It’s Time for the Senate to Kill the Filibuster
The United States Senate has become the place where pro-life bills and other good laws die.
The culprit is the filibuster, and of the many reasons currently being discussed for ending it or limiting it to a talking filibuster, one of the most compelling is this: The filibuster demoralizes voters.
Americans vote for certain policies, win elections, and then don’t see those policies implemented. And the hidden culprit, which many ignore, is the filibuster.
For this, much of the blame lies with Aaron Burr. Although he is best known for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804, he left another imprint on American politics by giving us – perhaps unintentionally – the filibuster.
Dueling was abolished in the 1860s. Now is the time to bury the filibuster, or at least weaken it.
A year after dispatching Hamilton, Burr was finishing his term as vice president when he suggested that the Senate eliminate a rule allowing debate on a particular bill to be interrupted so that the bill could come up for a vote.
By removing this rule, the Senate created the possibility of unlimited debate, giving rise to the filibuster, which allowed senators from the minority party to block votes by standing up and talking non-stop, for hours, about whatever came to mind.
Famous filibusters in history include South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond who spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes in 1957 to block the Civil Rights Act and Texas Senator Ted Cruz in 2013 who spoke for more than 23 hours in an effort to pressure Congress to defund the Affordable Care Act.
In 1917, the Senate proposed the cloture rule, which ended debate on a bill if two-thirds of the senators present agreed to proceed to a vote. The threshold was lowered to three-fifths – or 60 votes – in 1975.
Any senator unhappy with a bill can now call a filibuster and no one has to stand up and say a word. When a cloture vote is finally called and does not receive 60 votes – which is often the case – the bill dies.
The silent filibuster has an impressive track record of killing many important bills. In my area of work, anti-abortion advocacy, we saw the Suffering Unborn Child Protection Act in 2015, which would have protected babies in the womb after 20 weeks of gestation from the horror of abortion by dismemberment. But it never came up for a vote because the closing vote was 54-42.
In January 2025, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act — aimed at saving the lives of newborns who survive through abortion — never got past failing to pass the cloture vote by a vote of 52-47.
These were life-saving bills that were never even voted on.
In the interest of bringing nominees to the federal bench for which the President of the United States nominated them, the filibuster was eliminated for district and appellate court judges in 2013, as well as for Supreme Court justices in 2017. Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett were confirmed by a simple majority – 54 to 45 for Gorsuch; 50-48 for Kavanaugh; 52-48 for Barrett.
Whichever party has majority power in the Senate usually at least flirts with the idea of eliminating the filibuster. It is time, now, for Republicans to end the flirtation and the filibuster.
Eliminating the filibuster – or at least replacing it with a “talking filibuster” so that a senator who wants to prolong debate must actually debate, as I suggested to my supporters in an action alert in January, will put power back in the hands of American voters.
And they will feel it, because they will finally see the policies that motivated them to vote in the first place become law.
Many Americans work hard to elect candidates who represent their values and promise to fight for specific policies protecting and advancing those values.
And voters know when their candidate wins and when their party gets a majority in Congress.
But then, how many understand the filibuster? How many voters realize that Congress’s failure to enact these policies was due not to a lack of effort, but to the absence of that elusive 60-vote majority?
And if they don’t understand that, what should voters conclude?
They are disappointed by their candidate, by their party, by Congress and – worst of all – by the very notion of voting. They promote division within the party and also demoralize other voters.
All because of a rule they didn’t even know existed.
Of course, that’s not the only thing demoralizing voters. There are, in fact, lazy, ineffective, and uncommitted members of Congress.
But eliminating or strictly limiting the filibuster would significantly improve the situation. A win will feel like a win. Having a majority in Congress will feel like it means something. And voters will be more motivated to preserve and increase these majorities in future elections – and in this one.
Frank Pavone is National Director of Priests for Life and National Pastoral Director of Rachel’s Vineyard Ministries and the Silent No More awareness campaign.
