During the recent government shutdown, we heard the familiar yet alarming rallying cry to abolish the filibuster. The pitch, which even came from President Trump, comes wrapped in phrases like “get things done,” “good-government reform,” and “break the gridlock,” but we all know that is just spin. At its heart, the push to end the filibuster is a naked power grab. It’s a demand for speed, for brute majority force, and a desire to pass sweeping legislation without the inconvenience of persuasion, compromise, or accountability. That is precisely why the filibuster must remain, especially in the world’s most deliberative body.
The filibuster makes it harder for Congress to pass laws. That is a feature, not a flaw. In a federal government that already regulates, taxes, subsidizes, and intrudes too much, slowing things down is a virtue. The less Washington does, the less damage it can inflict on the freedoms, finances, and daily life of the American people. When Congress is forced to pause, negotiate, and think, America wins.
The filibuster’s most fundamental purpose is not procedural. It is moral. It prevents whichever party happens to hold a razor-thin majority from entrenching itself at the public’s expense. In a country divided roughly 50–50, it makes no sense to hand absolute power to one faction for two years at a time. That is how you get whiplash governance, where each majority wipes out what the last one built, fuels resentment, and deepens the partisan divide. Gridlock may frustrate cable-news commentators, but chaos is far worse.
Eliminating the filibuster would open the door to exactly that kind of chaos. Yes, Republicans might get a few short-term wins, but only a short-sighted optimist would believe the pendulum won’t swing back. And when it does, Democrats would respond with their own troubling wish list, like expanding the welfare state, adding states to secure Senate seats, packing the Supreme Court, and transforming the entire balance of power. In polarized times, both parties would take turns imposing diametrically opposed agendas every couple of years. The filibuster is the firebreak that keeps our politics from burning down the entire system.
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Some argue the filibuster is undemocratic because it is not in the Constitution. Neither is the Senate’s cloture rule, nor the party system, nor the committee structure, and yet the Framers expected the Senate to operate with deliberation and restraint. The Senate was always meant to be the chamber that cooled the passions of the House. The 60-vote threshold may not be written into the parchment, but it is fully consistent with the Framers’ design to slow down majorities, discourage drastic swings, and guard the nation against hasty, ill-conceived change.
The filibuster forces more dialogue, more debate, and more free speech. It protects minority viewpoints, regardless of which party holds the minority at any given moment. Republicans complaining today would be grateful for it tomorrow. Democrats demanding its abolition now would rediscover its wisdom the minute they lose control. Power changes hands. The filibuster exists to give both sides the assurance that their voices will matter even when their vote totals do not.
The filibuster should never be, however, a license to hold the majority hostage. It is a tool that demands serious engagement, not theatrics. Cooler heads need time to speak, to persuade, and to reveal the true implications of sweeping proposals before the country is forced to live under them.
If anything, Washington needs more brakes, not fewer. There are already too many laws burdening the American people, and far too many of them should be repealed rather than expanded. The Founders did not design our system to be efficient. They designed it to be free. Barry Goldwater captured this perfectly when he said his aim was not to pass more laws, but to repeal the ones that violate the Constitution or burden the people. He had no interest in making government more efficient because he intended to make it smaller. When too many laws are causing such large problems, it is very hard to imagine that a slurry of more laws will make Americans better. Instead, we need new power tools in the antiquated toolbox.
Government should focus on long-term problem-solving, not temporary power grabs destined to be reversed the next time voters shift their mood. The filibuster is not merely a procedural rule. It is a safeguard that protects Americans from Washington’s worst impulses. Before we tear it down in the name of “getting things done,” we should remember that some of the most dangerous words in American politics are “We must act now.”
Shaun McCutcheon is a Free Speech advocate, an Alabama-based electrical engineer, the founder of Multipolar, and was the successful plaintiff in the 2014 Supreme Court case McCutcheon v. FEC.
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