A filibuster is a parliamentary procedure where debate is extended, allowing one or more members to delay or entirely prevent a vote on a given proposal. It is sometimes referred to as talking out a bill, and characterized as a form of obstruction in a legislature or other decision-making body. More: en.wikipedia.org.

Yes, the rules are good now Yes, but the rules should be changed No see voting resultssaving...
4 opinions, 4 replies
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100
2 votes
Aug 3, 2015

I vote no, but only because I believe discussions in Congress should be on topic. Discussions should be logical, relevant, and useful. And so should be all the bills they carelessly toss together.

Anyone involved in private commerce who has been involved in a "staff meeting" knows what a waste of time this can be.

It's not that I want them to make decisions for me; we little folk have been doing that for two centuries; it's that I detest paying them so much money to have a lavish lifestyle while they play endless, political games, seeking only to increase our taxes and limit our freedom.

The founders of our nation knew the importance of keeping the 3 branches of government in proper order. And although the filibuster might be a good tool to make statements to defend the minority, the situations that cause such an event should have been prevented in the first place.

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100
1 vote
Aug 3, 2015

We don't want bad laws. Preventing them is good. Requiring 60% to pass a law is one of the best rules we have.

The only problem is that we do want to repeal bad laws, and we need to pass a budget. And the filibuster prevents us from doing those things. We should change the rules so we need 60% to pass a law, but only 50% + 1 to repeal a law or pass a budget.

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0
main reply
0 votes,
Aug 3, 2015

It's important to note that budgets are not categorized differently from any other bills going through senate. To change their categorization would be a pretty complicated procedure.

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100
1 vote,
Aug 3, 2015

It's very easy to distinguish the budget from other bills. If a bill gives the government the power to imprison or fine people for doing anything or for not doing anything, then it is not a budget. If a bill gives the government power to do anything other than spend money, then it is not a budget.

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0
0 votes,
Aug 3, 2015

Yes, but the procedure for passing them is to my knowledge the same. That's what I was trying to convey.

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0
0 votes,
Aug 3, 2015

Agreed. Additionally, they could shove all sorts of new law into a budget bill via amendment in order to bypass philibuster.

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75
4 votes
Aug 3, 2015

I didn't vote because I am not sure how to answer.

Filibustering absolutely should be allowed. It is a vital tool to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. If the minority strongly believes in something, they should be able to work together to require a super majority in order to pass something.

So in that way I vote yes.

However, filibustering used to be kind of taking advantage of a technicality, the fact that congressmen were allowed as much floor time as they wanted to talk about a bill. So this would require them actually actively doing something, for a long time, to block the bill. At some point, they decided that simply filing an intent to filibuster was enough to actually filibuster something and so they no longer have to actively do anything, making it incredibly easy to filibuster and requiring nothing more than a signature from 1 congressman to invoke all kinds of nonsense.

So, in that way, I vote No, because the rules have to change.

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50
2 votes
Aug 3, 2015

It,filibustering, should be allowed as it was written into procedural rules.

If someone is going to filibuster, then they need to stand there and talk, as it was first designed, the entire time they are filibustering...

None of this "call it filibustering and go home" nonsense...

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