It stretches credibility to claim that the "proper functioning of the government" is broken today requiring a change by something that is ... quite old.
(I think there's a MUCH stronger argument to be made that the proper function of the US government has been broken by Presidents changing thing by executive order because nobody has enough votes to do much in the Senate. It seems like "nobody has the votes to make big changes" should be an indicator that not making big changes is the proper result.)
The status quo would be "issue a ruling, it may or may not get put on hold while the government appeals, eventually it gets to the Supreme Court if necessary." Seemed to be working. Republicans obviously have used this to challenge stuff themselves.
It is unclear why there is a need for giving the government an escape hatch to let them say "sure, we lost this one case, we'll stop enforcing things against these few people, we just won't appeal and will continue to do whatever we want nationally instead."
> It seems like "nobody has the votes to make big changes" should be an indicator that not making big changes is the proper result.
"Nobody has the votes" seems like a weird way to put it, because is implies that everyone wants to make changes, they just can't agree which changes to make. On the contrary, I think the issue is that most congresspeople do not want to make changes. Changes are scary. If your name is associated with a change, and that change becomes unpopular, it might threaten your reelection!
> "Nobody has the votes" seems like a weird way to put it, because is implies that everyone wants to make changes, they just can't agree which changes to make. On the contrary, I think the issue is that most congresspeople do not want to make changes. Changes are scary. If your name is associated with a change, and that change becomes unpopular, it might threaten your reelection!
The split in Congress is driven by the split in the people and the people DO want actions taken. Just - different actions for each faction.
If there was only one fairly unified party of voters in the country and a Congressman was refusing to vote to do what the voters wanted them to do, they'd get voted out.
"Not doing anything to be careful" is a bug enabled by the population being split.
I disagree. The trouble with your explanation is that there are plenty of issues which have had clear broad bipartisan support for decades. This is mostly stuff that doesn't even come up in mainstream political discourse and isn't even clearly associated with a particular party. It's basic stuff like consumer protection (e.g. predatory loans, telemarketing), government integrity (e.g. lobbying, term limits), and more.
As a former-red-state-citizen for decades, "basic stuff like consumer protection" is not something that I think has clear broad bipartisan support. Caveat emptor! Regulation [of scammers] bad! Free speech [for scammers] good! "I'm from the government and..."
A certain amount of less-partisan stuff does get passed all the time. But, to get more subtle about it, I think the danger if you help pass something like consumer protection - even if MOST people on both sides would support it - isn't that you risk getting branded with it if it backfires. It's that you get labeled soft in a way that the die-hards who dominate primaries can be rallied against. The right wing has been VERY aggressive in pushing purity tests for decades, and eventually you have convinced everyone of the final-battle-of-good-and-evil stakes. The left has been doing it more and more too, sadly - but it's not like what they were doing before was working too great.
That situation also gives increasing sway to the rich lobbyists who also want to make sure those basic things don't happen. Your base won't get mad at you for failing to ban abortions nationally because obviously you can't. So they don't put much blame on you for not getting the smaller stuff done either, or scrutinize your donors too much.
> As a former-red-state-citizen for decades, "basic stuff like consumer protection" is not something that I think has clear broad bipartisan support.
This might have been the case in the region you grew up, or you might be deceived by narratives in mainstream political discourse (which are driven more by politicians, interest groups, and media than by popular opinion). Regardless, there are plenty of national policy polls that show high Republican support for a wide array of consumer protection policies. This one turned up from a quick web search:
anecdotal, but from reading the room so-to-speak of trump supporters around me (and conservative media), it seems like having him (or some other strong person) basically accomplishes the same thing; if a company is "bad" the president will take care of it rather than some bureaucratic agency which they have been told (by the various medias they consume) is unaccountable and corrupt anyways
(I think there's a MUCH stronger argument to be made that the proper function of the US government has been broken by Presidents changing thing by executive order because nobody has enough votes to do much in the Senate. It seems like "nobody has the votes to make big changes" should be an indicator that not making big changes is the proper result.)
The status quo would be "issue a ruling, it may or may not get put on hold while the government appeals, eventually it gets to the Supreme Court if necessary." Seemed to be working. Republicans obviously have used this to challenge stuff themselves.
It is unclear why there is a need for giving the government an escape hatch to let them say "sure, we lost this one case, we'll stop enforcing things against these few people, we just won't appeal and will continue to do whatever we want nationally instead."