[sunnyps]

Republicans can end the filibuster in the Senate with a simple majority after which they can pass the funding bill with a simple majority. But of course, they won't do that since it opens up other bills to be passed with a simple majority too in the future. So it's not factual.

edit: This is what they would need to do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_option

[lesuorac]

Its weird how restoring congress to how the framers intended (majority vote) is called the "Nuclear option".

[xp84]

It’s weird to me that any Democrat would be rooting for the nuclear option right now. After losing so badly last year, after demographic trends continue to degrade their ability to win majorities in either house or in to win in most swing states, and with Trump improving his numbers even in blue states last year. Democrats are currently daring Republicans to eliminate their last resort option to block anything, even though they should not be confident that the DNC will ever be in a position to benefit from this new power later themselves.

I think shutdowns are usually pretty stupid, but I’m not reading for “nuclear option” to be the way this one gets resolved.

[UncleMeat]

While I'd prefer to get the first legislative crack at it, I am extremely convinced that the filibuster is poison to our country.

Congress cannot pass anything meaningful except one omnibus spending bill each year via budget reconciliation, which has arcane rules around flat budget impact after 10 years. Since congress can't do anything, we naturally move more and more of the details of federal governance to executive agencies and executive orders. While not all of this is bad, it has a few horrible effects.

First, the supreme court is more willing to interfere with executive action, amplifying its power as it finds reason to protect actions by the favored party and cancel actions by the disfavored party. Increasing the power of the supreme court shifts federal power towards an unelected branch that is the slowest to adjust to changing voter preference.

Second, as more power within the executive gets concentrated specifically with the president we enable more and more federal action at the whims of exactly one person. This exposes us to the current situation, where Trump is unfettered in how he wields the executive branch rather than guiding it and having its power distributed across the executive branch.

And we've also got the general popular dissatisfaction with congress and the democratic process because they can't get shit done. A country that has an enormously unfavorable opinion of congress is more primed for collapse into anti-democratic governance.

Yes, if we didn't have the filibuster then the GOP could pass all sorts of nightmare legislation. But I'd prefer legislation enabled through the will of the people to this slow collapse into authoritarianism.

[xp84]

Your points are really insightful. Especially:

> Since congress can't do anything, we naturally move more and more of the details of federal governance to executive agencies and executive orders.

It's really interesting how wildly different this is than parliamentary systems where Parliament is the ultimate authority and the executive's tenure simply ends if they lose the 'confidence' of a plurality in Parliament.

Instead we have a useless legislature as you described, and an executive whose claim to all this additional power is actually quite dubious, yet that executive controls nearly everything. I don't think a swing to the other party changes this, either (not that the DNC is capable of winning elections enough to ever hold the kind of power the GOP now has). I think from now on, the President will rule by executive action, and use creative avenues like rulings from friendly courts to vaguely legitimize this power.