"we"
caught a local blogger talking about the political "we" this morning. seems the hyperbole is in overdrive about our little local plebescite here, and there's a deep fear on the part of certain D's that the potential lack of a supermajority in the senate somehow places the entire country at the edge of an abyss. ("vote for the D, or the dark ages return...")
funny, when i read the congressional rules designed by our founding fathers, i can't help but note the powerful protections afforded to the minority, baked right into the fabric of our legislature. for example, the filibuster, more than any other single mechanism, ensures that 40% of the country can hold the other 60% hostage until their concerns are met and addressed. this was thought by our founders to be an extremely important democratic ideal, and i cannot help but be impressed with what that means.
sapere aude
funny, when i read the congressional rules designed by our founding fathers, i can't help but note the powerful protections afforded to the minority, baked right into the fabric of our legislature. for example, the filibuster, more than any other single mechanism, ensures that 40% of the country can hold the other 60% hostage until their concerns are met and addressed. this was thought by our founders to be an extremely important democratic ideal, and i cannot help but be impressed with what that means.
sapere aude
posted by kad barma at 10:06 AM
4 Comments:
Uh...the filibuster isn't from the founding fathers. It's much newer than that.
Everyone bitches and moans about how the legislature is just do-nothing and locked into ineffectual watering down of legislation but we ignore the fact that the reason this is so, is that a little minority can defeat pretty much everything. You can see the effects on the health care legislation - all good strong reform was off the table because the Senate had to even pander to the likes of its own majority's fringes like Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson. All to retain the magic 60 votes, not 50. The House actually had a pretty strong bill, because they only needed a majority.
I say kill the filibuster. We never used it while in the minority because the Republican'ts threatened the nuclear option, and now they are using it to kill any chance of actually enacting the reforms and policies which Dems were elected overwhelmingly to do. I say if you get the majority, you should be able to enact something useful pertaining to the ideology you ran on, and if the American people hate it, they can vote you the heck out in favor of the other side afterwards. That's what happened after Bush's tenure after all. They owned the legislation they passed (largely due to the fact the Dems DIDN't filibuster).
Oh and RE hyperbole it's not. I really do believe this is our best shot at changing a bad system (sure, changing it only incrementally). If we do not do it now, it'll be another decade, another few million uninsured (or more) and a bigger crisis that will be even harder to change.
If this health care legislation was in place back when we were uninsured for 6 years, though employed (as a contractor and self employed, respectively), we would have qualified for something we could afford, and illnesses which should have been *preventable* would not have taken hold. My family is case #1 why this legislation is so important.
Not the least of which is because of the rules it puts into place - no preexisting conditions, no kicking people off of care when they get sick, etc. That *alone* is worth this battle for the Senate seat and all the "hyperbole" in the universe. We are spoiled in MA - we have some of those protections already, though not all. Most of the rest of the country is not so lucky.
I think you have it backwards. Even "cloture" is a relatively recent phenomenon.
Filibusters have been the law of the land since 1806, and were generally accepted practice since the Senate was formed 17 years earlier. One time someone took advantage of the "move the previous question" clause to end a debate, and the result was they moved to eliminate that as a practice so that nobody could end debate.
The founders didn't even want a 60% rule to end debate.
Read your history.
Oh, and to the, "I would have been covered" suggestion?
It's rich that someone who becomes a "have" under the current proposals would be so satisfied with them.
What about the "still won't haves"???
Universal health care should be exactly that. Universal. Coverage for ALL. Further subsidizing existing insurers to cover some more people does nothing to help those who remain beyond the scope of what can be afforded at the present coverage guidelines.
What I would suggest is needed is two things:
First, like telephone and postal service, we have to insist that coverage be extended to EVERYONE, no matter who they are or where they live. This means finding a way to put doctors in rural and urban areas where there aren't enough.
Second, like current dental insurance plans, we need to differentiate between nice-to-haves, like braces and cosmetic fillings, and "need-to-haves", like plain old metal fillings when people have cavities. Currently, on the healthcare front, people can qualify for thousands of dollars a year worth of prescription drugs for chronic or trivial conditions (Viagra even gets covered) that far too often can't even be proved to improve the things they're supposed to treat. That is not something we can afford, and certainly not on top of the generous bailouts currently being paid to our white collar criminals, I mean bankers.
When someone shows me a plan that provides coverage, and not just subsidizes insurers, I might be tempted to vote for it.
Until then, keep your 41st Senator whining to yourself. I plan to vote for whomever I feel is best able to represent me in Congress.
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