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Comment by pdonis | Hacker News Reader

> The points don't matter, just which side of the line each person is on

That's because it isn't just about ideas, it's about power. Politics and government now are not about coming to consensus solutions that everyone, or at least everyone but a small minority who just wants to game the system, can live with. Politics and government now are about imposing on everyone whichever set of ideas gets a slim 51% majority. That isn't the way it was supposed to work.

I personally would like to see a Constitutional amendment that would require a 2/3 majority in both houses of Congress to pass any legislation, and a 3/4 majority required to override a Presidential veto. That would at least require some amount of bipartisan consensus, and therefore some amount of actually somewhat reasonable debate instead of just shouting back and forth, before a public policy was imposed on everyone.

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"That would at least require some amount of bipartisan consensus, and therefore some amount of actually somewhat reasonable debate..."

What you would get would be a lot of back-room deals and strange bedfellows. Like now, only more so.

I'm not so sure. The back-room deals that go on now are not about getting the other side to vote for things they really don't want to vote for, as much as horse trading on which bills come up for a vote vs. getting stuck in committee or tabled. It would be harder for either side to get any value out of that if a 2/3 majority was required to pass a bill--back-room deals can't get that many votes to switch in the opposition party about something that's really contentious.

That's not to say that any bill that gets enough bipartisan consensus to pass a 2/3 vote must be good; plenty of bills that have passed in the past with that much consensus have been bad. But I think it might change the dynamics in at least something like the right direction.

That's because the tools in place to override a tabling are the 2/3 vote tools.

Make everything 2/3 vote and you increase the need for the dealings that override the current 2/3 vote tools.

Which tools are you talking about?

Bills can be forced out of committee to the floor via a discharge petition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discharge_petition), but it requires a 2/3 vote.

A) a 2/3 requirement would mean nothing gets passed, benefitting the only party that gains by obstructing legislation, the Republican Party

B) it doesn’t matter how high the bar is set when one side refuses to do their half of bipartisan responsibility (see impeachment)

When people are strictly divided, the barrier to pass something should be lower so that elections change things again. A government that can’t act might as well not exist. There’s no point in holding elections if legislators never pass any change. The liberal values that make the West free depend on civic engagement.

> a 2/3 requirement would mean nothing gets passed

Plenty of laws have been passed with that much of a majority.

> When people are strictly divided, the barrier to pass something should be lower so that elections change things again.

No, when people are strictly divided, they should try different things locally instead of having one side's preferred policies simply imposed on the other--much less having things flip again for everyone every time the party in power changes. That means it should be harder to pass Federal legislation that is binding on everyone, not easier. Federal legislation should only be passed if it has broad enough support to make it worth attempting to impose on everyone. Policies that don't have that kind of broad support throughout the country simply should not be enacted at the Federal level. They should be tried out on a smaller scale, in a state or locality where there is broad enough support.

> The liberal values that make the West free depend on civic engagement.

Civic engagement at all levels. Using the Federal government as a bludgeon to impose one side's policies on everyone is not "civic engagement". It's tyranny. Which is exactly what we set up the United States of America to protect against.

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