In case you are unaware, but congress has been DEEPLY dysfunctional for the past 30 years, and has been getting worse every session. Even this week it was shocking news that a bipartisan bill managed to even come to a vote.
This is what happens when the party that doesn't have the White House chooses obstruction and enforces the the Hastert Rule.
Yet in functioning legislative bodies (think: parliamentary systems), employing something like Hastert doesn't require any enforcement at all.
They don't typically require supermajorities to pass laws, and those in the minority don't have the means to substantively object to bills they disagree with.
I should have been more precise - the Senate's rules are garbage and should be hurled into the Sun. More generally, my comments come from watching PMQ's in the House of Commons and seeing that the party out of power really doesn't have many tools to slow down the opposite sides agenda.
If such a system was implemented in the US, it would force politicians to more carefully consider their positions -- no confidence votes and a motion to vacate serve the man functional purpose as a stick to get people in line, which might not otherwise be possible if they consistently took unpopular positions.
You’re fundamentally misunderstanding what is going on. There are a majority number of votes to support popular legislation. These bills are simply not brought to a vote BY THE MAJORITY PARTY due to internal majority party politics.
Nothing in your facile proposal would remedy this. What would fix the problem would be change to the rules so that simple majority could bring legislation to a vote. This does not exist in any functional way.
And we haven’t even touched on the fact that the majority of seats are often controlled by a minority of voters due to gerrymandering and the constitutional structure of the senate.
I'm well aware of the procedural votes that occur before something goes before the entire House or Senate...which serve no other practical purpose than to slow things down. It should not be possible under any circumstances for a single vote -- in an instance where that vote would not make or break a tie among the majority -- to doom a bill that a majority of the caucus supports.
Glares in the direction of the Freedom Caucus, many of whom should have been expelled from Congress after 1/6
In addition, the shitshow that is the amendment process demonstrates that our representatives have long forgotten how to craft comprehensive legislation that has even a chance of addressing all potential concerns.
Again, if I had a magic wand for a day to fix Congress, I'd dissolve it and reconstitute the chambers as a parliament...but how exactly to do that is an argument for another day.
If I had my way I’d create a unicameral legislature with a combination of multimember districts and at-large party list seats in the vein of Germany’s Bundestag.
On a slightly more reasonable note, I’d be happy with just eliminating all state senates nationwide, similar to Nebraska.
You really blame republicans like when the shoe is on the other foot the other party doesn’t do the exact same tactics of blatantly stalling bills they don’t like and overall slowing government to a crawl.
This is what happens when the party that doesn't have the White House chooses obstruction and enforces the the Hastert Rule.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastert_rule