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Comment by kd5bjo | Hacker News Reader

The Senate is a deliberative body, and its primary work requires debate. Already too much gets done behind closed doors and outside the public eye. Dispensing with even the pretense of open debate is somewhat concerning.

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Can someone point to any concrete results of debate on the Senate floor from anytime in the last 20 years or so? I am genuinely asking, because it seems to me that the value of debate on the floor is like you said only pretense at this point. Mandating that pretense and in turn making the Senate slower to react in an emergency seems like an actively harmful requirement.

It's not exactly a pretense, but rather it's playing to the audience, which is the country and the rest of the world. It's theatrics, not intended to sway the lawmakers themselves, who in general are not persuadable by their colleagues.

Meanwhile, behind closed doors, lawmakers are horse trading and calling in favors to get their pet projects passed.

This is pretty much how Congress has worked for the past 100 years or so.

This was true in the 19th century as well.

I am reminded of this historical document [1] (A real source [2]). This private horsetrading likely has and will always be part of any legislative body.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WySzEXKUSZw

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compromise_of_1790

Due to extreme partisan politics, I have to agree that there doesn't seem to have been any good debates on Senate floor. COVID19 has finally broken the dam of it but doesn't seem long lasting.

For the most part the majority party seems to call the shots and are all aligned in effort, making any debates a waste of time. Until the partisan politics stop and we have parties reaching across the aisle again, that is.

I don't think partisan politics have anything to do with it - it's just always going to be much easier to decide things behind closed doors. The '94 Republican Revolution didn't really make these things more transparent - just more theatrical.

"It doesn't work, make it worse" is what I hear here. These are the kind of arguments that move states further towards fascism.

That is a misinterpretation of my comment. To reframe it using your language "It doesn't work now and is actively hurting us during times of emergency, so does removing this requirement make it worse?" No one here has yet to put together a convincing argument on the real world ramifications of debate on the Senate floor. I am open to changing my position on this, but I need to hear a stronger argument than someone proving Godwin's law.

You can try to dismiss the fact that circumventing debate and transparency in government is authoritarian as Godwin and run your apologetics for such authoritarianism while two countries have just slipped into literal fascism and fascist parties literally founded by retired Nazis are pulling 25% in some European countries if you want.

I asked you for a reason and your answer was basically "do it my way or you are a fascist." I am happy to engage in debate or change my mind on this issue, but I need something more specific and tangible than allusions to "debate and transparency". How do these speeches on the Senate floor lead to debate and transparency in ways that can't be replicated remotely?

This is ridiculous. Senators don’t have to literally be on the senate floor to debate, it’s the 21st century. This has nothing to do with nazism anymore than all the companies who have moved their work meetings to Zoom have become Nazis.

Never mind that the “debate” on the floor is just them making speeches to to the TV camera, something they could just as easily do from home - and often do by calling into cable news or major broadcast networks. Often the speeches they are making are to a nearly empty chamber as well - you’re not seeing actual debate in most cases, the other side isn’t there listening and considering the arguments.

it seems to me that the value of debate on the floor is like you said only pretense at this point

Yes, is this basically what C-SPAN serves as? The hours of Senators reading speeches, is that the "deliberation"? Serious question. I never thought of the Senate as a "deliberative body", not that it shouldn't be.

Actually one of the biggest losses in Congress has been committees. The committee driven Congress was slowly pushed aside by the Republicans as part of their take over in the nineties and then nearly completely neutered by the Democrats when they took on the concept of party first politics.

At least with the old system the committees were far more important than their members and they drove policy across Congress as a whole, not all direction is from the party into Congress

Like you said, tough, it's just pretense. Any debate that is held on the floor of Congress isn't there to convince fellow congresspeople of anything. It's purely theater for constituents. All of the actual decision-making is done in meetings, and often congresspeople aren't directly involved until their staff makes a recommendation.

This is what gets glossed over in the quest for soundbites. There are actual legitimate arguments against this sort of thing, but they get overlooked because SENATOR X AND HIS BUDDIES ARE JUST TRYING TO OBSTRUCT A SENSIBLE PLAN!

Plausible deniability is pure political power.

People can debate remotely, too.

Yes. People overlook this as well, that Roberts Rules of Order are primarily a tool for arbitrating discussion in huge groups of people. Technological solutions for managing these discussions exist or can be created now. So it's possible to have a virtual senate floor where the traditional rules of order are followed, people are allowed to speak, testify, etc. without being physically present in the same room. As long as the Senate's plan requires the traditional mode of session there's nothing wrong with using technology to allow them to hold sessions remotely. In fact this may lead to more participation from Senators because they no longer have to choose between presence on the Senate floor or presence within their district.

How's a filibuster work when a surreptitiously orchestrated connection drop inevitably becomes ground for relinquishing the floor?

Furthermore, part of getting everyone colocated with the apparata of government is to ensure unfettered access to staffers/resources.

The Library of Congress isn't just there for decoration you know. It is actually there to be utilized.

Furthermore, there is the potential for breach of highly sensitive state information if you go full telepresence.

This really isn't something to approach lightly.

CSPAN is already broadcasting the house and senate floors today, and committee meetings. There is no worry about breach of sensitive information, you could literally turn on cable TV and watch it before. e.g. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/05/watch-us-house-panel-holds-h...

There are some closed door hearings with sensitive information, where such security precautions would be needed, but that’s no excuse for not at least restarting the hearings and actions that would have been public before.

Filibustering is an emergent property of profoundly broken processes in our Senate. If remote meetings force some procedural change, that's probably in everybody's best interest.

I hesitated on bringing it up. It's counterintuitive, but I'm always reluctant to do too much to speed things up when it comes to mass communication and building consensus. I realize that it is basically a legislative DDoS attack; but it is also a way to buy time to organize thoughts and filter information for both sides while also depriving the body of the benefit of an overly expeditious vote.

Would it be nice if everyone could just agree and move along? Yes, yes it would. Unfortunately, supermajorities are the realm of Walgreens advertising, and I still don't accept that there should not be mechanisms through which delay can be enforced.

Then again, I'm not terribly well read up on legislative procedure either, so I may be pulling postulates out of my arse. If anyone is better versed in it, and wouldn't mind some explanation, I'd be quite interested.

Then again, I could just read the damned rules. Is it strictly Robert's Rules of Order proper, or some specialized set of procedures?

The U.S. Senate uses Jefferson's Manual, not Roberts Rules of Order, but they're similar.

Too few people today have ever been in a meeting conducted under Roberts Rules of Order. So few organizations today are run by their members. Roberts Rules of Order are for a meeting which has the power to decide something - it's for when the result is a vote and a decision to act.

Just look at hackernews, reddit, forums, etc. Remote debating never ends.

On the whole this resolution isn’t as radical as you might think. Let’s say DC got flooded and you can’t access any of the Congressional buildings. It’s to address scenarios like that.

Right; it’s a continuity of government measure, which is generally important. The concern is that it only enables voting in such a scenario, and ignores all the other essential parts of a functioning legislature. As such, it’s either half-baked or nefarious, and neither option sits well.

Does the senate still debate or deliberate issues in any meaningful way? I thought that has been replaced by partisan strategizing and messing with processes and rules.

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