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Started By
Message
Congress Has Become Totally Irrelevant
Posted on 4/27/26 at 6:05 am
Posted on 4/27/26 at 6:05 am
quote:
Congress Has Become Almost Totally Irrelevant
The way Republicans are managing the Department of Homeland Security budget shows that Congress is now just something to work around.
by David Dayen
April 24, 2026
More than three weeks ago, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) agreed to Democratic terms to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), except for its immigration enforcement agencies. That bill has still not become a law, prolonging the longest shutdown of any government agency in history.
Nobody has even thought about the DHS shutdown for a while, because President Trump signed executive orders to first pay airport security agents on March 27, and then all other agency personnel on April 3, under the guise of emergency action. It should be said plainly: This is illegal, it has always been illegal, and the precedent it sets pushes Congress, the branch of government with the power of the purse, into total irrelevance.
...
Rank-and-file House Republicans are wary of the Senate reconciliation bill, which only includes ICE and CBP appropriations, and want to pass that first before agreeing to the other DHS funding. But there are lots of complications here. Trump and Senate Republican leaders have said that the bill must stay skinny, but members at risk of losing their seats are demanding something they can take back to voters, hard-liners want provisions suppressing the vote in the name of nonexistent voter fraud, anti-government bigots want undefined “fraud prevention” actions to deny welfare spending to Black and brown people in blue cities, and hawks want to fund the misbegotten war in Iran and stuff money into the pockets of military contractors. Not to mention anti-abortion activists who want to extend a ban on Planned Parenthood funding in Medicaid that ends in July, and fiscal hawks who want to pay for ICE and CBP funding, which normally just comes out of the general budget.
Johnson is promising a third reconciliation bill (which couldn’t commerce until October 1 of an election year, so good luck) to take up some of these other priorities, but it’s unclear whether anyone will believe him. If enough holdouts oppose the ICE/CBP reconciliation bill without their pet topics, it could cause the entire bill to collapse, with no alternative to pay DHS and TSA workers.
...
The key point to me is that the filibuster is actually a tool for more lawlessness, as politicians scheme to find a way around it. Everything becomes far less accountable: The oversight mechanisms on the budget don’t exist in reconciliation, and the rescission process that enables party-line cancellation of spending doesn’t have a check either.
A majority-rule legislature where the president is more like a prime minister has the benefit of being coherent, enabling the public to assess the changes and signal approval or disapproval. What we have now is an endless race to find loopholes and reinterpretations of the law, or just to break it. Nothing about this is sustainable.
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Posted on 4/27/26 at 6:08 am to NC_Tigah
quote:
Congress Has Become Almost Totally Irrelevant
They are intentionally inept.
It keeps the money flowing to them.
As a group, when was the last time that they represented the people?
Posted on 4/27/26 at 6:16 am to jimmy the leg
How do you fix the issue that they no longer represent the people?
Posted on 4/27/26 at 6:16 am to jimmy the leg
quote:
As a group, when was the last time that they represented the people?
…. when the 17th Amendment was passed ….
Posted on 4/27/26 at 6:18 am to BurlesonCountyAg
quote:
How do you fix the issue that they no longer represent the people?
The people need to elect better.
Society becoming less polar andthe poles becoming more purple would help a great deal, too.
Posted on 4/27/26 at 6:21 am to NC_Tigah
This is going to be an unpopular position with some but Congress isn’t the really problem.
The problem is that we live in a nation where two incompatible groups of roughly equal size and directly opposite goals are cohabitating within one shared governmental structure.
Our republic was never meant to effectively govern such a divided populace and the cofounders said so directly.
The only way to govern two groups so divided and at the verge of kinetic violence against each other is a totalitarian dictatorship which pushes the agenda of one side at the expense of the freedoms of the other while suppressing the minority group as the globalist left wants desperately to do to the right and we see occurring now in Europe or via a separation.
The problem is that we live in a nation where two incompatible groups of roughly equal size and directly opposite goals are cohabitating within one shared governmental structure.
Our republic was never meant to effectively govern such a divided populace and the cofounders said so directly.
The only way to govern two groups so divided and at the verge of kinetic violence against each other is a totalitarian dictatorship which pushes the agenda of one side at the expense of the freedoms of the other while suppressing the minority group as the globalist left wants desperately to do to the right and we see occurring now in Europe or via a separation.
This post was edited on 4/27/26 at 6:22 am
Posted on 4/27/26 at 6:23 am to NC_Tigah
That drivel right there is why so many morons believe in assassinations, riots that burn down their own cities, looting and laxity in their own homes. They believe this nonsense that so called journalists openly spout
Posted on 4/27/26 at 6:25 am to BurlesonCountyAg
How do you fix the issue that they no longer represent the people?
Term limits and only people with skin in the game can vote. Both pipe dreams, of course
Posted on 4/27/26 at 6:28 am to SlowFlowPro
quote:
The people need to elect better.
The People need better choices
Posted on 4/27/26 at 6:31 am to Bayou
quote:
The People need better choices
Just look at how better choices like Massie and Rand Paul are treated by those on the poles.
Why would better options want to deal with that?
Posted on 4/27/26 at 6:37 am to NC_Tigah
Get rid of party’s, Term limits, and taking money (PACS, lobby’s, special interests) completely out of politics and bringing it back to a civic duty not a “for profit” career. Yes I know it’s impossible but a man can dream.
Posted on 4/27/26 at 6:37 am to NC_Tigah
They will suddenly find their power and voices to degrade and impeach Trump.
They cant save America in any ACT.
But they can hire a team of lawyers to impeach Trump, and spend a zillion dollars to save POS Cornyn....Like Turtle did to save Murkowski leaving Kari Lake and Mastriano to rot and defame.
They cant save America in any ACT.
But they can hire a team of lawyers to impeach Trump, and spend a zillion dollars to save POS Cornyn....Like Turtle did to save Murkowski leaving Kari Lake and Mastriano to rot and defame.
Posted on 4/27/26 at 6:38 am to NC_Tigah
Totally unbiased report.
Posted on 4/27/26 at 6:43 am to SlowFlowPro
quote:The poles obviously will never be "purple." The question is whether the purple equator is centrally circumferential to a sphere or the shaft of a dumbbell.
The people need to elect better.
Society becoming less polar andthe poles becoming more purple would help a great deal, too.
Regardless, this is not an electorate problem. It is an institutional problem. Congress is impotent by choice. We've not had a normally passed budget in 30 years! That includes one filibuster-proof Congress.
Posted on 4/27/26 at 6:49 am to NC_Tigah
quote:
Congress is impotent by choice. We've not had a normally passed budget in 30 years!
The population would revolt if real spending cuts occurred.
I can go make a thread to prove this by talking about how SS/Medicare need reform and the age of eligibility should be raised and reimbursements need to be cut and you'll see a ton of professed "conservatives" who talk about the government spending less lose their fricking minds. They would never vote for a pol serious about spending cuts, so we get pols who don't engage in spending cuts.
Posted on 4/27/26 at 6:51 am to BurlesonCountyAg
quote:
How do you fix the issue that they no longer represent the people?
Either break up the United States into smaller republics, or, create more congress members.
When the founders signed the Constitution, the population in the US was ~4 million people and the max number of people to representatives was 30,000 to 1. And representation grew according to the population.
After the 1920 census, Congress became concerned that if they held to the wording of the Constitution, Congress would too fast and end up being too large to be "effective". So in 1929 they passed a bill to permanently cap the number of reps at 435.
If the held to the 30,000 to 1, there would be over 11,000 congressmen in the house.
All that history to say now the representation is ~75,000 to 1. You effectively have no representation.
It is ridiculous to think 538 elected officials can govern over 340M people in vastly different geographies and vastly different cultures judiciously.
This post was edited on 4/27/26 at 6:54 am
Posted on 4/27/26 at 6:55 am to NC_Tigah
And they have done this to themselves. They don't want to legislate because they don't want to have to take a public position on issues and they don't want to go on the record. They want everything to be hidden and they want to spend time fundraising for their next election. Congress is broken and I don't think it can be fixed.
Posted on 4/27/26 at 6:59 am to NC_Tigah
If anyone here was gifted a seat in either chamber of Congress, what could you do to effectively change anything?
Posted on 4/27/26 at 7:01 am to Cuz413
quote:
Either break up the United States into smaller republics
This is not possible. The "divorce" simply won't work.
quote:
If the held to the 30,000 to 1, there would be over 11,000 congressmen in the house.
I get it, but I would imagine this would just make viable non-binary parties more popular and would lead to even more gridlock. We are not set up in a parliamentary system and this require that sort of system to work.
Not a huge fan of a binary system, but within the context of your argument about passing more laws, it makes it easier.
I'm of the opinion that we need fewer laws and we need to scale back from where we are. There's very little National legislation that I could really be tempted to support these days, unless that legislation produced government power at the federal or state level.
Posted on 4/27/26 at 7:01 am to NC_Tigah
quote:
hard-liners want provisions suppressing the vote in the name of nonexistent voter fraud, anti-government bigots want undefined “fraud prevention” actions to deny welfare spending to Black and brown people in blue cities,
quote:
The key point to me is that the filibuster is actually a tool for more lawlessness, as politicians scheme to find a way around it.
This whole article is crap.
There is fraud and the only suppression is to voters that do not have the right to vote.
And he looks at the filibuster as a Democrat does.
Extremely biased article that I couldn't read.
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