tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post5643210491762501754..comments2023-10-16T07:13:12.123-05:00Comments on A plain blog about politics: Could Repealing ACA Produce Superbill!?Jonathan Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15931039630306253241noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-77752131092501840802011-10-15T16:06:50.950-05:002011-10-15T16:06:50.950-05:00An interesting analogue to Superbill: a few years ...An interesting analogue to Superbill: a few years back, Mexican president Felipe Calderón proposed a series of constitutional reforms to the structure of the Mexican government. One of them was that the president would be able to propose two initiatives in each session which the Congress would have to vote on.Aaronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05443458454030599925noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-32826741156573336002011-10-14T17:32:35.217-05:002011-10-14T17:32:35.217-05:00Bryan,
Thanks!
I don't know...I think dictat...Bryan,<br /><br />Thanks!<br /><br />I don't know...I think dictatorship by White Supremicists was a lousy way to run the House, so anything is better! I'm really not sure what I would have thought was ideal if I had been been blogging in 1959-1975. I do think that keeping some sort of balance between the leadership and the committees is a good thing, and I think Pelosi and (perhaps?) Boehner have been better at it than everyone from Wright through Hastert.Jonathan Bernsteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15931039630306253241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-15664617128825627822011-10-14T17:18:58.980-05:002011-10-14T17:18:58.980-05:00PF,
I don't disagree with you. I'm pushin...PF,<br /><br />I don't disagree with you. I'm pushing what I want, and what I think people who care about the Senate should want -- and I think (naturally, and perhaps correctly) that my proposal is better than the other ones out there. <br /><br />I guess what I'd say is that to the extent that all Senators have at least partially self-interested (and not partisan) motives, they should be trying to figure out a way to preserve the importance of individual Senators. Whether there's any chance of that impulse beating out the partisan motive...well, I'm not especially optimistic about that.Jonathan Bernsteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15931039630306253241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-32470327719741388902011-10-14T17:12:21.881-05:002011-10-14T17:12:21.881-05:00Apologies if you've written on this before, bu...Apologies if you've written on this before, but do you tend to like or dislike the reforms that strengthened the House leadership? <br /><br />A lot of my thinking on the Constitution is informed by what you write (separate institutions sharing powers, the Madisonian system), and it seems to me that it's appropriate for at least one venue in our constitutional scheme to be a pure expression of majority will, and may only be possible by concentrating power in the party leadership.<br /><br />I agree however that the Senate should be a complementary body and not a mirror of the House, and I like the three reforms you propose as a means for the majority party to still express intense preferences while recognizing the Senate's different constitutional role. Here's hoping Reid or his successor takes up the challenge.Bryannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-3413998996630927302011-10-14T17:07:09.287-05:002011-10-14T17:07:09.287-05:00Jonathan, isn't this proposal misjudging what ...Jonathan, isn't this proposal misjudging what a majority of senators seem to want? The majority of senators opposed to filibuster reform right now don't seem to be in good faith flummoxed by how to come up with a better rules-based democratic system for organizing intensity and preference.<br /><br />There's a small group of centrists Democrats who cling to a senate culture focused on individual senator power, who relish their leverage and who all things considered have no problem with less rather than more stuff happening in the senate. And then there's an entire group of Republican senators who's main concern seems to be that they get first dibs on breaking norms and rules of senatorial culture, so that they can benefit from it.PFhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00263515090451316188noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-48998242604581622332011-10-14T15:02:52.913-05:002011-10-14T15:02:52.913-05:00I can appreciate those who don't want the Sena...I can appreciate those who don't want the Senate to function like the House. However, isn't the dysfunction in today's Senate a bigger problem for effective governance than the way the House operates?<br /><br />As longer-serving Senators leave office, the institutional nostalgia will decrease, and fairly soon we'll have a large majority of Senators whose only experience of the Senate is of the current "filibuster anything that might move" Senate culture.<br /><br />At that point, aren't we likely to end up with a Senate that is increasingly incapable of playing its constitutional role in the country? And how far away from that are we now?massappealhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17883213166005005577noreply@blogger.com