Is America ungovernable?
economist.com
economist.com
As far back as the 1830s, de Tocqueville made a fascinating study of why a stable democracy had arisen in the wake of the American revolution of the 1770s while, in contrast, the French revolution of just a few years later had led to mass slaughter and the guillotine. In significant part, he found that the difference lay in the massing of power that in France had gone unchecked, leading the people to fall under the sway of their immediate, unchecked passions and causing disastrous results.
In politics, there are reasons to check unlimited power and the U.S. system of law and politics is fundamentally premised on this (that is why there are, among other things, three co-equal branches of government, a federal/state division of power, a bicameral legislature, and, ultimately, a constitution whose main function is to prevent the rise of an overweening central authority).
One can of course question this and advocate for a stronger central authority and for the abrogation of the various checks and balances (or even pure traditions, such as the filibuster) but it is a bit tendentious to say that a system has suddenly become "ungovernable" simply because you wish it did not stand in the way of your immediate agenda. It has, after all, been but a very few years since many of these same sources were touting the filibuster as the last, great bastion of liberty when it was being used by a then-minority party to block judicial appointments seen as unfavorable to their cause. One's arguments are always stronger if they are principled and not tied to the exigencies of the moment, as those advanced here appear to be.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/01/the-rise-of-clotu...
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/31/republican-filibusters-s...
Adopting the filibuster as a matter of routine for nearly every matter before the senate, and hoping that the country will reward you for it by being disgusted with congress's lack of ability to get anything done, is not what they were envisioning when they enacted it.
Political junkie history trivia interjection here.
It used to be that any one senator could stop laws from passing. Later on cloture was reduced from unanimous consent to 2/3rd of the Senate. Finally it was reduced again to 3/5th of the Senate.
There are lots of other issues here, and I didn't want to interrupt your discussion, but I find it fascinating that, if anything, it was always intended that very few senators could/should hold up things. The Senate was intended to be the more deliberative and slow-moving body, and large latitude has always been given for the minority to shut things down with discussion.
Back to your regularly scheduled discussion.
Filibustering every single routine bill to come through the senate out of cynical political game-playing is a travesty. These people swore an oath to serve the country, and they're disgracing their office with about 8/10 of the filibusters they're invoking.
(Might as well weigh in with an opinion)
Part of this is because politicians just don't like each other that much anymore -- nobody gets together for poker or dinner parties. That's a shame, and it hurts the country. Part of it is that Congress is under incredible scrutiny by cable news outlets, talk radio, and the blogs -- people are being sent there to fight an ideological battle, perhaps to the exclusion of doing the nation's business. Both sides are keeping these long lists of grievances with the other side. Lots of bitterness and lack of trust.
This isn't an unsolved problem, however. The Republic has a long history, and we've seen all kinds of partisanship in the past. Traditionally president of the party in power finds a few members of the opposite party and makes deals with them for bills. This usually ticks off the president's base, but it also splits the opposition and makes them ineffective. Once the opposition is split, moderates from both camps can join in to pass a bill with a dozen or so holdouts at both extremes voting against it. It's been done lots of times. Clinton very effectively did it when he announced "The era of big government is over" He took the other guy's issues and crafted bills that made it impossible for some of the other guys not to vote for them. Once he snagged a dozen or so Republicans, the rest of the process worked out fine. But it really ticked off his base!
I'm not seeing that same strategy being applied today -- perhaps because it wouldn't work. I don't know. I tend to think it would have worked a year ago. It may be too late now. Beats me.
How many republicans would vote for any healthcare bill? Even one that gave kittens to every republican in the country, spit in the eye of liberals and was named "the healthcare bill"?
I posted below that republicans filibustered PAYGO rules and a deficit reduction committee... right after filibustering the routine raising of the debt ceiling.
The republicans see a clear incentive to gridlock every single thing that goes through congress because they think people will blame it on the democrats. It's working out for them ok, so shame on us, I guess.
Hey. Just my opinion. I have a friend of mine that no matter what the subject can give me a list of all the bad things the Republicans did. I have another friend that can do the same for the Democrats.
I'm really glad that neither of these friends are in public office. :)
Kennedy worked with Bush on NCLB. Gingrich, although not in the minority, worked with Clinton on welfare reform (although Clinton did have to veto it 7 times before they would pass something he could agree to).
I just don't see any willingness from current republicans to share a victory with Obama on anything. Either they're personally committed to not working with him on anything, ever, or they're afraid of tea party primary challenges, or both.
The fact that the current republican caucus is primarily old white men from the south probably doesn't help, for reasons that are too inflammatory to go into too deeply except to note that I'm commenting on old white men from the south, not on republicans necessarily.
I believe it's much of the same material told from the conservative side. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/02/19/debunki...
But I'll just reiterate that we're dealing with a party here that attempted to filibuster raising the debt ceiling, and then filibustered implementing PAYGO rules that same afternoon. They filibustered appointing that bipartisan deficit reduction commission after the original idea had been pitched by republican senators.
So, yeah, there's room for improvement in how Obama's handling these jokers. He could do a better job in exposing what they're doing and forcing them to be productive. More televised meetings with them would be my advice, and he seems to be going that way with the healthcare summit next week (that republicans may decide not to show up to). But they're still the primary jokers in the picture. IMO.
For a real filibuster, the ones holding it must be willing to sacrifice their own agenda in order to do so. While the filibuster is going on, no other business can transpire.
I'd like to see sometime the other side call their bluff, and say "Fine, let's have that filibuster. Stand there and start talking. We'll see how far you get before your fat butts are too tired, or you've got some other action on the agenda that you want to work on."
The number of pages in the Federal Register more than doubled during [Nixon's] administration, rising from roughly twenty thousand in 1969 to forty-five thousand in 1974, when he resigned, and sixty thousand the next year. The all-time peak, reached in 1980, was eighty-seven thousand. The number of pages declined sharply during the Reagan administration, then rose again under Presidents Bush and Clinton. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; the Consumer Product Safety Commission; the Drug Enforcement Administration; the Endangered Species Act; the Environmental Protection Agency; the Legal Services Corporation; the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; the Occupational Safety and Health Administration-all had their origin during the Nixon administration. In addition, affirmative action and wage and price control were introduced.
It would be a lot easier to achieve in less balanced democratic systems such as the ones that exist in mainland Europe, where once a government is elected it can pretty much do what it wants to do without having to worry about partisan issues at least until the next elections come around.
Such a system can and does, of course, lead to legislation being enacted that most people don't actually want, but at least it's, usually, clear and workable, unlike the outcomes of the American political process which often (to me, as an outsider, at least) seem hopelessly convoluted and kludgy, which is a result of their having passed through a lengthy process of deliberation among wildly incompatible political interests.
Health care isn't something you want to rush. Getting it right is more important than getting it now.
The main reason Obama was trying to push it through quickly was so to prevent the opposition from reading it and publicizing the bad parts. I.e., to prevent a public debate.
If the opposition were interested in good policy, they'd be well-served to point out bad things that are actually in the bill, (of which there are plenty), rather than wild-eyed slogans about death panels and sidetracking about abortion.
The government in the Netherlands fell because it was a terribly mismatched coalition to begin with and the issue of military intervention in Afghanistan was the last in a series of internal conflicts that made it unworkable.
(IMHO).
Generally speaking, the Dutch form of government, where people vote once every four years for parties they think should be part of a coalition government which then, basically, gets to do whatever it wants until it's voted out, is exactly what I had in mind when I wrote my original comment.
Once a government is in place, there's hardly any checks and balances to speak of, but once in a while you get the chance to vote out parties that have really made a mess of things.
() yes, I know that according to the constitution parliament has the last say in government. in practice, however, several parties commit to a coalition government and will defend it no matter what, even if said government does something they're absolutely against.
European governments, meanwhile, are not easily placed into a single bucket. For example, a government can fall over a vote of no confidence, which is much less involved than impeachment. Governments made up of coalitions - which are more likely with e.g. single transferable vote election systems - are often forced to be centrist to some degree, because they would fail a vote of no confidence should they anger one of the coalition parties too much.
That's the point of it, though. The system was intentionally designed to make it difficult to get a law passed, on the theory that any bill that can survive the process to become a law and then withstand reviews from the judiciary regarding its constitutionality must be pretty good and important, or it wouldn't get passed.
The Constitution and the form of government it establishes is there to abrogate the powers of the ruling class. The whole point is to make it difficult for the government to do things.
There are some exceptions; for instance, the President is Commander-in-Chief and generally is granted at least some leeway in the unauthorized usage of force if there is an imminent danger to American citizens, though technically only the Congress can authorize a full-on war. Some other emergency powers are reckoned to the President or his municipal equivalents in the case of martial law, etc.
Our government makes some allotment for extraordinary powers when the exclusion of them would cause significant destruction, but in general the idea is for things to go slow.
This isn't really compatible with the way our government is used today, which is sad condemnation of our generations, imo.
As such, these things are imposed upon the federal government in part because the majority of laws are intended to be enacted by local governments, like states and cities. Each state in the United States has its own constitution and is free to make its own legislative procedures insofar as such procedures do not contradict the Bill of Rights contained in the federal Constitution.
For instance, if Kansas wanted to do away with free speech, they would have to withdraw from the union to do so (theoretically), as such a prohibition is contrary to the constitution of the union of independent American states.
Or by contrast, if the federal government wanted to impose a law which said all people must wear a seat belt while riding in a car, this would be violate of the federal Constitution and the independent states are free to reject such a law (theoretically). The federal Constitution is clear that any powers not explicitly delegated to the federal government are within the purview of the state.
Now, that's the idea. In reality, states make laws and operate under procedures that circumvent fundamental rights frequently, and the federal government enforces its will by withholding funding or imposing other forms of ostracization upon any state that doesn't comply (see age 21 drinking age). Things are even worse now, and constitutions are rarely upheld -- the congresses and legislatures at both federal and state levels just pass whatever they like with complete disregard for its legality, and the public lets them do it -- as long as the public can get their American Idol and Zoloft there are no problems there.
The whole thing is just really sad.
I made a very similar point on another comment in this thread, that basically the states should be making the majority of the laws, but they've let themselves get tied up with very restrictive rules (at least in the few states I'm familiar with).
As far as truly unconstitutional laws, I don't think they happen nearly as much as you think they do.
The biggest difference is, the European Union has 500 million people spread under 29 different countries' national governments. The United States has 300 million people under 1 country's national government. The decisive action you're talking about would be more like the entire EU decisively getting something across than a particular nation. Things do happen faster on the state level.
your checks and balances have to be, well, balanced. and that balance is going to depend on context to some extent. so the right amount / kind of checks and balances might vary from one moment to the next.
This is most certainly not the case, and reflects that as much as we have problems with our government, the foundations are still working. The compromises inherent in our bicameral legislature and the electoral college are there to protect from the problems that an unchecked majority might lead to. Our system is designed so that even popular ideas backed by a "mandate" (an invention of the media; who actually voted for the supposed underlying initiative?) can -- and should be -- blocked if it's so thoroughly repugnant to others.
At the risk of skirting up against Godwin's law, the idea that this "progress" is destined, part of the inexorable evolution to a higher social order, sounds decidedly Marxian. Frankly, I find such an attitude every bit as alarming as these "reforms" to which it refers.
That said, the article really does even out and put this all in perspective. If you can make it through the whole article, I think that the picture you wind up with is a pretty fair picture.
[Edit: fix bad phrasing in next-to-last para]
Many states have been taken over by handcuffs of strict tax limitations (which is why california is screwed, and my own colorado is screwed to a lesser degree).
Really, the Massachusetts method of state-by-state decisions, then coalesced into national policy when it's been proven and has wide support is a good method to go with. But states can't do that now.
I'd say that the super-limited federal government only worked when states had a counterbalancing ability to get things done. I'm not sure why states power has fallen to so low a level (popularly elected senate, ability for citizens to push through restrictive state constitution amendments, massing of federal money that forces policy decisions [like highways & drinking age].... etc).
I agree with your idea that experimentation at the state level before attempting something federally would be far superior.
But I disagree that States can't do so now. Certainly where I live now (New Jersey) there's nothing limiting local experimentation into healthcare (certainly not a strict tax limitation!!).
Frankly, I think the problem is that those proposing such measures can't stand to see anyone try a different approach (or none at all). In their righteousness, they convince themselves that their idea is the only correct one, and thus everyone must be forced to "benefit" from it.
I wish I knew what happened to the philosophy of letting each person live the kind of life they want, without having to be subject to the values of someone else.
Basically, it limits the ability to tax, so a new program (say, single payer health care for the state), that would require a tax, requires massive public approval. Which stops progress as much as the federal government gridlock.
Your last line betrays some of your political leanings. In my view there are two major competing ideals of government. There's your "live & let live" ideal, and there's the "we're in this together" ideal. Neither is wrong, and both have a pretty strong argument behind them. But it leads to totally different policy decisions that are at odds. So yeah, that's what happened to it, there's a competing ideal.
Best, then, to take our heads out of the sand and address the divide directly. Otherwise we will have the same conflicts over every issue, arguing over surface details without ever really resolving anything, all the while building more and more acrimony.
I'd that pretty much dictates that "reform" of some kind is necessary. Whether you disagree with a given set of reforms or not is another discussion of course.
If spending on computers and cellphones has increased by 15%/year, does that also necessitate PC/Cellphone reform? If not, why not?
I'm typing this on a quad core with 2 21" monitors. My cell phone has more capabilities than my computer did a decade ago. Way more people have computers, smartphones, etc than 10 years ago.
Bodies haven't double transistor counts. More to the point, there are actually fewer people insured as a % of the population than there were a decade ago, and the population has certainly not been growing at 15% a year.
You're probably big on curbing gov't spending.. go walk down to your local town/city hall, get a copy of the budget now and 10 years ago, take a look at the difference in healthcare spending.
It's more or less the same situation: new technology creates more features, and people are willing to spend more on those features.
So yes, it was a serious comment. You stated a criteria which should trigger reform, namely 15% growth/year.
Are you willing to apply this criteria uniformly, or is it really just a made up post-hoc rationalization for your already existing beliefs?
I wouldn't argue for gov't involvement in reform unless it were a basic necessity, luxuries tend to work themselves out through the market, charge too much and people won't buy.
What we're seeing with these price increases isn't people loving health insurance so much they want to buy more of it. It's people being forced to pay more and more for a necessity because if they don't have insurance, a broken arm means bankruptcy or close to it. There's no functioning market.
How do you know the increase is not due to spending on unnecessary medicine?
In fact, there is compelling evidence that this is the case. Most studies show that a considerable fraction of medical spending is on medicine which provides no health benefit whatsoever. See this comment for a link to some review articles:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1140658
So indeed, people love medicine so much that they want to buy more of it. They buy all sorts of medicine which doesn't even make them healthier.
Also, trauma care (broken arms, car crashes) is not a major driver of medical costs.
(interlude -- none of those things have a good reason to go up by 15% a year. X rays, antibiotics and opiates have been around for a century.)
So basically, I'm roped into paying a monthly total into this ridiculously broken system because if I don't, the cost of routine, cheapo medical care would bankrupt me. Maybe not this year, but eventually the dice would come up snake eyes for me. I have no option to take my business elsewhere -- that's market failure.
Here's another good article on busted incentives that I linked below:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_...
One town in texas has double the national average in healthcare spending. Really interesting article on why, compared to the cheapest towns for healthcare -- it has nothing to do with health.
Do you still believe that reform is necessary? If so, why?
Incidentally, as far as reducing costs goes, the only method proven to reduce spending is increasing the marginal cost of medicine to the consumer. I.e., high deductibles, lower subsidies, no first-dollar coverage, etc. In contrast, any reform scheme which lowers the marginal cost to the consumer will probably make the problem worse.
I said that health insurance is a necessity, pretty clearly I thought, because incidental care is so outrageously expensive in order to finance an inefficient and broken system. The fact that it shouldn't be so expensive just to take care of incidental medical needs doesn't change how things work -- it just highlights how much need there is for reform. So, yes, health insurance is effectively a necessity unless you're a big time gambler (everyone loses eventually), and yes, it's still going up by 15% a year, so yes, nothing's changed in my opinion that some sort of reform is neccessary.
On your final point, I must be completely missing what you're proposing. How does increasing the cost of medicine make it less expensive? You're saying reduce total spending by making healthcare inaccessible?
I think you're mixing up unit costs and aggregate costs. Yes, increasing unit costs to infinity would reduce aggregate costs to zero.. so? Where's that take us, nobody gets a checkup and every hospital visit is an emergency room visit? Aren't those like 100X more expensive?
Trust me, I wish that this particular not-quite-market was functioning properly and there was no need to have this discussion. But it's broken, and the only way I can see to fix it is by government action. What else can we do, community-organized boycott?
Increasing the marginal cost of medicine to the consumer is not the same thing as increasing unit costs. Consider a $100 pill; if a customer has gold plated plans with no copay, the marginal cost of the pill is $0. If the customer has a plan with a $101 deductible, the marginal cost is $100. In both cases the unit cost is $100.
Switching a customer from first dollar to high deductible coverage will cause the consumer to consume less medicine, but will have no (direct) effect whatsoever on the unit cost. This lowers aggregate costs directly (since consumers consume less), which in turn reduces demand and indirectly lowers unit costs.
Also, note that you originally claimed health insurance costs went up 15% / year. Now you claim health care unit costs go up 15% / year. Which is it?
If "much of what it pays for" isn't a necessity then that's just more evidence of how broken the system is.
Your high deductible approach is one way to tackle the problem however it has the problem of disincentivizong preventative care, so we might get a lot more 20k emergency room trips instead of 300$ physicals -- and have a less healthy population, to boot. But it might also be a component of a plan that worked.
I'd note that "most capitalistic" does not always mean "most effective" -- just usually, for normal markets. Otherwise we'd all take capitalist cabs to work every day instead of the socialist subway :)
Ummm. That's precisely the point.
Your phone and PC are more complex, with more capability, and more other people are using such devices. The exact same thing is driving increased spending in healthcare. The previous comment stands.
More to the point, there are actually fewer people insured as a % of the population
And yet virtually all of those uninsured people already get medical care. If they have an acute need and go to the emergency room, they will be served.
I don't mean to say that the system is perfect -- indeed, it's badly broken. But misrepresenting the problem doesn't get it fixed. At best, it fixes a problem that doesn't exist because it's targeted at the wrong thing!
I really think you're underestimating how big 15% a year is over a decade.
Regarding the statement about people without insurance already getting medical care -- you're ignoring the fact they're going to be saddled with a $20k medical bill afterwards. Sure, they can declare bankruptcy, but who wins then? Me, paying my share of the hospital visit that could have been avoided had the person been getting regular checkups?
The system's ridiculously broken. Seriously, go find your local government budgets and look at how much money is being spent on medical care compared to 10 years ago. That's money that could be in your pocket or in your community via more school spending, better road upkeep or whatever. Then apply the same savings to every private US-based product or service you buy, if they're giving their employees health insurance, you're paying for it.
Healthcare investments in technology should be reducing costs. Like in electronics. They're increasing them instead. That's badly broken.
And they are.
As far as I can see, this is just another example of class warfare and envy. The fact is that even the poorest are better off medically than any point in the past.
Because we've now got antibiotics, advanced imaging tech, minimally-invasive surgery -- all things available even to the poorest through Medicare or bad-debt writeoffs in the hospital -- more people can get better care than ever before.
But those things came about because at the beginning, the developers were able to make a killing (excuse the pun) when they sold it. It was the willingness of the more affluent to spend so much that brought about the economies of scale that now let us produce so many of the standard treatments for so little (how much does something like basic antibiotics cost now, even for the uninsured?).
Trying to control the costs of those early treatments that are still in the "pay off the investment" phase of their lifecycle is killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
I wish I could afford the same treatments that the zillionaires get today. But I know that in a not-too-long time those same treatments will become available to my economic means.
Here's a great illustration of what I think is the real issue, borked incentives:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_...
This one town in Texas, average demographics, not particularly less healthy than anywhere else, has double the average healthcare costs. Why? It's a racket -- the doctors are in league with the equipment manufacturers and just recommend that their own stuff is purchased, over prescribing a ton of artificially expensive and btw, unnecessary procedures.
That's market failure.
BTW -- "class warfare" isn't in my lexicon. I'm doing plenty ok. Put down the flash cards :)
In any case, I see the analogy as pushing the opposite viewpoint: in computers I get more capability for less money than a decade ago. I used to have to spend $2000 for a decent laptop, but now I spend $700. Why can't I get better medicine than a decade ago for >50% discount? Does the medical field not make technological advances in the same way as computing, that make existing technology get cheaper over time?
A decade ago for $1k, I'd get a P3, 1GHz, 256MB RAM, no monitor. Now, for the same price, I can get a quad core with 4GB and a flat screen. Unit prices are way down. I don't think increased demand due to cheaper supply takes us to 15% increase a year -- I think you're underestimating just how steep that curve is.
Does that necessitate tax reform?
[1] Many studies purport to count medical bankruptcies. They use criteria like "> $1000 spent on medical costs in year prior to bankruptcy". Using that same criteria, we would probably learn that nearly all bankruptcies are caused by taxes.
I'd say sudden, large shocks to cashflow are more likely to cause bankruptcy than known, predictable outflows. And that's without even getting into the whole thing where taxes are guaranteed to be less than 40% or so of your annual income, but medical expenses will always be the same amount no matter how much money you have in the bank.
This holds for a lot of other expenditures: roads, for example. If the super-poor had to pay an equal share of road upkeep, they wouldn't be able to drive. In general, taxes save the poor money.
I suppose one might argue that the poor could just do without healthcare and save even more cash, but that has too much of a whiff of 'let them eat cake' about it for me.
Regarding tax reform: Sure. Our deduction system is crazy, Warren Buffet pays far less as a share of his income than I do. That's not fair, simplify the system and you can lower the rate across the board while collecting the same revenue. I'm consistent with these things :)
http://www.seanet.com/~jimxc/Politics/Pictures/WP_Obama_defi...
Regarding taxes, you believe that a $1001 unexpected event will drive you into bankruptcy, but a sustained payment of $10,000/year will not? Note that if that $10,000/year were reduced to $8,999, there would be sufficient money available to pay for the unexpected $1001 payment.
Counter-cyclical deficit spending is pretty much the only time that the gov't should knowingly go into the red to hand out tax cuts -- otherwise, they should either cut stuff or raise the revenue necessary to stay in the black.
Funny thing about those estimated future government expenditures.. if I had to give you one guess as to what the fastest growing component of those spending projections is, what would you guess? (Hint: it's abbreviated "HC")
The Declaration of Independence states that government derives it's authority from the consent of the governed, but voter turnout is relatively low, voter approval is very low, and people don't seem to have a sense of partnership with the government.
I almost think it time for a movement with two tenants: 1) federal government has lost it's moral authority to govern. 2) We do not respect government authority, but only government power.
This movement would be phase one. Phase two could be either an American styled revolution or better, a non-violent Indian styled one, or something else, but preferably not decades of cynicism and decline.
I believe a major thing holding this country together right now is our strong sense of justice. I've heard it said of Colombia, that the biggest threat to their country is that when someone gets murdered, families don't except the government to be able to deliver justice. We do still have that expectation.
in the ensuing chaos
Communal violence killed an estimated one million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs
not to be a jerk, I just get sick of the dominant paradigm which holds that action without the threat of force has ever, in any way, significantly shaped the power structures of human civilization. you've been brought up on docility propaganda.
What I am talking about it an idea; perhaps phase two is violent, but without phase one, it's violence without a purpose.
P.S. Where are your italicized phrases sourced from?
yes, that is what I'm saying. I don't view a religious civil war between hindus and muslims over pakistani independence to be violence with a purpose. I see all violence as purposeless. the product of ignorance that could have been avoided. I say this not as a high minded ideal, but as simple rational appraisal. violent action is rarely economical unless the aggressors are able to externalize the costs of their aggression onto some other group. support for war is often drummed up through appeals to ignorance on the part of the populace supporting the aggressors.
For the general concept of what it would mean for citizens to opt out of a government in the American context, though, Thoreau wrote quite a bit on the subject: http://thoreau.eserver.org/civil.html
Anti-war groups have typically also debated some version of "how can I opt out?", though I'd say with with mixed success. They can generally find ways to avoid actually serving in the military, but avoiding paying for it or having wars be waged in your name is a lot harder.
All these articles, like the Economist's, are just looking at passing the health care bill as a binary decision, where passing it equals progress, and holding it up equals lack of progress. Every bill these days, after it goes through the congressional meat grinder, comes out as a spineless piece of pork, and unless a magazine like the Economist (who ironically refuses to compute the economics of health care in this article), can point this out, then they, in my opinion, have lost the authority to report.
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Fair enough, but that means that there are two questions.
(1) When does anyone earn the moral authority to rule over you? (2) When does anyone earn the moral authority to govern you?
Both lead to related questions - when does the US govt have said moral authority? (It's okay to answer "when folks who I like are in power.")
But there's also the way that politicians conduct themselves. It's more like a bunch of spoiled kids that feel entitled crying foul and bringing congress to a screeching halt. Everyone seems to be so engulfed in pride that they can't come to a compromise. Isn't the point to at least come to a compromise to please as many people as possible instead of bringing things to a complete standstill?
We have heard the America is ungovernable mantra before. In the fall of 1980, Lloyd Cutler, President Jimmy Carter's counsel, wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine: "one might say that under the U.S. Constitution it is not now feasible to 'form a Government.' The separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches, whatever its merits in 1793, has become a structure that almost guarantees stalemate today."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870482090457505...
American politics seems unusually bogged down at present. Blame Barack Obama more than the system
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1...
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A few weeks ago the GOP filibustered the routine raising of the debt cap that has to be passed every so often while the gov't's running a deficit. Ok, fine, they didn't have a problem with deficits for the last 8 years but whatever.
The next vote? PAYGO rules. The GOP filibustered THAT too. Wtf? And a week later they filibustered the appointment of a deficit reduction commission, which had been originally proposed by republicans.
The current state of congress is that the GOP will try to filibuster every single thing that's proposed by a democrat, even if they agree with it.
Checks and balances are always so inconvenient to the party in power, aren't they? I happen to like the limitations of power. Gridlock is good. Government should work slowly.