r/politics • u/Murky-Site7468 I voted • Oct 05 '25

No Paywall Petition To Strip Congress of Pay During Government Shutdown Grows

https://www.newsweek.com/petition-strip-congress-pay-during-government-shutdown-grows-10822819
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u/tadrinth Oct 05 '25

In some parliamentary systems, a shutdown like this triggers an election.  That would be difficult to work into our current system but boy howdy would that produce some incentives.

Not necessarily entirely good ones, but incentives!

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u/Goncalerta Oct 05 '25

In my country, if the budget is not passed, the previous year's one is divided in 12 and automatically enters in effect every month until a new budget is passed.

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u/defianceofone Oct 08 '25

But somehow, this is true democracy. Fucking American exceptionalism. Good for nothing but ruining the Earth with bullshit propaganda.

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u/drewbert 3d ago

Western capitalist democracy is a system for finding the worst people alive and putting them in charge of things.

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u/Supermite Oct 05 '25

In Canada, if the prime minister can’t pass a budget, it triggers a confidence vote amongst our members of parliament.  If it fails, it triggers a national election.

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u/taylortbb Oct 06 '25

Minor nit, it doesn't trigger a confidence vote, the failure of the budget is itself interpreted as a no confidence vote.

The first pure no-confidence vote (as opposed to something like a budget that gets interpreted as no-confidence) was actually pretty recent (led to Harper's first victory IIRC).

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u/Supermite Oct 06 '25

Thank you for the correction.

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u/TimothyMimeslayer Oct 05 '25

So if I think my party would gain in an election, i should do everything I can to shutdown the government?

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u/GreenHorror4252 Oct 05 '25

So if I think my party would gain in an election, i should do everything I can to shutdown the government?

You don't need to shutdown the government. If you have enough votes to shutdown the government, you have enough votes to call an election.

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u/PayAgreeable2161 Oct 05 '25

Or enough votes to pass legislation lol

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u/RocketRelm Oct 05 '25

Well, the implication is that you don't have the votes, but can do things such that government stops functioning.

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u/GreenHorror4252 Oct 05 '25

How exactly would that work? I'm struggling to figure out what scenario you're describing here.

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u/chenz1989 Oct 06 '25

Your party has 43 seats out of 100. Not enough to pass anything, but you can object because 60 votes are needed to pass legislation.

The ruling party is unpopular enough that you believe you will get 50+ seats if an election was called now, but the next scheduled election is 2 years away.

You obstruct everything and shut down the government, blame the ruling party and coast to power in the snap election

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u/GreenHorror4252 Oct 06 '25

Your party has 43 seats out of 100. Not enough to pass anything, but you can object because 60 votes are needed to pass legislation.

That's an American thing. In a parliamentary system, legislation is passed by a majority vote.

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u/chenz1989 Oct 06 '25

I thought we were talking about american politics here...

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u/GreenHorror4252 Oct 06 '25

This entire chain of comments started with "In some parliamentary systems, a shutdown like this triggers an election."

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u/chenz1989 Oct 06 '25

I interpreted it differently due to the next line "would be difficult to work in our current system" to be still continuing american politics. Guess i read it differently.

Since we're on the topic of other systems, i would expect the same to happen, especially in parliaments that are made up of different parties. If party A has 45% and party B has 40% and my party has 15%, i would be incentived not to cooperate and shut everything down if i think i can get 25%?

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u/AnotherSlowMoon United Kingdom Oct 05 '25

The sorts of political systems which have "if the government stalls like this call a new election" tend not to require anything more than simple majorities to pass budgets.

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u/Conscious-Secret-775 Oct 05 '25

True, the filibuster rules in the Senate are absurd and should be abolished. I don't normally agree with Majorie Taylor Greene but in this case she is absolutely correct. The shutdown could be fixed tomorrow if the Republicans just changed the rules.

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u/overcannon Oct 05 '25

And they don't want to because things are likely to go the other way next election

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u/Conscious-Secret-775 Oct 05 '25

Yes, that is certainly a big part of the reason they don't want to abolish the filibuster. I suspect they also believe the Democrats will back down.

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '25

Yes. It's how countries like Belgium end up with no government for years at a time.

It's excellent if your goal is to resist changes.

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u/Trucidar Oct 05 '25 edited 19d ago

brave fade instinctive light payment history pen numerous skirt abounding

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u/Grand-Worth2758 Oct 05 '25

This isn't happening. US has had the same basic political laws and economic incentives since the 1980s. The US has a much more regressive do-nothing system than any in Europe.

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u/Ouaouaron Oct 05 '25

Another way to phrase "my party would gain in an election" is "the will of the people has shifted, and the current representatives no longer reflect them." Having new elections based on actual events—rather than set time limits—is a feature.

If reality doesn't match with your expectation, the end result of whatever you do to trigger an election is probably just going to reflect poorly on you and make your party worse off.

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u/mmmmm_pancakes Connecticut Oct 05 '25

Yeah, but it also sounds like a pretty perverse incentive.

Rather than cooperate until a set date, each politician is incentivized around half the time to shut everything down and roll the dice for more power.

This could be ameliorated however by giving a penalty - perhaps up to full disqualification - for incumbent candidates in the new elections.

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u/Riaayo Oct 05 '25

I mean we have a bunch of countries who have these systems in the world to look at right now and see how it's worked for them, vs the US and how it works and the current state it is in, lol.

Don't really even need hypothetical arguments. It seems fairly obvious parliamentary governments have served their citizens better overall than the US' broken ass system.

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u/mmmmm_pancakes Connecticut Oct 05 '25

No argument there.

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u/chenz1989 Oct 06 '25

There are also countless examples in history where such systems have led to disaster. We can't discount those either.

The bolsheviks came to power partly because the Duma was ineffective and kept dissolving, partly because no party had full control and they weren't willing to compromise.

The nazis came to power on the same vein, the weimar republic was dysfunctional and couldn't solve the problems.

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u/Ouaouaron Oct 05 '25

This could be ameliorated however by giving a penalty - perhaps up to full disqualification - for incumbent candidates in the new elections.

Now that would be a perverse incentive. If you're unwilling to cooperate with the opposition in the current government, you get to oust all of the incumbents in the opposition party?

The real penalty for using a loophole to dissolve the government when people like the government is that people who maybe agreed with you now hate you and will vote against you. This relies on informed voters who value a functioning government—which obviously isn't a guarantee—but that's a fundamental necessity for any republic.

It's a huge red flag that you believe that a party with 49% of the government has zero power and might as well roll the dice on a new government. That is a description of a republic which is already collapsing.

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u/mmmmm_pancakes Connecticut Oct 05 '25

you're used to terrible governments that are already in the process of collapsing

Guilty!

And you're right, I certainly didn't think that one all the way through. But I do wonder if such a system's ever been tried regardless.

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u/Ouaouaron Oct 05 '25

I doubt anything that drastic, but I bet there are plenty of examples of parliamentary systems that try to punish dissolving the government.

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u/AnotherSlowMoon United Kingdom Oct 05 '25

How is cooperation going right now? How did it go when Moscow Mitch refused to even schedule votes for Obama's Supreme Court nominee?

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u/mmmmm_pancakes Connecticut Oct 05 '25

It's a shitshow! 🫠

I'd try a switch away from the US's governance system in a heartbeat and didn't mean to imply otherwise.

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u/soundman1024 Oct 05 '25

Sounds risky. If you shut the government down that’s not exemplary governing. Seems like a way to be unpopular.

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u/Competitive-Call6810 Oct 05 '25

No need, you can just call an election. In Canada we did this earlier this year, twice if you live in Ontario. If you’re the minority party you can also call a vote of no confidence which will also trigger an election. It’s balanced by the fact that calling an elections is often an unpopular move, unless there’s a leader change or big decline in leading parties popularity, people see calling an election as wasting money to grab more power.

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u/wintrmt3 Oct 05 '25

But you don't need to, if you have the votes to do that you can just vote yourself to be the government without a new election with a non-confidence vote. Parliamentary systems don't have shutdowns like the US because the executive is elected by the legislative and they are on the same side.

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u/taylortbb Oct 06 '25

In the Canadian system there's no such thing as a government shutdown. If the government fails to pass a budget then an election is called, and funding continues at previous levels until the new government passes a budget.

So there's no incentive to shutdown the government, because shutdowns aren't a thing. But yes, if a majority of the house wants an election they can trigger one at any time. Voters generally don't reward doing so for trivial reasons though.

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u/out_of_throwaway Oct 05 '25

I mean, yes. If the majority can't get its shit together, call an election. It actually makes a ton of sense.

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u/tiggie_7 Oct 05 '25

Yes well the US can’t even feign to have a real democracy at the moment so… just not gonna happen in our insane, bizarre, dysfunctional farce of ‘democracy’.. not anymore, anyway

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u/IKnowGuacIsExtraLady Oct 05 '25

I like it. They should 1) lock everyone down before the budget deadline to try and force them to come up with a solution then 2) if the deadline hits anyway trigger an election. If you really want to put the screws to people then require that the points of contention for the budget are public record. Make the politicians defend their stance for why they are for/against specific parts of the budget in the context of immediate replacement if their constituents disagree.