• isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      5 hours ago

      Excuses excuses.

      Yes, Democrats like to whine that they only got 60 votes in the Senate for a short period during Obama’s term. You want to know the last time Republicans had 60 votes in the Senate? 1911.

      It’s been over a century since Republicans had that kind of majority, and I think back then the filibuster had a larger threshold to overrule, so they probably didn’t even have a filibuster-proof majority even then. You probably have to go back to Reconstruction to find Republicans with that kind of majority.

      Do you know how Republicans dismantle programs without a filibuster-proof majority? They do it by cutting funding. They cut funding to programs and zero out their budgets. The program still exists in legislation; it just isn’t funded.

      To fix that damage does not require breaking a filibuster. It just requires properly funding those programs again. And funding can be passed with just a simple majority.

      And of course, much of what Republicans do is done by executive order, and that can easily be reversed by the next Democratic president.

    • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      Burn down systems of oppression, then. Oh wait. That also magically takes time because this stupid platitude is just the latest in a long line of excuses from the pawl of the ratchet.