I'm going to let you in on a secret. Only one party could have opened the government alone. And either party could have relented and opened the government at any point. One even took their fall and went home.
You are correct the Republicans could have reopened the government if and only if they abolished the filibuster. The media you get your information from likely never let you in on the fact that it takes 60 votes to pass a budget bill. The Republicans do not have 60 seats in the Senate so it took democrats voting with them to pass the bill. The Republicans could have done away with the filibuster and made it a simple majority vote however they decided not to do that because if they did the filibuster would have been gone forever removing the minority parties only real ability to slow or stop legislation they do not agree with. Finally enough democrats came to their senses and voted with them to get 60 votes.
Or they could have compromised Now , you might say they had no reason to . But , they could have done it
Attempting to starve the poor on top of letting the subsidies for healthcare expire is just so Christ-like, right @cml750 our neighborhood fake Christian hypocrite? But we had money to cut taxes for the wealthy so that's something.
Do you approve of the filibuster as currently constructed? Do you think it fosters genuine debate and contributes to democracy?
I am fine with the filibuster as it is. I applaud the Republicans for not eliminating it even though there were a lot of people calling for them to do it.
I wish I could say the same. I think it's silly that someone can filibuster a bill by saying they intend to filibuster, but never have to actually speak on the Senate floor. Everyone thinks of the filibuster as the thing in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but senators don't actually have to say a word to kill legislation. I'd reform the filibuster in two ways: You have to actually speak 60 votes are required to sustain debate, not end it.
That is just getting rid of the filibuster with extra rules. If it takes 60 votes to continue debate, but only 50 to pass legislation, when would there ever be 60 votes to sustain debate?
Because "debate" isn't even happening now. It would be one thing if senators were actually debating, but requiring 60 votes to break an email blockade just gums up legislating. 60 votes to sustain would impose a cost on filibustering, both on the speaker and the senators who vote to allow them to keep speaking. I'd rather they all have to be like Cory Booker, or Ted Cruz reading Green Eggs and Ham, and be forced to vote to keep hearing it in person.
I understand that. I actually prefer the non-talking filibuster. Having someone drone on about nothing isn't a debate either, it is a meaningless performance. That is the point of the filibuster. Why pretend it is something else? It wouldn't because there would never, ever be a filibuster. Understand the dynamic. If 60 votes are required for cloture, then the majority party cannot just pass everything with 51 votes (or 50 and the VP). If 60 votes are required to do a filibuster, then the only party that could filibuster is the one that can just pass the legislation with 9 fewer votes anyway. Are they going to filibuster their own bill? Are they going to cast 60 votes to filibuster a bill they can defeat outright with 50? Your plan is just the elimination of the filibuster, and then two meaningless rules attached to a vestigial artifact.
I'll let you in on an even more silly secret. Government shutdowns are literally invented based on an attorney general opinion from 1980. Until 1980, failures to fund the government didn't trigger a shutdown. The government used to continue on and effectively behave as if a continuing resolution was in place. In 1980, the head of the GAO confirmed the generally accepted principle at the time agencies continue to operate as usual during funding lapses. There's this myth that Congress was really good about keeping the government funded in the past but the reality is that the government just didn't shut down back then. Carter's attorney general overruled the GAO and issued an opinion stating that the antideficiency act required that the government fully shut down. His original opinion didn't even make reference to "essential government workers." He literally stated that if any part of the federal government wasn't funded, it couldn't operate. He eventually amended his opinion to clarify that essential workers could keep working. But the point of this is that government shutdowns are entirely made up. And a president could easily just overrule the AG opinion and keep it open. And for good measure, Congress could pass a law to clarify that the government stays open and operates on an automatic continuing resolution until a new spending bill is passed. The debt ceiling gets a lot of focus as a manufactured crisis but the government shutdown is arguably even more ridiculous. Any attorney general and GAO Comptroller General could just declare that the Antideficiency Act doesn't preclude government operations in the event of a funding lapse and just be done with this. This is arguably the worst after effect of the Carter Administration. Carter and the Congressional Democratic leadership constantly fought over spending legislation so there were multiple funding lapses during his administration. But given that back then, funding lapses didn't result in shutdowns, things just carried on until new spending legislation was passed. Then his AG decided to force the issue with Congress by declaring that the government would shutdown if they failed to pass legislation. And thanks to his AG, we're stuck with this idiotic situation. No other government in the world does it this way.
