In a half-hearted defense of the filibuster - it prevents us from actually implementing coherent policy  - Ross Douthat has given Wonks Anonymous another reason to hate supermajority requirements:

Note that most of the bills listed above attracted supermajority support while either cutting taxes or hiking spending. (The pending health care legislation promises to pay for itself, but everyone, from the CBO on down, is taking that promise with a substantial grain of salt.) This trend can’t continue: In the next decade or so, we’ll need to either raise taxes, cut spending, or both, or else the American future will resemble the Californian present. And anyone who thinks that Congress is ready to make those kind of hard choices hasn’t been paying attention to our politics lately.

Which is also the California experience. When the economy is booming we can all get together and agree to spend more. The cities get public schools and urban projects the Central Valley gets water projects and everybody gets their car tax cut.

Hell, even when the state is bankrupt we still see our legislators passing a water measure that will provide all sorts of fine pork to their constituents while obligating future taxpayers to make payments that they cannot afford.

It is hard enough to get a majority together on anything that involves pain. People who are directly impacted tend to vote against these things. If it is hard to get a majority then it is even harder to get a supermajority. An even smaller group of disgruntled voters can block anything.

For example, we have had numerous taxes and spending cuts proposed to pay for the health care reform. Wonks Anonymous thought that some were great and some not so great. The fact is that most of them were shot down, not on their merits but because some aggrieved minority could buy or threaten 40% of the Senate plus one to oppose them. It appears that only the users of tanning beds have not got enough clout to block a tax hike.

Wonks Anonymous sees a future of paralysis. Douthat is more optimistic:

We’ll get fiscal responsibility through a bipartisan compromise, engineered by centrists in both parties and capable of getting 65-70 votes, or else we won’t get it at all. We may need a better class of centrist to make such a compromise possible — but we probably don’t need to abolish the filibuster along the way.

And this better class of centrist will come from where? Maybe Louisiana or Arkansas?

The system is perfect. People need to improve.