There are lots of things that could draw us out of the stalemate. Not all of the possibilities are good, but I can't think of any that are worse than ceding the legislative power to a committee of 9 people who are unelected and appointed for life.
For instance, if the current legislative system really is broken beyond repair, even a whole new constitutional convention would be a better very bad option than "the Court does all the legislating now".
And a better bad option than that would be for more things to be done via executive action and agency rule-making. The executive is at least subject to the peoples' will every few years.
But I don't think it's true that there is no way to make the legislature work. I think filibuster reform is the place to start. You're right that getting to 60 votes for every single piece of legislation in the Senate is an absurd requirement. But it is not true of every piece of legislation, and there are very recent success stories (the Inflation Reduction Act) of passing useful legislation through simple majorities of both chambers. I think just having that capability for more bills would go a long way. And it only requires a simple majority (and significant political backbone) to reform the filibuster. I think it will happen soon, as the legislative stalemate and rule-by-Court is an increasingly frustrating situation to the electorate, and not just for one side or the other.
And I don't think the stalemate in the House is actually a systemic problem. There are some rule changes at the margin that I think would be useful; decreasing the power of leadership in favor of the committees for instance. But the reason the house is dysfunctional right now (besides that the party in the majority is itself just very clownish at the moment) is that it is incredibly closely divided, reflecting an electorate that is itself very divided. The biggest improvement we could make to that would be gerrymandering reform, but even without gerrymandering, the House wouldn't have a large majority one way or the other. Even the national popular vote is consistently within 5 points each election. We just don't have strong political consensus at the moment, and the House reflects that, as it should. Legislating from the bench is the worst possible solution to that problem!
For instance, if the current legislative system really is broken beyond repair, even a whole new constitutional convention would be a better very bad option than "the Court does all the legislating now".
And a better bad option than that would be for more things to be done via executive action and agency rule-making. The executive is at least subject to the peoples' will every few years.
But I don't think it's true that there is no way to make the legislature work. I think filibuster reform is the place to start. You're right that getting to 60 votes for every single piece of legislation in the Senate is an absurd requirement. But it is not true of every piece of legislation, and there are very recent success stories (the Inflation Reduction Act) of passing useful legislation through simple majorities of both chambers. I think just having that capability for more bills would go a long way. And it only requires a simple majority (and significant political backbone) to reform the filibuster. I think it will happen soon, as the legislative stalemate and rule-by-Court is an increasingly frustrating situation to the electorate, and not just for one side or the other.
And I don't think the stalemate in the House is actually a systemic problem. There are some rule changes at the margin that I think would be useful; decreasing the power of leadership in favor of the committees for instance. But the reason the house is dysfunctional right now (besides that the party in the majority is itself just very clownish at the moment) is that it is incredibly closely divided, reflecting an electorate that is itself very divided. The biggest improvement we could make to that would be gerrymandering reform, but even without gerrymandering, the House wouldn't have a large majority one way or the other. Even the national popular vote is consistently within 5 points each election. We just don't have strong political consensus at the moment, and the House reflects that, as it should. Legislating from the bench is the worst possible solution to that problem!