Fair enough. I know they're just words on paper with escalating levels of authority, and at the end of the day we get the government/money we want/deserve.
I personally benefited some $2000/year from the Trump tax cuts that I know my children will have to repay some day at punitive rates, but apparently that's what my fellow citizens want. Without a cultural change, founded on a spiritual change, why should we expect our government, finances, or money to change? I love Hayek but I disagree with that quote at the bottom of the site. A "poison pill" is no solution to our problems.
A supermajority to raise taxes would be amazing - government might actually have to be accountable for dollars spent rather than just lazily going back to the trough for more taxpayer dollars.
If you don't think our current and rapidly expanding deficit is a real pending disaster...
At this point I kind of wish a supermajority was required for every vote. Then neither party could control legislating over the objections of the other. This trading back and forth every so often thing doesn’t seem to be working great.
I'm surprised that you think that too much legislating is the problem. No legislation can even happen without bipartisan support unless one party has control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, AND the Presidency. Oh, and unless there's a supermajority in the Senate, the minority party can filibuster most legislation anyway.
Sounds like a great way to ensure that compromise has to happen, except that the party in power ends up getting credit for anything that gets done (or doesn't get done), plus to the other side they're dangerous fanatics who can't be trusted.
If you're in the minority, why not just ensure that the ruling party (if it can even be called that) fails to accomplish anything? Your side will love blocking their agenda, and if enough people aren't paying attention maybe they'll blame the other side for "not getting anything done".
As long as your party can hold out hope for not losing too badly in the next election, the status quo works just fine.
"I'm surprised that you think that too much legislating is the problem."
Too much "legislating" is indeed _the_ problem. At least with gridlock they can't screw things up worse than they are.
Just look at AB 5 in CA - tailored by labor unions with all sorts of collateral damage and unintended consequences that are still reverberating through CA economy. What's hilarious is that many independent tech writers who were in favor of it initially suddenly got to find out the wisdom of our legislators first hand when AB 5 proceeded to destroy their current business model as an independent, for higher worker.
Ha! Delicious irony indeed.
Making new laws _should_ be hard. It also would be good if congress started to do their job instead of delegating it to the executive branch. And for every new hair brained law it would be awesome if they were required to at least remove one other one - removing five would be better still.
If you think complexity favors you vs. big businesses or special interests....
There already is a filibuster so to pass legislation in the senate the majority needs 60 votes. The only exception is budget reconciliation which was why both the Affordable Care Act and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act were both part of the filibuster exempt budget process.
It's definitely a negative thing as nothing significant will ever get done
