calbear93 said:
JeffBear07 said:
calbear93 said:
JeffBear07 said:
dajo9 said:
JeffBear07 said:
dajo9 said:
JeffBear07 said:
dajo9 said:
JeffBear07 said:
dajo9 said:
About 90% of Democratic legislators voted for the $15 minimum wage. I support primarying all 8 of the Democratic Senators who voted against it.
I also support defeating the 100% of Republicans that voted against it.
Since you appear to feel strongly about this, I'm interested in your thoughts on the question I posted upthread. Namely, what is the rationale for inserting a minimum wage provision into a reconciliation bill? Also, of the 8 Democratic senators who voted no, I suspect that a few more than just Sinema would be potentially amenable to a $15 minimum wage outside of reconciliation, so in that hypothetical scenario, would you still support primarying them?
I'm not interested in what Bernie Sanders calls "the archaic and undemocratic" rules of the Senate. I'm interested in results for the American people.
To be clear, I am in full support of a $15 minimum wage. Having said that, budget reconciliation is a completely different concept from the filibuster with a clearly delineated set of parameters that are - in my view anyway - perfectly reasonable. The filibuster, on the other hand, is a concept whose original basis is sketchy at best and whose recent history is anathema to functioning government. I guess I just don't see why the minimum wage fight isn't something better taken up as a stand-alone issue separate from a budget reconciliation bill. I think it's a virtual certainty that several more Democratic senators if not all (looking at you Manchin) would vote in favor of a $15 minimum wage if it didn't go through the reconciliation process, since there apparently isn't an actual justification for considering it a budgetary measure. So why are certain wings of the Democratic party framing this parliamentarian decision as the end-all be-all on the minimum wage question?
Budget reconciliation only exists as a workaround to the filibuster. To say they are different concepts is wrong. The former exists because of the problems caused by the latter.
This got me curious enough to look a little bit into the history of budget reconciliation and I sorta agree and disagree with you here. It looks like the initial concept of budget reconciliation was introduced via the 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act, which Nixon (R) signed into law. Carter (D) was the first president to actually sign a bill into law using reconciliation. Then Reagan (R) is the first president to really use reconciliation as a regular tool for spending and tax priorities. So yes, it does look like budget reconciliation was originally created as a vehicle for overcoming the filibuster on certain types of bills.
On the other hand, this framework still makes it clear that the intent of budget reconciliation is for budget-related items, so I stand by my assessment that if there are clearly delineated parameters in place, then they should be followed. In the instant case, unless there is some budgetary justification for a minimum wage law, I don't see why this is where the fight for a $15 minimum wage needs to be fought and won.
Ultimately, the near- and mid-term viability of the Democratic party is going to rely heavily on eliminating the filibuster anyway, because unless HR1 passes, state Republicans across the country are going to rig election systems hard against Democratic-leaning voters. If the filibuster is eliminated, raising the minimum wage will become exponentially less difficult. And if at that point, Democrats at large can't find some way of convincing Joe Manchin to vote some form of a minimum wage increase, then that means doing so through budget reconciliation was and has been a lost cause to begin with and the whole current fight over including a minimum wage provision through the current budget reconciliation process was pointless.
Or TL;DR, outspoken progressives need to pick their fights better. Don't succumb to the Republican messaging that Joe Biden and the Democratic Party are already a failure only 2 months after sweeping the presidency and both chambers of congress. Sure, there's a distinct possibility that a godforsaken scenario where nothing getting done indeed comes to pass, but at this moment, Biden and Democratic congressional leadership still have 1.5 years to increase the minimum wage, eliminate the covid threat, etc. If Democratic / progressive constituencies are going to bail on the party's elected officials now, then truly they are a long ways away from understanding the practical reality of how government works and that would just be a tragedy.
I don't see any evidence of Biden supporters abandoning Biden. He is hugely popular and has been a huge success so far not even 2 months in. The fight for $15 is just beginning. Senators opposing it are going to find themselves put under increasing pressure. Maggie Hassan is up for reelection in 2022. She has dug herself a deep hole.
Let me ask you a question since we both know HR1 (a bill intended to ensure the rights of the American people) can't get through the undemocratic Senate. After Republicans use state power to disenfranchise enough Americans to have power despite minority support, will you still support the U.S. Constitution that props up this tyranny over the American people in the name of this useless construct called states rights? If so, why do you believe states having rights is more important than the American people having rights?
To your second point/question, if the Republicans do end up successful in passing their whole spate of voter suppression laws and the Supreme Court upholds (seemingly more likely than not), then I would consider that the biggest middle finger to the Constitution as it exists that we have ever seen in U.S. history and a perfectly good reason to say "F*** it, I guess it's anarchy now until we can write a new one." So this ties back into my belief that if the Democrats don't nuke the filibuster to pass a sufficient minimum wage raise, that means that they aren't nuking the filibuster to pass HR1, and we as a country thus have a far greater problem on our hands than poverty wages anyway.
Sorry to be a stickler for the constitution. You are not one of them, but I have seen so many people who don't have the first clue on what the constitution provides raging against it.
Just from a sense of history on the constitution, the founders were very split on voting rights and who should have it. Until the 14th amendment, the states had complete power to decide who would have voting rights. The 14th amendment also didn't mandate voting right, but only provided a punitive measure in the form of reduced representatives in the house for abridging voting rights. The 15th amendment itself was the first time voting rights was specifically addressed, but only to the extent that it directly and intentionally abridges voting rights on account of race, color or servitude. What was key was that it also gave Congress the authority to make laws to enforce the 15th amendment (remember that the 10th amendment reserves for the states all rights not expressly reserved under the constitution for the federal government).
The main constitutional debate has been (i) is there a law that intentionally and directly discriminates based on race or color (generally no) and, therefore violates Section 1 of the 15th Amendment or (ii) is the voting protection laws beyond the authority granted to the federal government under the 15th amendment. What you are probably thinking about is not the constitution but the Voting Rights Act of 1965 promulgated under Section 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment. That was the first time when even laws that did not patently discriminate based on race but had the effect of discriminating based on race could be made illegal.
The litigation will be whether the new state laws violate the Voting Rights Act. Congress can also make further laws under Section 2 of the 15th Amendment (remember, it is not an amendment to the constitution but only an exercise of authority granted under the constitution and, therefore, only requires a majority in both houses) to make what the states are proposing illegal under the argument that it has the effect of abridging voting rights on account of race or color. I suspect however that even if they tried, they will **** themselves by adding unrelated items on woke bull**** that will then get overturned as violating the the 10th amendment since it does not directly relate to enforcement of the 15th amendment.
I appreciate the more nuanced take, especially in how you see the 15th Amendment and the 1965 Voting Rights Act coming into play. I think you and I differ on this in a couple key ways though. First, I get the sense that you're taking a bit of a textualist approach to the 15th Amendment, which is to say that you're approaching its provisions from a more strictly literal perspective. I personally take, more often than not, a more "general spirit" approach. In this case, I believe that if we are to premise our adjudication of all the upcoming voter suppression laws on the 15th Amendment, we have to look at their net effect and not just their facially intended effect. Take one of the Georgia proposals, for instance, where they want to limit Sunday voting to just one Sunday during the voting period. On its face, it doesn't seem too difficult to make at least the token argument that people of all races and ethnicities go to church on Sunday and thus this proposed law affects everyone equally. But it appears patently obvious that given the fact that black churches in Georgia predominantly use Sunday services to drive their congregations' turnout, the net effect of the law is to suppress black turnout.
And while I know that the Voting Rights Act is at the heart of the current case before the Supreme Court, I'm not relying on that as the end-all be-all of voting rights litigation, because we've already seen that the current Supreme Court composition doesn't care much for common sense when it comes to that law (See Shelby County). Instead, I'm personally looking at this more through the lens of the 14th Amendment - argument being that there are clear and distinctive groups of people whose right to vote is not being protected nearly as much as other constituencies and demographics. So that is why I am framing this as a constitutional argument rather than a legislative one, because of we are going to start interpreting that Constitution to allow for certain groups of people to be discriminated against in their right to vote in net, then we are fundamentally undermining the proper function of Articles I, II, and III in properly representing the people. And if that's the case, then I'm of the view that that Constitution and its corresponding amendments are not worth defending any longer.
Couple of things I think we need to clear up.
The 14th amendment does not guarantee voting rights. It only provides states with a punitive measure in the form of reduced basis for representative for those who are not given voting rights. While voting law cases often bring up both the 14th and the 15th amendment, it is the 15th amendment that is the crux of actually guaranteeing voting rights.
And the 15th amendment is broader than you think. The biggest hammer in the 15th amendment is Section 2. Why? Because it rearranged power allocation between State and Federal on voting matters related to race and color. And Congress used that power to pass the Voting Rights Act that prevented unscrupulous local government from trying to avoid appearances of direct abridgment of voting rights based on color but indirectly resulted in the same abridgment. And the Supreme Court has for the most part upheld the exercise of Section 2 of the 15th Amendment by Congress that made illegal not only intentional abridgment of voting rights but also any action that has the effect (irrespective of intent) of abridging voting rights based on color or race. Where the federal government got tripped up in Shelby vs Holden (glad someone else read the case instead of shooting in ignorance) was when they started requiring all voting laws to pass through a federal gate irrespective of whether they had a discriminatory impact and also choosing certain states and not others. I happened to disagree with the holding because of how fundamental voting right is to our form of government and because you cannot realistically believe that the barriers enacted that had an greatest impact on the poorest minorities were not designed to abridge the voting rights based on color.
If you are a lawyer, you know the different level of judicial review applied by the courts (e.g., strict scrutiny), etc. Unfortunately for the 15th amendment and laws promulgated under the 15th amendment, the courts are applying a high standard that is naturally subjective (e.g., exceptional circumstances necessary to abridge state rights - i.e., is there systematic racism in the voting laws and voting rights). We already know where many of the conservative justices stand on this point. With those lens, it will be hard for any cases to pass that level of judicial review.
I'm not quite syncing up with you here. My argument isn't that the 14th Amendment guarantees voting rights; rather, I'm saying that the 14th Amendment can be used as a basis for challenging voter suppression laws because of its provision for equal protection for all under the law. You're right that the 15th Amendment is the one that explicitly bans voter suppression on the basis of race, but that doesn't mean that it's the only vehicle for pursuing a challenge. So you're going to have to convince me why the 14th Amendment is
not an appropriate basis for challenging voter suppression laws.
That said, your meaty explanation of the 15th Amendment suggests that you are looking at our discussion through the narrow lens of the Arizona case currently before the Supreme Court. Within the framework of that particular lawsuit, your discussion of the 15th Amendment is applicable, because it refers directly to the already defanged Voting Rights Act. My position on that law is that the Supreme Court has already demonstrated an unjustified hostility and intentional ignorance towards the law's underlying purpose, so there's no reason to expect that the Court will be a reliable check on voter suppression via the VRA. Hence, HR1 is crucial to the continuance of a functional democracy as we currently know it.
The more conclusory position I laid out earlier is that if HR1 doesn't pass, then certain states will inevitably pass exceptionally onerous voting restrictions obviously designed solely to suppress turnout primarily in communities that tend to vote Democratic, and an artificially stacked Supreme Court will more likely than not find in favor of those states. If that comes to pass, then it's clear in my view that the Constitution has been *******ized to the point of being functionally meaningless.
That segues into your discussion of the different levels of judicial scrutiny that the courts apply. Upfront, I'm not entirely sure which standard you are referring to with your reference to "exceptional circumstances," since I was taught rational basis - intermediate scrutiny - strict scrutiny, but I suspect you are referring to the second which uses substantial government interest as the standard. Given the behavior of many Republican-led states not just in the past few months but since at least 2010, I think the federal government circa 1965 has proven justified in its position that some states simply can't be trusted not to abuse state control over election processes. I would argue that that does pass the intermediate scrutiny test based on the federal government's substantial interest in maintaining integrity in federal elections. Obviously, the Supreme Court has previously disagreed in
Shelby and looks poised to disagree again. It is again my argument that the Supreme Court is being intentionally obtuse on this issue for partisan purposes, but since I can't prove that, that's not where my argument ends.
That brings us full circle back to the 14th Amendment and by extension the strict scrutiny test. I believe that many if not all of the voter suppression laws that have been proposed in the past few months should not be found to have passed the strict scrutiny test (which is generally the test used for 14th Amendment issues) because they are predominantly aimed at limiting participation in the electoral process by minority communities and thus depriving specific races and ethnicities of equal protection against disenfranchisement. Your assertion that the 15th Amendment is or has been the dominant factor, while apparently correct within the framework of the Arizona case, is independent of the broad approach I am espousing above. From your other posts, it appears you don't have a particularly established position on HR1, but suffice to say, that is the basket in which I am currently placing all my eggs on the ability for our democracy to remain functional, and from what I've read of it, that law would stand up to any level of scrutiny as well.
