Currently suffering from a cold,
but I’m still gonna make this TikTok.
Cause I’m not committed to posting.
I’m not committed to posting.
Anyway, I saw something,
a video that I really liked,
and so here’s a stipid from it.
You should watch the whole video.
I’ll tag the creator McDonald’s receipt.
But you would have to convince somebody in the house or the Senate
to sponsor the Bill, to introduce it.
And then once they’ve sponsored it,
that whole
entire process starts with the subcommittee and the committee.
And getting through the first either house or the Senate,
and then going to the next one,
the subcommittee, the committee,
getting through that one.
And because the Republicans have control of the house,
and because they,
the independent senators are frequently voting with the Republicans,
they’re squashing everything the Democrats propose right now.
Voting down ballot matters.
That’s why non presidential elections matter.
That’s why non presidential election years matter.
That’s why when people say,
oh, what we just.
We say this every four years with this conversation every four years,
nothing ever changes.
Are like telling on themselves that they don’t understand how it works.
And most importantly,
that’s why the president can’t just do whatever they feel like.
That’s the entire point of the system of government.
It’s called checks and balances.
It’s supposed. You should watch the whole thing there.
It’s a good explanation of how built the criminal law.
I’m commenting because there are two points.
I wanna make related to her description of the process.
First, this is a thing I think she didn’t mention,
which is important to mention.
And the second is one of the implications of that thing.
So the thing she didn’t mention through her explanation of power,
Bill becomes law is the filibuster.
Um, which many of you watching this know what that is.
Filibuster is in the Senate.
Although, interestingly enough,
back in the 19th century, there was a house filibuster.
We can talk about that in another time.
But filibuster is in the Senate.
And what the filibuster is
is unlimited debate. Um,
and so if you filibuster something,
what you’re saying is, I’m gonna debate this, uh,
until I’m. I’m good and done with it.
And then there’s something called a cloture vote.
And if 60 senators, uh,
vote for cloture,
then they’ve ended the debate and it moves on to an up or down vote.
Now, in practice these days,
a filibuster is basically unbreakable
because there are not 60 senators,
there’s no bipartisan coalition,
for the most part,
to break filibusters of legislation that is filibustered.
Um, a quick history lesson on the filibuster.
It’s not in the Constitution,
it’s not part of the. The structure of the Senate.
And it
more or less emerges out of some quirks in the rules of the Senate.
The first filibuster is in the 1830s.
It kind of goes dormant after that.
Not really in use, it pops Up again in the early 20th century, um,
and at this point, the filibuster is.
I mean, it’s like a.
It’s like a nuclear weapon.
Like, it completely, um,
monopolizes time.
Hold on.
Dog is very angry about something,
I don’t know what. Um,
anyway, it completely monopolizes time in the Senate.
You can’t really do any other business,
and there’s actually no way to break it.
The person just have to. Have to get tired.
So in 1917, I believe,
during the filibuster of a President Wilson war measure, um,
the cloture is created. And at this point,
it requires two thirds, um,
of the Senate to vote, um,
for cloture, to end debate.
Um, cloture is at two thirds of the Senate
until,
I wanna say, the 1960s or 1970s,
at which point it becomes 60 votes, um,
of the 100 members. Um,
intro. Later,
sometime later, maybe late 70s,
early 80s, is introduced a new process by which filibusters happen,
on
which Senate business happens on two tracks.
So if a Bill is filibustered,
that doesn’t freeze the chamber to a halt,
other Senate business can happen,
and the filibuster does its own thing.
Um, and now we’re at a point where,
I mean, basically a senator emails the,
you know, the floor and,
or the parliamentarian or the majority leader or whoever,
and it’s like one filibustering this,
and that’s kind of the whole process.
There’s some people who think that, um,
we should return to The talking filibuster
and make people go up there and speak.
My view is that we shouldn’t have a filibuster at all,
and here’s why. And this gets to the.
My second point.
Now, think about what it takes
to be in a position to pass a major piece of legislation.
Let’s say, to pass the Inflation Reduction Act. Big,
you know, hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars
climate package that was passed in 2022.
So in order for Democrats to pass the Inflation Reduction Act,
they needed to capture both chambers of Congress,
House and Senate.
They captured the house in 2018,
and they captured the Senate in 2020,
and they also needed to capture the presidency,
which they did in 2020 as well.
They lost those things in 2016.
Right. And so it’s a four year cycle.
It took four years from 2016 2020
for Democrats to regain control of government.
And then it took better, you know,
basically the better part of a year,
year and a half to introduce the legislation,
negotiate the legislation,
have the legislation passed through various committees, um,
and then reach the floor where it could be passed.
Multiple veto points today at every point.
If at any point,
Democrats lost an election,
and here, you know,
I mean, any one of the,
you know, the,
the 435 House elections in 2020,
if they’ve lost any one of the ones,
I gave them the majority,
they would have been out of Luck.
Have you not been able to hold the senator or take back the Senate?
Out of luck. Have they lost the presidency?
Out of luck. Um,
and then on top of that, they have to get it through Congress.
And so even if there isn’t a filibuster.
Right, there’s no filibuster.
It’s an upper down vote in the Senate.
What you’re talking about is
kind of a de facto super majority requirement,
because remember the four year cycle of actually winning power.
These are two separate electorates.
So two separate electorates had to say okay to Democrats holding power.
And then once in the Legislature,
merely having to pass bills through committees
and then through multiple chambers,
access its own kind of super majority requirement.
If not, you don’t simply need a majority of the house.
You need a majority of the house and the Senate.
And that’s, that’s,
that’s, that’s a large number of people.
First of all, it’s, uh,
269 people, uh,
but also,
um, I mean,
268 if you count the vice president’s vote. But
they represent many, many millions of people.
Tens and tens of millions of people.
So when you begin to add it up,
what you have through all the veto points,
through the time it takes to assemble an electoral majority, to,
to hold power, is a set of, again,
de facto supermajority requirements.
And so my view is that
if you already have all these de facto supermajority requirements,
multiple veto Points at which any point
failure or disagreement could kill the process.
Why do you need a filibuster?
It’s an obstruction in particular purpose.
Henry Cabot Lodge, a Massachusetts senator in the 1890s,
wrote, um,
I really, I think persuasive peace
arguing against the filibuster,
saying that there are actually two duties
when it comes to being a legislator.
There’s a duty to debate and to deliberate,
but there’s also a duty to vote.
And if you have deliberation without voting,
then you’re basically violating the basic premise
of what it means to be a legislature.
And I agree with that. So down with the filibuster.
It should go away. And I hope you were informed after hearing this.