4th/5th hour Symposium
If you have comments or questions that you didn't get a chance to provide during class today you may post them here. Posts must be added by noon Nov. 8th. I am going to challenge you to only post content that we have not already discussed during the symposium or that has been discussed in class during our 2 weeks studying Congress thus far. Find something off the beaten path from other parts you have read in Chapter 12 or you researched yourself.
Mr. Thompson
posted by erdecker @ 10:24 AM
20 comments
20 Comments:
We discussed how a law should be passed to limit the Senate's ability to filibuster, but that would never happen because the Senate would never restrict themselves. Well, what would happen if we added in a level of checks and balances within Congress which made it so the House was in charge of making rules about the Senate and vice versa? Would it work, or would they just attack each other?(especially when controlled by opposite parties like right now)
I know we are just starting on the budget, but I was curious to how it works and why congress takes so long on agreeing on a budget. If the president proposes a budget to congress, why is it so difficult to agree on it, or simply bring it to a conference committee like they do with a bill when it is trying to become a law. And responding to Mariah, I think that if you introduced a checks and balance system within congress, each house would set rules so the other could not do something then nothing would never get done. It would be a good idea if we had senators and representatives who would care more about the job they were elected for rather than trying to be reelected again.
Maddie McCullough
In response to Maddie's question, the reason that congress takes so long to propose a budget is because of the extreme democrats and republicans within congress. Both parties have aspects of the budget that they want to change but are too stubborn to compromise so an agreement is difficult to obtain. While democrats wish to tax the rich further, the republicans wish to cut unemployment payment to a shorter time. The radicals of both parties are not able to come up with a budget plan that pleases the majority. The country - ages 18 to 35 especially, the age group that votes the least - needs to educate themselves on politics, do the research on their representatives, and vote based on their true beliefs if there is any hope to change the way the government is run and to improve the problem that is debt in this country. Today in class we talked about how the U.S. spends about 6 times as much money as China, the country below us in military spending. This amount of money seems kind of ridiculous being that military is a discretional expense. Could spending be better spent elsewhere that would improve other aspects of our country? The government is not very good at spending the money that it gets from taxes. The cautiousness that private sectors demonstrate when spending money is an example to the government on spending responsibly. I don't see a compromised budget being made any time soon because of the extreme views from both parties, both wanting different things and not being able to find a compromise. But maybe that's just the pessimistic side of me thinking. :)
-Shannon Adkins
Mariah, I think it is a great idea to form a system of checks and balances for powers given to Congress by themselves. I also agree that if each house had to check the other, they would attack and limit each other too much. But on the other hand, if the "checker" was from outside of Congress, another opinion would be added in and could possibly stall the advancement of decisions even more than it is already which would not be beneficial at all. So to answer your questions, theoretically it is a good idea but there are so many details that would have to be worked out and I'm not sure that it'd end up being beneficial.
Jamie Knox
Mariah, I think that an outside power would be nice to have checks and balances but since congress has this thing where they like giving themselves privileges by passing empowering laws I don't think this check would be very efficient for very long. One thing that particularly rattled me in the textbook was how it always came back to, "if you are wealthy you are more likely to succeed at being elected' and I don't think this goes with what the founding fathers had in mind for a, oh, I don't know, government for the people, by the people... I wasn't aware "but mostly by the wealthy people" was implied. So I was wondering, why did we make it so difficult for anybody but the wealthy to gain office? Intelligence level really should have nothing to do with it, considering how often people vote for incumbents no matter how much the disapproval ratings for them are skyrocketing.
Is it possible that the absence of a strong independent population within congress disrupts the legislative process due to the stalemate caused by party politics.
Due to checks and balances throughout the United States government, the law making process is a much much slower process than it could be. Does the checks and balances removing the majority of the poor ideas make up for the inefficiency of the process?
Answering Igor's question "Does the checks and balances removing the majority of the poor ideas make up for the inefficiency of the process?"
Yes, it does make up for it.
My definition of an efficient Congress/Government would be one that passes a large amount of GOOD legislation. Obviously that is difficult since checks and balances slow down the process and also make it more tedious, but the effect is that we cut down on bad legislation or at least legislation that is not viewed as favorably.
I certainly prefer small volumes of good legislation being passed rather than large volumes of mediocre/bad legislation being passed.
Anyone else?
I know we've talked a lot about incumbents usually winning in elections even though their approval ratings during their terms are low. We usually respond that it is the people's responsibility to research the candidates, but what do you think the candidates could do better to get their names and beliefs heard? They already make commercials for television and radio, so what more could they do?
During class Emma P. had a question about the Representatives in the house and how much they lead. She said the start of the government had about 300,000 citizens to one House of Representative. Now there is about 700,000 citizens to one House of Representative. I ask, do we need to add more House of Representatives to Congress, so that the Representatives can focus and lead a smaller amount of citizens?
Nick O. in class said that if we raise the number of Representatives, then it would be chaotic. If we specialized each House of Representative to their committee that they are on, then i believe it would be more simplistic and organized. Do you think we should raised and specialize the Representatives?
In response to Mariah, I believe the it would not work, because the opposite parties would just cancel each other out. What we could do, is have the citizens vote on it (even though it is not in regards to us) or we could have the President and supreme court get involve to set the rules, so it is a little more fair.
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During class Emma P. had a question about the Representatives in the house and how much they lead. She said the start of the government had about 300,000 citizens to one House of Representative. Now there is about 700,000 citizens to one House of Representative. I ask, do we need to add more House of Representatives to Congress, so that the Representatives can focus and lead a smaller amount of citizens?
Nick O. in class said that if we raise the number of Representatives, then it would be chaotic. If we specialized each House of Representative to their committee that they are on, then i believe it would be more simplistic and organized. Do you think we should raised and specialize the Representatives?
In response to Mariah, I believe the it would not work, because the opposite parties would just cancel each other out. What we could do, is have the citizens vote on it (even though it is not in regards to us) or we could have the President and supreme court get involve to set the rules, so it is a little more fair.
Sam, I think if we raised and specialized Representatives it would be rather ideal in the sense of simplicity and organization. While the US has a whopping 1:700,000 ratio of representatives to people, the ratio is much smaller in other places. For example, France's National Assembly currently has about a 1:113,000 ratio and Britain's House of Commons has about a 1:96000 ratio. My point here is that an expansion in the House wouldnt necessarily be chaotic, even though the value of each vote will drop but this in turn bolsters a governing party's scope to pass laws collectively without taking others' votes through pet projects... but we should also account for the fact that House expansion will be practically impossible at this point in time without constitutional amendment, which incumbents would probably hate to pass. Not to mention Congress has enough issues to worry about. With that said, I was wondering why does Congress operate in a manner that essentially promotes factionalism. One thing that I consider is that in George Washington's farewell address, one of his 5 warnings was we should 'avoid partisanship in a domestic political standpoint for the common good.' Do the pros brought by factionalism successfully counter the cons?
-Amjad Murdos
I was doing research on how Congress can balance the budget and I came across some key ideas. First off, tax hikes need to stop. All they do is hurt the economy and American workers by dampening investment and job creation. Discretionary spending needs to be reduced because Congress is spending way too much on programs that only benefit a few. Congress should not use budget gimmicks. Excess spending is unacceptable if Congress wants to put the federal budget on a firm course to balance in ten years and stay balanced. Now the big question for me is, how can Congress follow through on these wonderful ideas if all we have is "show-boating" politicians in power?
Zach Higgins was the publisher of that last comment by the way.
Zach,
First question I have is what do you consider "excess" spending?
In response to your question of "how can Congress follow through om these womderful ideas if all we have is "show-boating" politicians in power?"
I believe that the big controversial politicians in office right now are not in congress to help our government but are in congress because it is their job. I believe that as Americas choose their representatives and senators it is our job to distinguish between who is running so they can better improve our country and who is in it just for the job.
Also, I believe that raising the term length from 2 years maybe 4 or 6 years would be beneficial. This way the representatives aren't taking their entire term focusing on being re-elected. Instead, they are in congress to do what they believe is honestly good.
- Brianna Colvin
To answer Zach's question, I do believe that the government needs to cut down on discretionary spending. However, the problem with that is Congress would never be able to reach an approval for lower the spending on anything that would hurt them directly or indirectly. For example, if some members in Congress were suggest cutting the spending on our biggest discretionary program(defense) down, many members would stop the plan to do that since they realize that might not get reelected by the people again if they do.
So would it be better if we increased the term limit like Bri said so that they could focus on passing good legislation and then after a couple of years go to work on their campaigns?
~Lucky Volety
As American citizens is there any true way to know if someone is running for their own benefit rather than the for the benefit of the country until after they are voted in and we see their actions?
Kylie you stated that politicians don't do enough to get their beliefs out during elections and that the incumbent always has a higher chance of winning. However, the politicians typically already do everything they can to let the people know what they do with the money they have to campaign with. They give speeches in towns, have Twitter, Facebook, advertising in media, etc. so that they can be recognized by the 18-35 demographic.
However, they don't gain much recognition from mainstream media because typically the media will focuses on helping the incumbent over the one against them. This is usually because the incumbent has more money to spend in campaigning and advertising. So the incumbent typically gets the seat. For example, as I was researching how much the House spends on campaigning, I found out that in 2012, 256 incumbents were re-elected and they had spent an average of $1.3 million, while their opponents(170 of them) only spent around $154,000.
So while you say that the politicians should do more to get our attention, it should be the people that do the research. As I stated above, politicians already do a lot to get their name out, but out of ignorance many people just choose to vote for the incumbent since they don't really hear about the other politician or research them. And we can't really say that the opponents should just spend more money campaigning. We should not be deciding who helps lead this country by how much money they spend but by how their ideas will help the country.
- Lucky Volety
To answer both Lucky and Bri's questions, I think that extending the term limit will only help some. Giving them more time to work may improve things a little, but over all I believe that it relates more to the person. We would be in a much better position in our government today if our leaders would be more concerned about our issues and trying to find out what is truly best for our government rather than worrying about their campaign. The people also have to realize the truth behind our leaders so we do not keep reelecting people who are not doing the job.
-Ashton Andersen
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