Trump Wants to Nuke the Filibuster. The Senate Can Do Better Than That.

Reform ideas for the defining feature of the US Senate.

I am a regular contributor to Barrons.com. The post below originally appeared there on 11.4.2025.

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Congress is closing in on the record for the longest government shutdown in history. President Donald Trump has offered a blunt prescription for Republican lawmakers: Go nuclear. Or, in Senate speak, get rid of the filibuster.

“TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER NOW, END THE RIDICULOUS SHUTDOWN IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday. That would allow them to pass policies Republicans have dreamed of for years, he said. “WE WILL BE THE PARTY THAT CANNOT BE BEATEN – THE SMART PARTY!!!”

Democrats have used the filibuster to prevent the Senate from passing a clean continuing resolution to fund the government 13 times since the start of the shutdown on Oct. 1. Ditching the filibuster, Trump argues, wouldn’t only reopen the government, but remove one of the few veto points Democrats have in preventing his agenda from being fully implemented.

Samuel Corum/Bloomberg.

Trump isn’t the first president to be stymied by the filibuster, nor the first politician to call for its end when politically convenient. Democrats made similar arguments when Senate Republicans stood in the way of their priorities—on voting rights, immigration, and abortion protections. Now, without any other levers of power at the federal level, Democrats are singing a different tune.

Support for the filibuster has rarely been about principle—it has always depended on who holds the gavels. That it still exists isn’t constitutional design, but because it has unintentionally evolved into being the Senate’s most indispensable and defining procedural weapon.

The filibuster isn’t enshrined in the Constitution. In fact, it doesn’t even appear in the Senate rules by name. It wasn’t until 1917, amid national security concerns during World War I, that the Senate adopted Rule 22, allowing for the cutting off of debate via “cloture” with a two-thirds vote. That threshold was lowered in 1975 to just 60 votes, as part of a Senate compromise to allow more civil and social rights bills to receive an up or down floor vote.

The result is that a determined minority can block legislation by preventing cloture and prolonging debate. In a sharply polarized, narrowly divided chamber, that has become an almost insurmountable hurdle for all but the most bipartisan bills.

What often gets lost in the current debate is just how much the filibuster has been changed, hollowed out, and weaponized in recent decades. As the country became more polarized and majorities more insecure, the Senate minority party became more willing to lean on the filibuster to stall the majority’s legislative agenda—senatorial custom and precedent be damned.

So while the filibuster used to be characterized by exhausting speeches from lawmakers physically holding the Senate floor for many hours, today it is almost entirely silent. Merely signaling intent to filibuster now shifts the burden to the majority, who must cobble together 60 votes just to proceed to a vote that only requires a simple majority for passage. The days of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington-style principled stands are few and far between.

That transformation, from a burdensome, talking filibuster to a silent one, has turned what was once an extraordinary measure into a routine blockade. In practice, this means that even widely supported bills can be stalled indefinitely—leading many lawmakers, especially when in the majority, to question whether the rule still serves the Senate or merely stifles its work.

Debate over what to do about this is often framed as a false binary: Keep the filibuster exactly as it is, or eliminate it entirely. But there are credible, constructive reforms that could restore the filibuster’s original spirit without surrendering the protections it affords. Lowering the cloture threshold from 60 to 55 votes, for instance, would still require some bipartisan cooperation without letting a tiny minority veto everything. The Senate has reduced the cloture threshold before, and it could do it again.

Alternatively, Congress could implement a formula-based approach, such as requiring a majority plus a fixed number from the minority party, to better reflect the electorate’s will. This change would ensure at least some bipartisan support for legislation, maintaining the minority’s interest in the upper chamber.

Another option is to reinstate the so-called talking filibuster, which would force senators to physically hold the floor to sustain their objections. Visibility and effort would help distinguish genuine principled opposition from routine partisan delay. It would also flip the burden stalling legislation back onto the minority. The Senate could also limit where and when the filibuster applies. It could be used only for final passage votes, not for procedural motions that already bog down the legislative process before debate even begins.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) broke with Trump and said he won’t discard the filibuster. Other GOP Senators made similar comments. But the next time Democrats regain full control of government, they may seize on Trump’s rhetoric to justify their own move to eliminate the rule. If that happens, Republicans will have little credibility in objecting—and the Senate may never return to its previous norms.

The overuse and abuse of the filibuster have contributed to a Senate that struggles to function, even in moments of urgency like right now. But any changes to it must be grounded in thoughtful institutional reform—not impulsive social media posts.