The U.S. Congress is navigating yet another government funding deadline — the eighth in less than six months — and are at an impasse over sending aid to key allies in Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel. Divisions among Republicans in the House and Senate killed a major bipartisan border policy bill. Reforms to bedrock programs like Medicare and Social Security are desperately needed but no closer to getting passed. Meanwhile, the House of Representatives spent close to a month without a speaker last year due to infighting between moderate and hard right factions of the Republican party.
When U.S. Representative Chip Roy, a Republican from Texas, begged his colleagues in November to “give me one thing I can campaign on and say we did,” he was articulating what many lawmakers and observers were feeling: Congress isn’t working.
The simplest expression of this is the number of bills passed by Congress. Just twenty-seven bills were passed last year — a record low — but even before that, the number of bills signed into law by the president has been falling.
Republican is written 8 times in the article and 4 times in graphs, but that is not even close to enough, should be twice or 3 times as much. Don’t give me that “both sides” bullshit. The graphs in this very article show a clear picture. Republicans are the party of obstruction. Conservative parties everywhere including in Canada, figured out in the last decade that simply “not doing their job” is the easiest way to get austerity and ferment power in the halls of legislation.
Conservatism is about maintaining the status quo … they don’t want change because keeping the systems of power the same means that they get to keep their power as long as they are in or near the center of power.
They have no incentive to make things more productive, efficient or even make sense … their only motivation is to keep the world as it is because they have a share of the power … and the more dysfunctional they can make the world, the more power they can achieve.
Why don’t they conserve people’s rights to abortion and equality that have existed for decades? Why are they constantly cutting taxes on the rich instead of conserving the funding rates for the government? Why are they regressing to raciskband sexism of the the 50’s when they are trying to “keep things from changing”?
Because they are not trying to prevent change. They are trying to prevent, and also undo, progress. They are regressives, not conservatives.
In the long history of western civilization … the periods of abortion rights, equality, taxing of the rich, dealing with racism and sexism were all just modern changes that happened really quickly and suddenly (relatively speaking).
There were thousands of years of history before where the world was set up as the wealthy and powerful on top and the slaves and poor at the bottom serving their masters.
That is what conservatism is … wanting to return to the model of a wealthy class owning everything and to be served by the poor they control and own below them.
To them, our modern beliefs and fight for equality and fairness are just mere blips in the history of civilization that has only ever known the powerful standing over the weak.
Conservatism is about preferring hierarchical power. It is merely correlated to maintaining the status quo to the extent that the status quo is very often strongly hierarchical. Make no mistake, however: conservatives in an egalitarian context would have no hesitation in jettisoning the status quo in order to create hierarchy where it didn’t already exist.
ferment power
“foment”
Shoot. That’s how you know I write how I speak.
Read the CIA simple sabotage field manual and try to tell me that isn’t exactly the republican playbook. They’re not interested in governing. What’s weird is how few of them seem to be even doing it deliberately.
Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance.
Ignorance can surely explain why a pack of republican lawmakers spent the 4th of July at the Kremlin.
At this point, it’s a distinction without a difference. Whether they are failing because of a plan, or because they are actual idiots is irrelevant.
To quote Aristophanes, “Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, and drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever.”
Technically, it’s the Strategic Services Unit’s. The CIA didn’t exist back then
You’re right, but as it’s a distinction without a great difference I thought it best to connect that dot implicitly.
In short, they have no incentive to improve anything
I know it’ll never happen but I’d like to see them held liable for all monetary costs associated with their actions, all lies they tell for ANY reason, and just their general stupidity at actual leadership.
Back in 2012 through 2013 the GOP forced multiple federal shutdowns. Each one forced federal funding agencies to stop reviewing and handling research grants. Each time it derailed and delayed both my personal grants and our research group’s work. This directly contributed to making it much more difficult for me (a recent grad) to get a faculty appointment that I’d been working towards during 13 years of college.
The GOP’s talking points of how bad government is has direct and personal effects on people. Every time the government shuts down talking heads blather on how “See? Everything just keeps working even without the government! Obviously, we don’t need it.” They’re wrong. The effects pile on as our nation’s infrastructure grinds to a halt. People lose work, systems break down, and families are damaged by their selfish theft of our money (which is the whole point in the end).
I don’t vote GOP. They don’t care about me or my family. They’ve made that abundantly clear for decades now with no signs of changing. The sooner they’re destroyed as a party, the better.
Meanwhile, my brother working for the government loved those shutdowns. They had time off since they were not allowed to work, didn’t have to worry about keeping their job, and were guaranteed to eventually get paid for it. As long as you had the savings to tide yourself over, it could be a great gig.
Thanks to Republican trying to add “efficiency” by not letting people work but paying them for doing nothing
They will when people run against them and kick them out
So am I.
There seems to be a common thread with regard to the inability of Congress to do anything. 🤔
So, what, we’re just stating the most obvious facts possible and getting paid for doing the journalism?
Okay, uh, AI sucks. Money nao.
I wonder if this would change if we didn’t know how our representatives voted. If they were all to blame for the failures of the institution rather than being able to point to their individual vote maybe people would put more pressure on them to work together.
Also it would mean they couldn’t be pressured or paid into voting a specific way. Then again, nobody ever likes this idea when I bring it up so I expect to get a lot of angry replies.
I think a problem with blind voting is, who do the citizens know who represented them and acted in their interest, and therefore who they should support and vote for? Backroom deals and corruption would run rife. Greater transparency is better than less.
A conscience vote, where the party leaders do not enforce a particular party line, instead accept the will of the representative member (notionally on behalf of their constituents) should be more commonplace. This is essentially the same as getting an independent. Best bet is to break up the 2-party system.
If Congress isn’t doing its job as a whole, the voters will vote out their individual Congressman, even if they’re not the cause. If you know you’re gonna lose your job because your coworker is fucking up you’re gonna police them. If things get bad enough the entire Congress could be replaced for incompetence.
Voting transparency also allows those backroom deals, but this time the Congressman can show that they did what they were bribed to do. So even if a vote fails the person giving the bribe got what they paid for. Or, to put it another way, are you really gonna try to bribe someone if you can’t verify that they’re going to do what you paid them to do?
If voters want to be informed of their Congressman’s positions, they can look at the records of debates and committee meetings. Votes are not the only way to know if your representative is doing their job.
These are the same reasons we have blind voting as individuals - so that voters can’t be intimidated or paid to vote a certain way. I think Congress would work better if they went back to anonymous votes.
Best bet is to break up the 2-party system.
I think getting Congress back to anonymous voting is a far more achievable goal, and might actually help with that.
Makes sense. It’s a shame when these should be fundamental principals and accountability of the person’s elected.
The concern for me is there would be those that act without conscience or care, the ‘wreckers’ that don’t have any current policy or engage in rational debate, they’re in plain sight already today and not being held to account?
I think the reason they’re not held to account is because everyone else can just point to that individual and say it’s not their fault. But with anonymous voting, acts of Congress would be blamed on the entire Congress, and would incentivize Congressmen to police themselves lest they lose their jobs along with the at-fault party.
Also, there’s a lot of other bad behavior that individual Congressman can engage in that would be firmly pinned on that individual. Their words in committee or on the floor, would still be available, and their voters could vote them out on that.
Down-under, we have some other mechanisms to try to preserve democracy:
Mandatory voting and preferential voting. This provides opportunities for third parties and independents who engage with voters.
Ethics Committees, used at state levels but pushes for a Federal Ethics Committee. “They allow Parliament to scrutinise the Executive more effectively, making it more responsible to the people”
Caps on political donations is another measure, supported by progressives but not yet by the conservatives.
Canada has similar safeguards, except we allowed third-party political funding into the mix a few years back (similar to the American super pacs) … which was snuck in under the radar so many Canadians are unaware of it.
I am still pissed about that crap migrating up here.
