How is the so-called "Super Congress" legal?

I wasn’t sure if I was the only one that picked that up lol. They released this information so non chalantly as if it wasn’t in violation of the constitution. I don’t support it, although I really hope I’m missing something because they must really think we are stupid otherwise.

Yes I support it as much as finally breaking stupid debacles and stalemates in Capitol Hill. But even that I’m not confident this super committee will do.

@Blackberry I’m glad I’m not the only one whose brain is full of fuck over this.

@mazingerz88 so you support it from the point of view that it might break political deadlock?

It is clearly illegal. It is an abdication of responsibility of the Congress. Some parts of the Constitution are so based in principle as to be unambiguous. One of these is the role of Congress to levy taxes, and pay the bills.
This is Chicken Shit. Pure and simple.
It is how cowards give themselves one more place to point fingers of blame.
It proves that they love their power, perks and priviledges much more than they take their responsibilities seriously.
Their respective parties are not relevent. They are cowards. Any honest American would vote for somebody else before they let this happen. I don’t care what party. Anybody else.

i dunno. it’s not like they can really do anything

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies I lol’d. I oppose this on principle, but I see what you are saying. 6 democrats and 6 republicans working together? LOLOLOLOLOLOL

@josie that about sums up my feelings on the matter.

i really can’t blam em’ for trying

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Yes. I understand that in a democracy, running things could actually get so complicated especially if emotions and stupid notions are thrown in along with any small modicum of rationality. It has to somehow sort itself out. It’s actually an ugly solution…to me it’s more like helping the snake swallow itself more efficiently. It’s terrible, it’s not even about doing what is right per se but just getting into a crappy sort of agreement to stay in power, of course. No shame! But who says politicians have shame?

I’m against this, and cannot see how this could be constitutional, but my question is what happens with independents? I know they are rare, but if the ‘Super Congress’ is split along party lines, how is it fair to keep independents out? And if you do include them, how is it fair since it would increase the power of the independent ‘parties’ power significantly? This needs to be destroyed yesterday.

I’m at a bit of a loss as to how you see this as unconstitutional. Congress approved the creation of this committee, nothing will be done without the approval of congress. (the triggers were already approved). So how does this become unconstitutional?

@Jaxk What this does is make it so the representatives that you vote for from your state might get no say in what happens on a given policy. If something is fast tracked through this ‘Super Congress’, there is a good chance that you couldn’t even complain to your representative in Congress since they might not be involved in it, and you can’t complain to someone that you didn’t have a hand in voting in. It completely unbalances what the Congress was formed for, and how you get to be represented in the Congress.

Just because the Congress approved something doesn’t make it constitutional either. The Supreme Court is the one who judges whether something is constitutional.

You know the old, “Can God create a rock so heavy he cannot lift it?”

It reminds me of that.

Can Congress write a law that enacts laws it does not vote upon?

I may stand corrected. According to Article 1, Section 5: ”Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behavior, and, with the Concurrence of two-thirds, expel a Member”

@jaytkay If God creates a ‘Super God’ to create the rock, apparently he can.

The people in this “super congress” are dead meat anyway. I don’t think anyone really wanted that job.

While @Jaxk might be correct about the constitutionality of the “Super Congress,” I think the majority of @josie‘s response still stands. It is an abdication of responsibility. It is how cowards give themselves one more place to point fingers of blame. Basically, Congress has decided that making the difficult decisions of governance should be Somebody Else’s Problem. So let’s make it somebody else’s problem.

@amujinx

It doesn’t seem that much different than any other bill in a committee.It gets massaged in committee and then is brought to the floor for a vote. There are a couple of special rules like no filibuster but that’s not unheard of either. I’m just trying figure out what is unconstitutional about this. What ever they agree on will still need the majority vote of both houses. If your congress person doesn’t like it they vote against it. Same as any other legislation.

Politics as a whole and the founding of our Government was done so by a quorum of established committees deemed representative of the voting members involved. Same here. Not much sense or purpose to involve “all” opposing members to a specific task at hand that is as obvious as a vote on issues specific and relative to the platforms of each party that would demand more than a vote representative of the supporting party by a handful of like minded individuals.

A “super congress” is unecessary, we just need a congress that does their bleeding overpaid jobs. What’s to stop the Republicans from stonewalling the supercongress as well as the actually legal one? I question the legality of this, the congress was elected by the people as it should be, and this supercongress is politically motivated cherrypicking and ignoring the will of the citizens.

It’s getting to pythonesque levels of absurdity here. Can we at least put John Cleese in this committee so there can at least be some humor to this total joke?

This is the United States of America. How does legality figure in the equation?

There used to be rational compromisers making deals in congress. It was called backdoor negotiation. Now it’s super committees. Super congress is just an exaggeration of something practiced by congress since time immemorial, imo.

But what is traditionally just one of the normal and integral inner workings of gray haired men in Capitol Hill is now a crass reality show for everyone to gawk at and get riled up with. Not every sort of transparency is good transparency. Once again we are being played by what should be real statesmen but now reduced to being the Simon Colwells of Survivor Hill.

????

All congress did was enact triggers, which are fairly common in American legislative history. If congress doesn’t cut $1.5 trillion, its cut automatically. To facilitate getting $1.5 trillion cut, whatever bill the committee (or “supercongress”) comes up with is subject to an up or down vote and cannot be filibustered.

I don’t see how this is a bad thing frankly.

I must be missing something, because every source I’ve read on this super congress has said they have legislative powers that by-pass traditional constitutionally-mandated procedures, which in my mind, makes the group itself unconstitutional, to answer @Jaxk.

Can anyone direct me to a trustworthy link that actually describes and explains the powers of the super congress?

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard The link I can’t give you, but you can read it on basically any news outlet. The Super-congress itself does not have any legislative “powers.” They are a glorified committee, tasked with coming up with a minimum of $1.5 trillion in savings and to put it in “bill” format. Once completed and agreed upon by said committee (or Super-congress if you like), they will present their bill to the rest of congress. Where this differs from regular committees is that rather than taking the next 7 million years to “add amendments” and weigh it down in legislative procedure (or just outright filibuster it in the senate)... this bill would be subject to an up or down vote in both houses, as it stands. No super-majority required in the senate, 51 votes wins. I believe the president will still have the veto option, but I’m not sure (and unless its $1.5 trillion in cuts to like…. i dunno… babies or something… I doubt he would veto anyways).