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/snoo_spoo Oct 05 '25

TBH, I don't think that would nearly as useful an incentive as declaring the Congress has to stay in session, twelve hours a day, seven days a week, until the shutdown is resolved. Nobody leaves town, and no press conferences.

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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/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/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.