this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2024
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The US could do similar, but the Democrats couldn’t on account of all legislation in the last decade needing Republican approval to not get filibustered, and Republicans hating the idea of any subsidy that interferes with the “free market” outside of oil subsidies.
While the US government could absolutely be doing more in theory, in practice I think the climate legislation the Democrats have managed to get past Republican obstruction has been very impressive.
Dems have actively chosen to keep the filibuster despite having multiple opportunities to remove it as a rule.
Multiple opportunities, in the last few decades? To my knowledge the only point they had the votes to was that one three month period where they got the ACA though, before that was in the 70s when party line votes were pretty rare.
It's a simple majority vote on the start of a session, Dems have had a simple majority plenty of times
A simple majority vote via the nuclear option could be undone just as quickly once things shifted, and from my understanding would never be an option in future if done once. To actually officially change the rules and eliminate the filibuster in a way that isn’t just procedural a two thirds majority is required.
It's a procedural rule, yes it can be put back in place if Republicans want to, they don't, but it can be. This is because it has no law associated with it, no bill to pass, it's something the Senate made up to stall civil rights and especially keep brown senators in the 1800s from doing anything the extreme white minority didn't want.
It's not a 'nuclear option,' it's a return to how the country was designed to function and did function for more than a century.
It was created in its current form by the formal adoption of senate rule 22 in 1917, which would explicitly take a two thirds majority to edit or remove and if not removed would leave the filibuster on the books. It’s also worth noting that filibusters were incredibly rare in the 1800s, especially pre civil war, with its use to stall civil rights legislation mainly being a 1940s and later thing.
The procedure to go around rule 22 by rasing a point of order in contradiction to established precedent is commonly called the ‘nuclear option’ by everyone from the media to reformists discussing it, and is recognized as the only likely way short of the two thirds majority needed to amend rule 22 to get around the senate filibuster. I think the name is more than a little grandiose, but it is the commonly accepted name for the procedure.