HB 27-06: Congressional Reform Resolution (Passed)

[Poirot]

A RESOLUTION
To reduce gridlock and streamline Congressional rule changes

Be it resolved by the House of Representatives and Senate assembled:

Section 1. Title

1. This legislation may be cited as the J.K. Sestak Congressional Reform Resolution.

Section 2. Amendment to Senate Rules

1. Article 11 of the New Senate Rules Resolution is amended to read as follows.

...
5.) Whenever either house shall consider a bill, order, or resolution that shall have originated in the other, the President of the Congress shall immediately call a vote in that house on whether to immediately pass the legislation, or further debate it.
a.) The President of Congress shall maintain a single thread in which to preside over these votes as held by both houses, and shall regularly update the title of the thread to inform the Congress of what legislation is being considered in which house.
b.) Should the house vote to debate the legislation further, debate shall proceed in a separate thread as established elsewhere in these rules.

People's Regional Senate
Passed 4-2 in the Atlasian Senate Assembled,

Section 3. Amendment to House Rules

1. Article 10 of the House of the Representatives Rules and Procedures for Operation is amended to read as follows.

...
5.) Whenever either house shall consider a bill, order, or resolution that shall have originated in the other, the President of the Congress shall immediately call a vote in that house on whether to immediately pass the legislation, or further debate it.
a.) Should the house vote to debate the legislation furtherIf there is one vote in favor of debate, debate shall proceed in a separate thread as established elsewhere in these rules.
b.) These votes shall be known as "initial cloture" votes.

I presumed the last amendment will be adopted and after that I am proposing an amendment to 5.a)
I imagine the vote would be a simple majority vote. There is a possibility of a small majority adopting laws without debate. people are elected to the legislature to examine legislation, debate, give opinions and vote. The proposed system would remove the right to voice opinion and debate of a representative when the House votes to adopt without debate. It shuts down voices. To make sure every representative's voice can be heard and do the work they were elected to do, I propose to move to debate if one elected official requests debate. I think this better preserves our representative democracy system. 

[Mike Thick]

While I can't formally object, I don't support this. We've seen unanimous consent used in real life to slow down progress on important bills. I don't want the same thing to happen here.

One more thing. People who, say, aren't Senators, discuss Senate bills in Senate threads all the time. If members of Congress are concerned about something in a bill, and they're concerned that it'll go through their chamber on initial cloture, they can still debate ad nauseam in the other chamber's thread.

How much this rule change affects the amount of debate is entirely dependent on members of Congress -- whether they debate in one thread or another thread, whether they hold things over or not. All this does is give them the option of passing things on a faster timetable. So, I don't think this is necessary.

[OBD]

Objection to the Poirot amendment.

[Joseph Cao]

Since there has been an objection, a vote is open on Poirot’s amendment. 72 hours to vote; please vote Aye, Nay, or Abstain.

And please post your reasoning, if you can. This is a very important bill that will determine the future working of the legislative branch and the people deserve to hear why we vote the way we do.

[Mike Thick]

(To clarify, the amendment before Poirot’s saw no objections, and is adopted.)

[Left Wing]

Nay on Poirot’s amendment.

I believe unanimous consent will slow down the process significantly and bills will be left in debate endlessly if one representative decides they want to continue to stall with debate.

[SevenEleven]

Nay.

[OBD]

Nay. I concur with Ted and Falterin that leaving a clause that allows individual Representatives to gum up the process kinda defeats the whole purpose of this rule change.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

As I understand this, a bill is passed in Senate. The House votes to pass it or debate it. I imagine the vote is majority and not unanimity. So House votes 6-3 to pass it. No debate.

I don't like it removes the right of some elected officials to give their opinions or point out problems or mistakes in the bill. It also could lead to less examinition of the bill because if it's not at the debate stage maybe people will just read rapidly or the general idea of the bill.

So I have reservations.

What you describe is legislative friction, which is a normal process that enables the kind of examination and amendment to occur, and gives the broadest sense of concern for objections of a singular representative. I am not here to guess at the motivations behind the desire for reform, but there is a lot of criticism that this process also drags things out and makes it difficult for legislation to come to fruition within a reasonable time frame. I think that underlies some of the bubbling resentment towards the current system in general.

My opinion is if the VP has a conceptualization especially limited to bills from the other chamber, I am inclined to give him the benefit of a doubt in terms of trying something different both because we have these concerns, and we have had issues with VP activity recently. I would rather see the system adapt somewhat then have it break or collapse.

That being said, it is an important dividing line between efficiency on the one hand and necessary review and consideration on the other and at some point brutally efficient legislating from a procedural standpoint means you are basically assembly lining garbage. So it is not unreasonable to be concerned thus as to the end result of this change, it is my hope that what can be achieved here will at minimum make the VP's job easier even if it isn't necessarily the proposal as currently composed.

Caveat: Everything being posted here is done so under the effects of fatigue, headache and exhaustion.

I think this is perfectly cogent Basically encapsulates my thoughts as well. The intent here is to grease the wheels a bit. However, the change this would make to "legislative friction" is a lot less dramatic than, say, a move to unicameralism. If this rule change is made, both chambers will have the same review powers they have now. They'll just have the option of expediting things if they don't think there are any problems with the legislation. Maybe I have a little too much faith in the process, but I think that generally the first chamber to consider a bill will spot most glaring errors, and if they miss some things, members of the second chamber will hit the brakes and fix what's left.

As for the issues with VP workload, I frankly didn't have that in mind when I made the proposal. No complaints on my end so far, but evidently the job has been a problem for some other people. That is certainly something to consider.

Will write up the final amendment that we've talked about tomorrow. With finals and the holidays, I've let this get away from me a bit, but I think it's still possible to wrap the rule change up in both chambers pretty soon.

It may have been a factor previously, and the more "friction" their is, the more procedural motions to be processed, the harder it is to administer a given thread.

[Poirot]

While I can't formally object, I don't support this. We've seen unanimous consent used in real life to slow down progress on important bills. I don't want the same thing to happen here.

One more thing. People who, say, aren't Senators, discuss Senate bills in Senate threads all the time. If members of Congress are concerned about something in a bill, and they're concerned that it'll go through their chamber on initial cloture, they can still debate ad nauseam in the other chamber's thread.

How much this rule change affects the amount of debate is entirely dependent on members of Congress -- whether they debate in one thread or another thread, whether they hold things over or not. All this does is give them the option of passing things on a faster timetable. So, I don't think this is necessary.

I'm in the House and focus on House bills. I don't go to Senate threads to see what they are doing before the Senate sends a bill to the House.

If both chambers have to debate on all bills on the two chambers at the same time because maybe you will not have a say when it goes to the other chamber, I guess we might as well have one chamber and not two.

There is a big sign of a presidential ticket running on liberty and activity. Voting not to debate is the opposite of that. It removes the liberty of an elected representative to debate if a majority decides to remove that right and diminish activity because one chamber gets less debate.

It will be easy for the majority in both chambers to strip the right to debate of a minority in the other chamber. You can always go to the other chamber but you don't have the right to vote and you can't propose amendment.

[Poirot]

I believe unanimous consent will slow down the process significantly and bills will be left in debate endlessly if one representative decides they want to continue to stall with debate.

You can't endlessly debate. It is possible to motion for a final vote and it does not need unanimity.
Last year in happened to me, I wanted to propose an amendment and people went to a final vote.

[Poirot]

I vote aye on the amendment.
I am not removing the right to debate of an elected representative (or more than one) in their chamber becaue a majority decided to not debate a bill. Skipping debate defeats the point of being elected to represent constituents, debate and examine bills. The majority can pretty much do what they want already so it's not necessary to remove possible debate on top of that.

[Poirot]

My amendment gives a quick adoption to bills for emergency situations and bills that everyone agrees with without removing the right of one or more elected representatives to advocate against something or give opinions.

[Rep Jessica]

aye-I voted aye because I want to do what Sev and FalterinArc fear to all of labors bills. This gives the minority party a lot more power. That is a good thing.

[Mike Thick]

Poirot, would it ease some of your doubts if we included a brief period for people to raise objections before the cloture vote? Like 24 hours or something like that?

[P. Clodius Pulcher did nothing wrong]

Nay

[Harvey Updyke Jr🌹]

Nay

[SevenEleven]

While I can't formally object, I don't support this. We've seen unanimous consent used in real life to slow down progress on important bills. I don't want the same thing to happen here.

One more thing. People who, say, aren't Senators, discuss Senate bills in Senate threads all the time. If members of Congress are concerned about something in a bill, and they're concerned that it'll go through their chamber on initial cloture, they can still debate ad nauseam in the other chamber's thread.

How much this rule change affects the amount of debate is entirely dependent on members of Congress -- whether they debate in one thread or another thread, whether they hold things over or not. All this does is give them the option of passing things on a faster timetable. So, I don't think this is necessary.

I'm in the House and focus on House bills. I don't go to Senate threads to see what they are doing before the Senate sends a bill to the House.

If both chambers have to debate on all bills on the two chambers at the same time because maybe you will not have a say when it goes to the other chamber, I guess we might as well have one chamber and not two.

Yes, you have stumbled into the correct position here. There is no reason to have two seperate legislative chambers.

[Mike Thick]

Amendment has the votes to fail. 24 hours to vote or change votes.

[Poirot]

Yes, you have stumbled into the correct position here. There is no reason to have two seperate legislative chambers.

So to avoid changing the constitution directly it was decided to implement a new political system: oneandafractioncameral system.

[OBD]

Do y'all want to do a full unicameral reform? I'm down.

[At-Large Senator LouisvilleThunder]

Do y'all want to do a full unicameral reform? I'm down.

Hell no.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Yes, you have stumbled into the correct position here. There is no reason to have two seperate legislative chambers.

So to avoid changing the constitution directly it was decided to implement a new political system: oneandafractioncameral system.

I think Ted's desire here is to satisfy the concerns voiced over the recent months, including those brought to me last session by Senators, pertaining to delays in consideration once their bills reach the other chamber.

The House doesn't have the flexibility of the Senate in this regards. For instance when we have backlogs, we aren't restrained by the slot assignments and thus Senators were more willing to introduce House bills directly as Senate bills to bypass any backlogs. Serial ports only displaced parallel ports because they achieved the ability to push through in a single lane more then could be broken up and pushed through several.

There also a bit of a holiday slow down overall and when you have multiple procedural steps to go through on each bill it adds up. We have had delays on our side too, but most everyone of our votes are commenced via unanimous consent and don't required the added layer of cloture votes, we had fewer amendments this time (about half the normal amount) and a lot of the bills were fairly lacking in controversial nature and the one bill that came back to us that was controversial was on its final stage and thus went to a vote directly, the vote was party line and that was that.

In no way does Ted's proposal undermine the rights of the other chamber. At the end of the day, the majority in the House or the Senate for that matter (thanks to the math) can cut off debate and amendment anytime they want under the current rules, last I checked cloture only requires 5 votes in the house unless that changed at some point (edit: well it is a bit more complicated than I originally thought, but after the first 72 hours if debate ceases it drops to five. I actually recall suggesting that cloture not be required if debate ceased for longer than a set period of time, that would really speed things up but alas that was considered "too harsh". ). Teds proposal basically just does an automatic "pre-debate cloture vote".

[Mike Thick]

Poirot, would it ease some of your doubts if we included a brief period for people to raise objections before the cloture vote? Like 24 hours or something like that?

I'd still like to hear your feedback on this, although I'm frankly inclined to add a brief debate period anyway.

Yes, you have stumbled into the correct position here. There is no reason to have two seperate legislative chambers.

So to avoid changing the constitution directly it was decided to implement a new political system: oneandafractioncameral system.

I think Ted's desire here is to satisfy the concerns voiced over the recent months, including those brought to me last session by Senators, pertaining to delays in consideration once their bills reach the other chamber.

The House doesn't have the flexibility of the Senate in this regards. For instance when we have backlogs, we aren't restrained by the slot assignments and thus Senators were more willing to introduce House bills directly as Senate bills to bypass any backlogs. Serial ports only displaced parallel ports because they achieved the ability to push through in a single lane more then could be broken up and pushed through several.

There also a bit of a holiday slow down overall and when you have multiple procedural steps to go through on each bill it adds up. We have had delays on our side too, but most everyone of our votes are commenced via unanimous consent and don't required the added layer of cloture votes, we had fewer amendments this time (about half the normal amount) and a lot of the bills were fairly lacking in controversial nature and the one bill that came back to us that was controversial was on its final stage and thus went to a vote directly, the vote was party line and that was that.

In no way does Ted's proposal undermine the rights of the other chamber. At the end of the day, the majority in the House or the Senate for that matter (thanks to the math) can cut off debate and amendment anytime they want under the current rules, last I checked cloture only requires 5 votes in the house unless that changed at some point (edit: well it is a bit more complicated than I originally thought, but after the first 72 hours if debate ceases it drops to five. I actually recall suggesting that cloture not be required if debate ceased for longer than a set period of time, that would really speed things up but alas that was considered "too harsh". ). Teds proposal basically just does an automatic "pre-debate cloture vote".

For the record: I do not want to move to unicameralism. Full stop. I want to try and make the current system run better, so we don't go unicameral.

[Joseph Cao]

I think the presence of representatives who will object for the sake of objection is pretty nearly a given in the average Congress, and so while I agree with Poirot that it's dangerous for a small majority to override motions to debate (and have said so during debate previously), I'm not sure if requiring unanimous consent to stop debate is the right thing to do here. Therefore, I abstain on the amendment vote.

As I recall, motions to table legislation require two-thirds of sitting representatives, which strikes me as a nice balance between these two extremes – functional enough to not gum up the works while also giving enough of a voice to the minority to prevent bills from being rammed through on partisan lines. Obviously partisan supermajorities have happened and will happen again, but in the long term I think this two-thirds threshold should hold up better than the simple majority requirement currently in the bill.