would have been forced to ask Congress to raise taxes to pay for his Iraq adventure, rather than just putting in on the national credit card.

In 1995, the Balance Budget Amendment passed in the House (300-132) but fell short by exactly one vote in the Senate (66-34). I remember at the time it was being reported that Congressional leaders did precise vote counting in order to allow as many people to vote for it as possible without it passing so that the maximum number of members would have political cover when they ran for reelection. Not coincidentally, all the senators who were up for reelection in 1996 voted for it.

[user4]

Re: re-election of current Congress peeps

keep sending our own incompetents back to DC

I don't believe the majority of them are incompetent. Most of them are actually quite bright, accomplished people, lawyers predominantly. The problem is that just about each one of them has an agenda (or ideology, if you please) that over the past few decades became increasingly more inflexible. Then, there are, of course, their own interests that majority of them place above the interests of the country.

You mean a group of talented and skilled men go to one place where other peoples money is to be dispensed and it surprises us that they would put their own interests above the others.

Are there more than a few hundred men in the whole country that would not put their own interests above others if faced with those kinds of rewards ?

I could think of a thousand ways to "invest in the future" and have a nice slice of it come back into my pockets.

[TN1965]

Re: re-election of current Congress peeps

Since we're talking about nonsensical governmental crap that gums up the works, where in our Constitution did the founding fathers say that 60% is the bar to win an election or vote?? And why is it that 51 votes work in the Senate for stuff no one cares about but it takes 60 for the good stuff? Guess it's better than the old days when it was 67% . . . .

Filibuster is consistent with Madison's idea of checking the "tyranny of majority." (I don't remember, and don't have the time to check the number, but it was in one of the Federalist Papers piece written by him.)

[TN1965]

Re: re-election of current Congress peeps

I think pork may well be the most likely sort of legislation to get a super-majority approval. And important stuff the least likely...

One of the common ways to secure the super-majority is to add "riders" to the original bill, and make it a "Christmas Tree bill."