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Comment by Jtsummers | Hacker News Reader

I said it in another comment and it's in many reports, but per Senate rules they need a 3/5th majority (60 votes) to pass the funding bill. One Republican voted against, two Democrats and one Independent for. That brought it to 55-45. The Republicans absolutely could change the rules, and don't require that same supermajority to do so, so this is squarely on them.

The same thing happened in 2018 when the previous shutdown happened, also with Trump in the White House and a Republican majority in both houses. The Senate Republicans lacked a supermajority and did not change the rules, and the government shutdown for 35 days.

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  > The Republicans absolutely could change the rules, and don't require that same supermajority to do so, so this is squarely on them.

Fuck that. Seriously. It isn't even a good idea for Republicans to do this. The point of a 3/5th majority is to enforce compromising. That thing that is essential to a democracy.

Remember, changing the rules means all future rulers can play by those rules. The extensions of these types of powers is exactly the type of thing that leads to Turnkey Tyranny.

> That thing that is essential to a democracy.

The US is the only democracy in the world that has this feature or anything like it.

Switzerland has a feature like it, in that a supermajority is required to pass a non-balanced budget. In practice, their budgets are all balanced. See their "debt brake".

The US will never have a balanced budget with the two current political parties trading off.

It'd require, now, raising taxes beyond what even the most high-tax friendly Democrat would want, or substantially cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Defense spending. The Democrats will never reduce the first three enough, and Republicans will never reduce the first two and Defense enough.

https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

Everything below those four is basically a rounding error, you could cut bits and pieces but nowhere near enough to balance the budget. And you can't cut interest payments without defaulting on the debt itself, which would create so many more problems. We need to raise our revenue by something like 50% or lower our spending by about 33%, or something in between on both.

We didn't unbalance the budget in a year. It won't take a year to fix it.

If we had proper plans to move in the right direction I wouldn't mind that at all. Instead we're blowing it up further.

Personally I'm fine with proper aggressively progressive taxes and that alone would be a huge help. But we do need to cut defense spending and yes, Social security. Because at this rate Millenials aren't getting Social Security anyway.

I agree. But my point is in that last clause:

> this is squarely on them [the Republicans]

They have the opportunity right now to end the shutdown without requiring any Democratic or independent votes.

They could have offered a compromise budget. They only needed five more Democratic or independent (one available, the other already voted yea) votes.

They did not choose either of those options, instead presenting an option that they knew the Democrats would vote against. That was their choice, they could ignore the Democrats and pass it anyways, or they could work with the Democrats and both can get what they don't want.

  > They have the opportunity right now to end the shutdown

There are a lot of other options. Namely, as implied by my comment: compromise.

They can also do extensions, provisional budgets, they can better carve out ensuring more workers actually get paid?

And yes, they knew the Dems would vote against and they had months to reach that compromise. The same is true in the other direction too. The problem relates to a dysfunctional government where we've created such division lines that compromise cannot be reached. Playing into the belief that it is either side (on this specific issue) just furthers that problem. Watch the rhetoric: Republicans blame Democrats, Democrats blame Republicans.

Funding the government is not a partisan issue. What to fund is, but you can't always get what you want and that's a feature, not a bug.

> Playing into the belief that it is either side (on this specific issue) just furthers that problem. Watch the rhetoric: Republicans blame Democrats, Democrats blame Republicans.

Playing into your game of "They're both at fault!" removes the fact that one has consistently reneged on their promises to the other party and acts in bad faith consistently. Or like Trump refusing to release money that COngress had already appropriated. Centrism isn't enlightened, but foolish.

  > Playing into your game

You may have noticed I stressed this particular issue and Funding the government

There's a time and place for partisan politics but funding the government is not one of those.

  > Centrism isn't enlightened, but foolish.

And how has this philosophy worked out? For someone who seems to hate Trump so much you really seem to like increasing this support base.

There's a whole country of people with varying needs and issues. You can't put everything under one clean umbrella. So why don't you start listening to what people are saying instead of responding to what you heard?

>You may have noticed I stressed this particular issue and Funding the government

Okay. But we don't live in a vacuum. It's no shocker that the party lines can't compromise. That didn't come out of nowhere yesterday, at the beginning of 2025, nor even at the beginning of 2016. You create a culture of tribal lines and it seeps into every aspect of your political navigation.

The last straws of all the refusals to allocate congress funds, breaking court orders, and tanking the economy in trade wars definitely means some that Dems are playing hardball too.

>And how has this philosophy worked out?

It passed the big beautiful bill and kicked the can down the road 6 months when we almost shut down in March but "compromised". The ball isn't just in the GOP's court, they own the entire stadium. So, not too well.

  > Okay. But we don't live in a vacuum.

I'll repeat myself

  >> There's a time and place for partisan politics but funding the government is not one of those.

I'm not oblivious to what is going on. But you recognize that the budget is kinda a big deal, right? It's not the kind of thing we the constituents should let be partisan.

Remember, they still get paid. WE are the ones that face the repercussions.

Every day Americans go without paychecks, basic services, etc.

The problem here is that they've had months to figure this shit out. It's not like a budget comes out of nowhere. You have a whole year (arguably more) to figure out what things you'll compromise on or not.

Look, I'll disclose that I vote left. I'm actually glad the dems are playing hard ball and I don't think their demands are unreasonable while I think the Repubs are silly spending decades talking about slashing the budget while adding more to it.

But that also doesn't mean that both sides can't be royally fucking it up. I'll eat a moldy sandwich over a turd pretending to be a chicken nugget but aren't we tired of having to choose between two shitty things? One being significantly worse than the other doesn't make it any less bad. We can't begin to change the situation while we can't acknowledge this basic fact.

I'm complaining about people not listening because anytime someone mentions they're fed up with having only shitty options someone complains about "enlightened centrism" or some other idiotic label that isn't actually an accurate description of the person complaining. It just enables more of this tribalism.

I'll continue the rant to add that this whole Trump situation was the Dems fault. They keep falling for the Repubs bait. We'll spend all day talking about issues that affect very few people while ignoring those that affect many more. I don't like that Repubs attack trans people, but it is also bait. I mean come on, there's less than 3 million of them in the US. It's less than 1% of the population by the highest counts. Meanwhile there's 14 million US children who aren't getting enough food. So why is there such a disproportionate amount of time given to one issue over the other, especially given how much easier it is to agree on one? We can talk about both. But seriously, is talking about trans athletes or gender affirming care for less than 3 million people more of an important issue than 14 million starving children? Don't let them control the conversations. They bait because they know we care and because of it they can turn it to talk about whatever they want. So stop this fucking tribalism and feed the god damn children

>I'll repeat myself

I guess I will too?

>You create a culture of tribal lines and it seeps into every aspect of your political navigation.

I don't know what else to say here.

>But you recognize that the budget is kinda a big deal, right?

My single mother raised me through 3 shutdowns as a government worker. So yes. There were times we had to stretch meals pretty thin because the delayed paycheck meant no groceries for a while. She wasn't exactly paid the minute the government opened up. Those IOU's take a bit to process.

> It's not the kind of thing we the constituents should let be partisan...But that also doesn't mean that both sides can't be royally fucking it up. I'll eat a moldy sandwich over a turd pretending to be a chicken nugget but aren't we tired of having to choose between two shitty things?

I as a constituent have never in my millennial voter life felt like I had any true representation in government. Maybe one year under Obama, but still not really. My feelings here are clearly irrelevant.

You're right on what "should" be true, but the reality is that the president has been completely reckless with what few fundings congress does agree on and the congress in power does not correct it. Congress themselves continue to balloon the budget despite GOP promising otherwise (regardless of what I think of how its allocated). There's already been two huge budget compromsises that ended horribly alongside the other 8 months of chaos.

That's why I push so hard on this "vacuum" statement. We can assign blame and talk theory when the building's fires are put out. No point blaming Jim for shorting the microwave when you can be using that oxygen to breathe.

>I'll continue the rant to add that this whole Trump situation was the Dems fault. They keep falling for the Repubs bait. We'll spend all day talking about issues that affect very few people while ignoring those that affect many more.

I guess it's my turn to be overly cynical.

There's no bait. We don't have progressive democrats, we have neoliberal establishment getting a kickback from the thieves ransacking the country in real time. It's no coincidence that better labor reform is handwaved whenever it comes up. It's one of the few bipartisan issues in this congress.

Anything to distract and give fake progress will work out for them. These days, they don't really need to distract anyway. 2025's given plenty of fires to put out and unify the dems on in the way 9/11 did for America for a short time.

>I don't like that Repubs attack trans people, but it is also bait.

1. You just said we can talk about both, to be fair.

2. Calling it "bait" is a bit short-sighted. Clearly this point is preying on the same sentiments as Abortion. Another "who cares" point but states instantly went in to ban it the second they could and now impacts half the population in states that acted on this. That's how they sap away freedoms: slowly, then all at once.

3. And now I feel you are falling into the bait here. I don't know where we got this sentiment that Trans policity is a top issue for Democrats. Harris never brought up the issue in her campaign. That's the power of shaping the narrative; you even get some of the other policy to believe how much their representatives talk on an issue, because they equivocate fights on the internet with debates on stage. Granted, I don't watch sports, but I only hear about this issue when the GOP brings it up, often as a distraction from something like, say, a government shutdown (yes, Trump did bring it up today)

>So stop this fucking tribalism and feed the god damn children

Best we can do is protect pedophiles, sorry. Definitely the dem's fault.

Again, I agree the Establishment Dems are compromised, but this is why I'm so harsh on this "enlightened centrism". They have issues and definitely made mistakes that lead to this. But what do you want them to do here? They can make a "feed the children" bill and it'd be a partisan 47-53 vote. The republicans can do the same and they'd get some dem votes even if they don't need it. But we both know they won't.

That's not a "both sides are bad" scenario. They are bad, but not for reasons as simplistic as "they can't agree to feed the children". It's something insidious within each party that just so happens to be clashing with each other at the same time.

I'll also just note as an afterword that I am not actually angry at you per se. This has felt like a productive conversation and how it has help me to ask more questions in the state of affairs as of late. I have been very angry at some other commenters here, but this is a proper discussion. So, thank you.

> The point of a 3/5th majority is to enforce compromising.

It's worth noting that the 3/5 requirement for most legislation is a recent development. Before around 2008 it was quite uncommon to require a filibuster-proof majority to pass legislation.

There's a count of the times this has come up on the senate's website: https://www.senate.gov/legislative/cloture/clotureCounts.htm

  > There's a count of the times this has come up on the senate's website

I don't think I'm understanding. Are there not also more bills being voted on? There definitely seems to be high variance from here[0] but also they seem to be spending far less time in session than previously

[0] https://www.senate.gov/legislative/ResumesofCongressionalAct...

There's a fair bit of variance in the number of bills per congress, but not really in a way that correlates to the usage of the filibuster.

Check out https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/statistics

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