Man Ray, "Seguidilla"; 1970; color screen print on plexiglass. Smithsonian American Art.


"The Senate Has Become a Dadaist Nightmare"

quote No one would ever design a legislative body that worked this way.

Ezra Klein for the New York Times; February 4, 2021.
https://www.nytimes.com/202...nion&pgtype=Homepage

Read-o-Meter: 9 minutes.


I know members (one has been explicit about it) that are reluctant to go to the New York Times domain. If it's not been your habit, then you may be able to look at this op-ed column without having a subscription. A "freebie." Of course, your reluctance may not be a case of "subscription paywall anxiety." In which case, I defer.

Ezra Klein highlights the Budget Reconciliation process and how the majority party in the Senate has (and continues) to use it to try to advance their agenda, instead of contending with the high barrier of needing a filibuster-proof 60-vote supermajority in order to pass legislation.

He argues that Liberals and Conservatives alike would be better served if the Democrats used their simple majority (with VP Harris's vote if needed) to "go total nuclear" and finally eliminate the legislative filibuster altogether, because what happens to governance when the majority party resorts to Budget Reconciliation is why "Government" is about as popular a concept in this country, by and large, as "diarrhea."

Of course I like the Dadaist reference, but I also think this is a carefully researched and very readable op-ed column from a very logical-minded social influencer (or influencer wannabe.) I think it's exceptional. Here are three paragraphs from partway thorugh the column:

quote [Senator Robert] Byrd’s reforms didn’t work as he intended. The problem of the filibuster demanded a solution, and even covered in “Byrd droppings,” budget reconciliation was the closest thing to an alternative. The Byrd rules didn’t prevent non-budgetary legislation from being passed through reconciliation, but they did make that legislation worse, and weirder, and the Senate has simply decided to live with the ridiculous results, and make the rest of us live with them, too. President George W. Bush’s tax cuts, for instance, were designed to expire — expire! — after 10 years because otherwise they would have increased deficits after 10 years, and so been ineligible for reconciliation. President Donald Trump’s tax cuts employ the same trick. This is a legacy of budget reconciliation: Massive chunks of our tax code are just set to disappear at an arbitrary point in the future, and what happens then is anybody’s guess. The distortions don’t end there. Budget reconciliation warps policy design by pushing away from regulation and toward direct spending and taxation. An example: If you were designing a health care bill in budget reconciliation, you couldn’t pass a rule saying private insurers had to cover pre-existing conditions. But you could add a trillion dollars to Medicaid funding so it could cover anyone with pre-existing conditions who couldn’t get private insurance. Or to use an example that is actually in the reconciliation package Democrats are designing now: You can pass $1,400 checks through budget reconciliation, but you can’t pass emergency paid leave. When Congress writes laws through budget reconciliation, it writes them with one arm tied behind its back.

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