[guntars]

Other countries have solved this issue simply by automatically forcing an election if a budget is not passed. Their representative are somehow able to overcome ideological differences and pass legislation once their jobs are on the line.

[johnnyo]

That doesn’t solve the problem because the idea here is that some laws should sunset, some shouldn’t.

When a civil rights law sunsets, lots of bad can happen in a short period of time.

I’m using the example of the government unable to agree on a budget as an analogy.

What happens when we can’t agree on how to renew the Civil Rights Act and it sunsets for a period of time?

[guntars]

If the civil rights act requires over 1/2 votes to extend it and it doesn't gather that much support, maybe it should sunset. The budget votes are different because they require 2/3 of the votes which is what allows the minority party to block it from passing.

[mschuster91]

The problem with this is that there may be laws that are highly valuable for poor people (e.g. minimum wage, workplace safety, building/fire codes), but irrelevant for rich people/politicians and thus end up way way down on the priority list compared to, let's say, budget laws or the next big tax cuts package.

A mandatory sunset provision can only work if the legislators act with the interests of their country and constituents first and their individual pockets second, which isn't the case any more in many Western democracies. The US are just the most obvious example where Republicans blocked everything Obama tried to pass through.