The US Congress is to all intents and purposes dead. It cannot function with the filibuster rule and an evenly balanced country with the two sides highly belligerent. Now the question we want to ask is: is this a good thing or a bad thing? One the negative side it means that the government can’t get anything done, but on the positive side it means the government can’t get anything done.
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Samizdata quote of the day – Good news? Bad news?January 6th, 2026 |
 17 comments to Samizdata quote of the day – Good news? Bad news?Leave a Reply |
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Fraser Orr is partly mistaken – the Federal Government, sadly gets a lot of things done – its spending has never been higher, for example handing out money to the health insurance companies (for which those companies pay with campaign donations to members of the House and Senate – mostly to Democrats, but not entirely just them).
The only way to reform health care, i.e. to reverse previous interventions that have made American health care the most expensive in the world, is to end the filibuster rule
And the only way to ensure honest Federal elections, to end electronic voting machines, enforce reliable I.D. and proof of citizenship, and end mass mail-in-ballots (the scam of “Early Voting” – which is taken from Irish political slang “vote early – and vote often”), is to end the filibuster rule.
And it is going to end anyway – the Democrats will end it as soon as they are in the majority, so end it NOW and get things done – that will prevent the Democrats gaining control.
Politics is not a game – politics is about defeating the enemy – before they can destroy you, before they can wipe-you-out.
As Senator Cruz pointed out in a recent book – a couple of Democrat appointments to the Supreme Court and the Bill of Rights (Freedom of Speech, Right to Keep and Bear Arms – all of it) would be dead.
As dead as only gold and silver coin being legal tender in any State (Article One, Section Ten), or “the common defense and general welfare” being the PURPOSE of the specific spending powers granted to the Congress by Article One, Section Eight – NOT a “general welfare spending power” – an utterly obscene concept which replaces limited government with UNLIMITED government.
Destroy the Dems – or they will destroy you.
There is no third option.
Whilst we are talking about American politics, political history, I will take the opportunity to point something out….
The “American Left” existed before Marxism – it goes all the way back to Thomas Paine, hostility to Christianity, support for fiat money (with a bizarre twist – Mr Paine only supported fiat money if it was issued by a republic – not by a monarchy), demands for high taxes on “the rich” (in his day big landowners) to fund endless government services and benefits – it is all in Mr Paine.
And the “American Right” was also there at the start – Roger Sherman, Christian, anti fiat money (pro gold and silver only), hostile to high government spending, and so on.
It shows the power of the left in the education system and the media (including the entertainment media), that almost everyone has heard of Tom Paine – but very few people have heard of Roger Sherman.
Even though Roger Sherman signed all the key documents of the United States (indeed he was the only person to sign all of them) – and Thomas Paine signed NONE of them, Mr Paine was NOT a Founding Father – but is treated as one.
Mr Paine was the author of many witty things that sound wise – till one examines them.
For example, “hereditary legislators are as absurd as elected mathematicians” – so elected mathematicians are better?
The sort of people who will say that 1+1=68 – in order to elected?
No, Paul. Article I Section 10 does not say that only gold and silver can be legal tender in any State. It says that no State government can make (legally declare) that anything other than gold or silver be legal tender. There is an important difference between the your claim and what Section 10 actually says.
Your claim is like saying that gold and silver coins cannot be legal tender in any of the States because Article I Section 10 forbids the States from coining money. “And therefore coined money, even if gold or silver, is prohibited by the US Constitution.”
Congress gets a great deal done with a single seat democrat majority because they work as a team. Republicans do not.
In the absence of a congressional majority a Democrat presidents with a phone and a pen gets a great deal done. Republican presidents by comparison are regularly stymied by unelected federal district judges with little or no support from a supine SCOTUS.
Democrat presidents don’t seem to have this problem.
In direct reply to Fraser rather like Great Cthulhu congress is not dead. Instead it waits dreaming until after the inevitable 2026 mid-term shenanigans and re-districting which, as usual, only one side is taking seriously.
Deep Lurker – I seem to remember we have discussed this before. I do not agree with you. The point of telling the States to only have gold and silver coin was NOT to allow the Feds to commit monetary debasement – perhaps the worst financial crime.
It is a financial crime that twists and corrupts a whole society – creating both artificial wealth and artificial poverty, via the Cantillon Effect. It is an utterly vicious thing to do – corrupting everything.
As for coining money – the Federal government can do it because Article One, Section Eight allows them to – otherwise it would be forbidden by the Tenth Amendment.
The Federal government may NOT print money, or give power to some fake “private” body to do so.
Otherwise there was no point in calling a Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia – and the Continental Congress could have just carried on funding itself by printing paper money “Continentals” – as in “not worth a Continental”.
So yes the Feds can coin money – but no they can not (Constitutionally) print it, or give the power to print it to some fake “private” organisation.
By the way – before the 1850s private gold and silver coins were common in some areas of the United States.
There is no particular need for government to mint coins – as long as the laws of fraud are enforced against people who pass off debased coins as real gold or silver.
There is also the danger of bureaucracy.
If Congress cripples itself with the filibuster rule – the power of government is NOT reduced, it just moves from the elected Congress to unelected administrative bodies.
The danger of this was first seen in the State of Massachusetts (Commonwealth of Massachusetts) where Horace Mann, via his control of the education bureaucracy – became almost a law unto himself, for example pushing new taxes for a system of State Schools with false claims that this would improve education (and even improve public morals, and establish equality of opportunity – his claims bordered on the delusional). Mr Mann also supported “laws” against alcohol – seemingly assuming that passing a “law” against something he disliked was a magic spell that would make the thing he disliked vanish.
In Britain Sir Edwin Chadwick tried to concentrate power in his own, unelected, hands – but his national Board of Public Health was abolished – although such things eventually returned (Britain is now a intensely bureaucratic country).
At the Federal American level, Senator Roscoe Conkling repeatedly, and rightly, pointed out that you can either have elected government responsible to the voters – OR you can have government by a Civil Service. You cannot have both at the same time.
South Dakota has, supposedly, been under the control of Republicans for 47 years – yet “look-say” or “whole language” teaching still dominates the teaching of reading – leading, as it always does, to bad results.
We are told that phonics will be introduced – in late 2026 (i.e. after almost 48 years of Republicans failing to get this done), “for teachers who choose it” (Ouch!).
The power of the Progressive bureaucracy, in this case the education bureaucracy, has prevented very large numbers of children being taught to read.
And it is no surprise that those bastions of “Democratic Socialism”, the Indian Reservations (with their communally owned land controlled by Tribal Councils) are still opposing reform.
Teach children to read – what a horrible idea! They might (horror of horrors) not be totally dependent on government services and benefits if they could read.
“But the Civil War….”
Both Oregon and California continued to operate without massive monetary fraud during the Civil War.
And as Senator Conkling pointed out at the time – borrowing or printing money does not prevent taxation, it merely hides it.
If a war is worth fighting – it is worth paying for, there-and-then.
If the people want war – they should pay the taxes to pay for the war. Printing money is really a hidden tax – and a particularly vicious one.
“All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.”
T. E. Lawrence
Secure door locks are only good before the thieves are in. If they’re already in, you want the doors open, so you can change the status quo and lower your thief count.
Deadlock is only a good thing before the progressives have had their way with the statute books. Once they have, you NEED to be able to effect change.
@bobby b
Deadlock is only a good thing before the progressives have had their way with the statute books. Once they have, you NEED to be able to effect change.
So you think that if the filibuster were gone and Republicans took control of the Senate and retained the house that things would get better? Do a thought experiment with me: imagine the President hired a guy who is an expert on getting things done efficiently, and he put together a team who investigated and found tens, hundreds of billion dollars of waste and fraud in the Federal government. Do you think the Republican congress would embrace that and do all they could (via, for example, their non filibustered budgetary power) to eliminate that?
I think that happened, and they didn’t. So it seems to me that it is a ratchet, and best to stick where we are and hope to god that AI, robotics and innovation (and to some degree an imperial presidency) will grow us out of this mess. I think the idea that the Republicans are much better than the Democrats is a bit of wishful thinking. Take the brakes off and they’d drive us to hell too, just a bit slower than the Democrats.
We seem to using the word “government” in two different ways.
The government, meaning the members of the administration, who can’t do what they want. And…
Government, or the state, that, filibuster or otherwise, can still tax, regulate, arrest, imprison and otherwise harrass unmolested by what might be going on in Washington.
Patrick Crozier – sadly so. Frazer Orr does not seem to grasp that the Filibuster does NOT limit the power of government – it limits the power of the ELECTED government, and hands over power to officials – with no way of reducing government power.
John – yes sadly so Sir.
@Patrick Crozier
Government, or the state, that, filibuster or otherwise, can still tax, regulate, arrest, imprison and otherwise harrass unmolested by what might be going on in Washington.
That’s true, and I agree that this unauthorized fourth independent branch of government is perhaps one of the biggest problems. But if congress just makes things worse, which is my argument, then why do you think empowering them will help? Congress had the chance to do a lot to bring it under control under the auspices of DOGE and could do so without the filibuster through the budgetary process and they failed utterly, so much that Musk left Washington in a trail of explitives and his usual inappropriate tweets. The Republican congress, under the best of circumstances, no filibuster, Trump’s leadership, clear ways to chop down the tree, a country solidly behind them: and they failed utterly, massively increasing spending, not getting it under control. This isn’t the Democrats fault, it is ENTIRELY the Republicans fault.
Instead I suggested that the best we can do is a deadlocked congress and an imperial presidency who has at least some measure of control over the administration, especially so if the courts are cooperative. Although my view of the Trump presidency is rapidly diminishing as he turns into a neo-con, goes hog wild with the budget and utterly neglects the things for which he was elected (immigration excepted), I will definitely grant that trying to bring the administration to heel is somewhere Trump has had limited success (which is saying a lot) and is one area he has improved things (including a couple of really important USSC decisions.)
What the Presidency does is temporary, which is good because if we get another Joe Biden we can hold our breath for four years and fix things afterward. With congress screwing with the voting rules, packing the USSC and adding DC and PR these are things that are irreversible.
BTW I much prefer to call it the “budgetary process”, or perhaps “reconciliation” which is a rather more confusing term rather than the traditional “Byrd rule”. Why? Robert Byrd was a Grand Wizard in the Klu Klux Klan — something he later, and politically conveniently repudiated. I believe in forgiveness, but someone who commits such an egregious sin, such a horrific error in judgement, should surely never have been a dog catcher, never mind a senator.
And yet, because he has a D after his name he is lionized and memorialized with this, one of the most important rules in the Senate? I mean if we are pulling down Lincoln’s statute because he was not fully aligned with BLM’s agenda, surely we can let that old bastard rot in his grave unremembered and dishonored?
Fraser Orr – major action is needed to prevent the collapse of the United States.
The filibuster rule prevents the actions that are needed – ergo the filibuster rule is a bad thing.
And time is short – for example, if elections are not cleaned up (no more electronic voting machines, no more mass mail-in ballots, and proper proof of citizenship shown in order to vote) then “Hakeem” will be Speaker of the House of Representatives.
If that happens, if the Dems gain control of Congress, the “filibuster” in the Senate will be gone anyway – so end it NOW and get things done that might prevent disaster in November.
The United States does NOT have to have the most expensive health care in the world – but there is going to be no real health reform whilst the filibuster ruler remains.
I agree with Fraser Orr that the late Robert Byrd was a dreadful person. And that his racism is overlooked because of his “Progressive” support for wild government spending – the Democrat agenda.