Originally Posted by
Suppressed Poet
I think that without the filibuster, things would be a chaotic mess in our modern times. Unfortunately, Democrats and Republicans have grown further apart on the political spectrum. Historically we have seen the country pretty evenly split with power changing from one side to another every few election cycles.
Let’s take a random domestic issue that those two parties staunchly disagree on. I’ll choose abortion as an example. So without the filibuster, we would likely see abortion going from totally legal up until the moment of birth to totally illegal at any time after conception. This would change just about every 4-8 years at a time when one party has a majority in Congress and controls the presidency. You really want to see such drastic changes in federal laws frequently in a relatively short amount of time? Is that really good for the country? I don’t think so…I’d much rather see a stalemate than that sort of chaos.
But I do agree with you about corruption, that public service was never intended to be a career, the influence and power of corporate interests being far greater importance to politicians than individual interests, and some other points you mentioned. How about term limits for members of Congress? How about they face the same regulatory compliance in their personal investments as say I do working for a big bank? What about campaign funding reforms? I’m sure there are some topics like this that both can agree to, but for me getting rid of the filibuster is not one of those.
Further…I’m all about limiting the power and reach of our federal government. That is another thing that our founding fathers never really intended for it to be the size and scope it is today. Let’s let California be California, Texas be Texas, and stop forcing shit down each other’s throats on the federal level whenever and wherever possible.