President Donald Trump dropped a political bomb last month, calling on Senate Republicans to nuke the filibuster to end the Schumer Shutdown. IT wasn’t needed in the end, but the problems caused by the Democrats’ abuse of the filibuster remain. Without 60 Republican votes in the Senate, Democrats retain the ability to stall Trump’s legislative agenda, even hold it hostage. Even though the shutdown showdown is over, Trump’s desire to nuke the filibuster hasn’t waned.
On Sunday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made the case for ending the filibuster.
“The American people are just now emerging from the longest and most devastating government shutdown in U.S. history,” he wrote. “And while the blame lies squarely with Senate Democrats, we cannot ignore the weapon they used to hold the country hostage: the legislative filibuster.”
He laid out the brutal impact of the shutdown: $11 billion in permanent economic damage, a 1.5% dent in GDP growth for the last quarter of fiscal 2025, 9,500 canceled flights, and paychecks for 1.4 million federal workers delayed.
All of that damage courtesy of the Democrats’ abuse of the filibuster. Bessent argues that if Democrats try this stunt again come January, Republicans should use the nuclear option on the filibuster right away.
The most compelling argument for ending the filibuster is that we all know Democrats will nuke it the moment they have the presidency and the Senate again. During their last Senate majority, when Joe Biden was president, their bid to kill the filibuster nearly succeeded, if not for Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, both of whom have since left the Senate. The jig was up, though. The same party that has no qualms about abusing the filibuster to block legislation when they are out of power doesn’t believe Republicans are entitled to do the same.
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Bessent points out that there’s no constitutional reason for the filibuster.
“The filibuster is not in the Constitution,” he pointed out. “The Framers envisioned debate, but they expected majority rule. The modern filibuster traces back to 1806, when the Senate, on the advice of then-former vice president Aaron Burr, deleted the ‘previous question’ motion from its rulebook. That deletion wasn’t a philosophical embrace of unlimited debate; it was a housekeeping measure that inadvertently removed the chamber’s mechanism for cutting off debate by majority vote. Only later did senators discover they could exploit the gap to delay or block action.”
The filibuster may not be in the Constitution, but is that a reason to get rid of it? Frankly, I think the case for nuking the filibuster now is that Democrats will inevitably do so the next time they get the chance. But, even that isn’t a good reason. Regardless of how we feel about it, Democrats will eventually have the presidency and the U.S. Senate again someday, and probably within the next few election cycles—and when they do, with no filibuster left, they’ll steamroll through a radical agenda.
Do Republicans want to be the party that gave them that power?
We know exactly what kind of agenda they want to push if they don’t have the filibuster in place to stop them. Every Democrat power grab you could think of would get rammed through, including a complete federal takeover of elections, universal mail-in voting nationwide, abolishing the Electoral College, statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico, and, of course, expanding the Supreme Court.
But despite the apparent risks, Bessent and Trump charge that the pain Republicans face in the near term from a Democrat-led shutdown is so severe that it demands immediate action. The shutdown's economic and social damage, plus the Democrats’ known plans, make waiting seem irresponsible. "Maybe all we can do is what we can do today. And nuking the filibuster will allow that," Bessent writes.
It’s a fair argument to make, but not one I’m comfortable with.
