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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   26257 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024

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Can you imagine a US Constitutional amendment that, if proposed, would actually get passed these days?

The relevant part of the US Constitution is:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

So, either 2/3 of both the House and the Senate, or 2/3 of the states must propose it, and then 3/4 of the state legislatures or conventions in those states must support it, for it to become part of the Constitution... as I understand it at least.

What sort of possible amendments could you imagine would actually pass and become part of the US Constitution in today's political climate, if they were proposed?

I find this to be an interesting question because it is a barometer of what the various factions of US politics actually agree on, despite their various differences, and also a barometer of how much polarization there is in today's US political situation.

Line item veto.

It was briefly introduced in the 90s, but ultimately declared unconstitutional. It would be a method of breaking the "giant omnibus bill" system of government, by allowing the president to remove pork-belly spending at will. ((One proposal I've seen would restrict the veto to bills passed by a simple majority, bills passed by a two-thirds majority that would allow congress to overturn a veto would be immune from a line item veto, so if we really put together a compromise bill that has near unanimous congressional support it would be immune))

Then you get stuff like this where the executive completely reverses the meaning of the legislation.

No one's ever going to convince me that anyone believes this is actually legal. The Wisconsin Amendment reads:

Appropriation bills may be approved in whole or in part by the governor, and the part approved shall become law, and the part objected to shall be returned in the same manner as provided for other bills.

Striking out single letters is the kind of thing that only an extremely dishonest legal genius could love. Any normal person would read this as allowing a governor to reject parts of appropriations bill, not provide an opportunity to completely flip the meaning of sentences.

Agreed. 43 states have some extent of line item veto and you don't often hear about really flagrant abuse of it, so I assume it works well enough in practice.

More importantly it kills the ability to trade. You want X; I want Y. I prefer X to not Y and you prefer Y to not X.

So we agree to X and Y. But now the governor can strike X and keep Y. Outside of comity, why would you support X to override the veto?

Given that I can’t count on you to override the veto, I’m never going to give you Y in the first place.

The worst part is that it doesn't necessarily flip the meaning, but everyone is going along with it as if it does. Each of the spending increases could easily be interpreted as a one-time thing. "For 2023-2425 increase spending by $150" is interpreted by everyone as meaning, "increase spending by $150 each year 2023-2425", but the more straightforward interpretation is to increase spending once over that timeframe.

It would be nice to be a nation of laws, rather than of raw power.

And yet every mainstream media story on it was congratulatory in tone towards the governor, and no lawsuit appears to have resulted. It's almost as if the words don't matter, only who and whom.

Maybe because everyone, including the GOP, liked the modification?

The article says the GOP have used the tactic before too, so presumably they don’t want to challenge it too much, it’s likely they’ll win back the governor’s office at some point.

It's ridiculous, but it's also like 40 years old and has been litigated in the state supreme court already.

They haven't used it nearly so blatantly AFAIK. I expect the actual reason it hasn't been challenged is because the modification is not all that extreme. The article itself mentions that the budget increase doesn't even keep pace with inflation. Why expend political effort to fight something they probably would have done anyways?

The governor broke the law in a terrible way, claiming vast powers for himself, but used them only to achieve a fairly small, very popular, and somewhat bipartisan goal. It was pretty smart tbh and something I hope Republicans know to copy if/when they get office.

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