The United States Senate can pass a bill with 51 votes. But because of the filibuster, most legislation requires 60 votes to even reach a final vote. This procedural rule has transformed the Senate into a legislative graveyard where popular policies — from voting rights protections to climate legislation to minimum wage increases — go to die, even when they have majority support.
The filibuster is not in the Constitution. It is not a law. It is a Senate rule that can be changed with a simple majority vote. Yet it has become one of the most powerful tools for blocking legislation in American government, allowing a minority of senators representing a minority of Americans to veto the will of the majority.
Understanding the filibuster means understanding why the Senate often appears paralyzed, why campaign promises become legislative failures, and why the gap between what voters want and what Congress delivers keeps widening.
What is the filibuster?
The filibuster is a Senate rule that allows any senator to extend debate on a bill indefinitely, preventing a final vote. To end a filibuster and move to a vote, the Senate must invoke "cloture" — a procedural motion that requires 60 votes out of 100 senators.
In practice, this means that even if 59 senators support a bill, it cannot pass if 41 senators oppose it. The minority party does not need to hold the floor and talk for hours anymore. They simply declare their intent to filibuster, and the bill is effectively dead unless the majority can find 60 votes.
According to the Congressional Research Service, the modern filibuster functions as a 60-vote requirement for most legislation. The Senate can pass bills with 51 votes only in specific circumstances: budget reconciliation bills, executive and judicial nominations (which were exempted from the filibuster in 2013 and 2017), and certain trade agreements.
Everything else — climate policy, voting rights, labor law, gun regulation, immigration reform — requires 60 votes. In a polarized Senate where neither party typically holds 60 seats, this means most legislation cannot pass even when it has majority support in Congress and among the American public.
How did the filibuster start?
The filibuster was not created intentionally. It emerged by accident in 1806 when the Senate, at the suggestion of Vice President Aaron Burr, removed a rule called the "previous question motion" that allowed a simple majority to end debate and force a vote. Burr argued the rule was redundant. The Senate agreed and eliminated it.
What the Senate did not realize was that it had just removed the only mechanism for ending debate with a majority vote. For decades, this did not matter. Senators rarely spoke long enough to block legislation, and the Senate was a smaller, more collegial body where extended debate was unusual.
The first recognized filibuster occurred in 1837, when Whig senators spoke for hours to block a bill supported by President Andrew Jackson. But filibusters remained rare throughout the 19th century. According to the Senate Historical Office, there were fewer than two dozen filibusters before 1900.
The filibuster became a more powerful weapon in the early 20th century when Southern senators used it systematically to block anti-lynching legislation and civil rights bills. Between 1917 and 1964, the filibuster was used primarily to preserve racial segregation and prevent federal intervention in Southern states' treatment of Black Americans.
In 1917, the Senate adopted Rule 22, which allowed two-thirds of senators to invoke cloture and end debate. This was the first time the Senate created a formal mechanism to overcome a filibuster. In 1975, the Senate reduced the cloture threshold from two-thirds (67 votes) to three-fifths (60 votes), where it remains today.
How is the filibuster used today?
The modern filibuster bears little resemblance to the dramatic floor speeches most people imagine. Senators no longer need to hold the floor and talk for hours like Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Instead, they simply file a cloture motion, and the bill is effectively stalled unless 60 senators vote to proceed.
This procedural change, implemented gradually through Senate precedents in the 1970s, transformed the filibuster from an occasional dramatic tactic into a routine legislative roadblock. According to data compiled by the Brookings Institution, cloture motions — the formal attempt to overcome a filibuster — were filed 298 times during the 2019-2020 congressional session. In the entire 19th century, there were fewer than 30.
The filibuster is now used on nearly every significant piece of legislation. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer filed cloture motions on voting rights bills, climate legislation, gun safety measures, and immigration reform during the 117th Congress. All failed to reach 60 votes, even though Democrats held 50 Senate seats plus the vice president's tie-breaking vote.
The filibuster does not apply to budget reconciliation bills, which can pass with 51 votes under strict procedural rules. This is how the Senate passed the 2017 Trump tax cuts, the 2021 American Rescue Plan, and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. But reconciliation can only be used for legislation that directly affects federal spending and revenue, and it comes with significant limitations on what policies can be included.
The result is a two-track Senate: a 51-vote threshold for budget bills and nominations, and a 60-vote threshold for everything else. This means that major policy changes — the kind that reshape American life but do not fit neatly into budget reconciliation — require either bipartisan cooperation or the elimination of the filibuster itself.
Can the filibuster be eliminated?
Yes. The filibuster is a Senate rule, not a constitutional requirement. It can be eliminated or modified with a simple majority vote through a procedural maneuver known as the "nuclear option."
The nuclear option works like this: A senator raises a point of order challenging the existing rule. The presiding officer (usually the vice president or a senator acting as president pro tempore) makes a ruling. If another senator appeals that ruling, the full Senate votes on whether to uphold it. A simple majority can vote to establish a new precedent, effectively changing the rule.
This is how the Senate eliminated the filibuster for executive branch nominations and lower court judges in 2013, when Democrats controlled the Senate and faced Republican obstruction of President Obama's nominees. In 2017, Republicans used the same procedure to eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations, allowing them to confirm Justice Neil Gorsuch with 54 votes.
The filibuster for legislation remains in place because eliminating it requires not just a majority party willing to use the nuclear option, but a majority party unified enough to vote together. During the 117th Congress (2021-2022), Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema refused to support filibuster elimination, preventing the party from reaching 51 votes even with Vice President Kamala Harris as the tie-breaker.
Some reform proposals would modify rather than eliminate the filibuster. These include requiring senators to actually hold the floor and speak continuously (a "talking filibuster"), lowering the cloture threshold to 55 votes, or exempting certain categories of legislation like voting rights bills. All of these reforms would also require 51 votes to implement.
Why progressives want to end the filibuster
The progressive case against the filibuster rests on three arguments: it is anti-democratic, it has been used historically to block civil rights, and it prevents the Senate from addressing urgent crises even when voters have given one party a clear mandate.
The anti-democratic argument is straightforward. The Senate already gives disproportionate power to small states — Wyoming's 580,000 residents have the same two senators as California's 39 million. The filibuster compounds this by allowing senators representing as little as 11 percent of the U.S. population to block legislation supported by senators representing 89 percent.
According to an analysis by Data for Progress, the 41 senators who can sustain a filibuster could theoretically represent just 21 states with a combined population of 34 million people — roughly 10 percent of the country. This means a small minority of Americans, living in predominantly rural and white states, can veto policies supported by the vast majority.
The historical argument focuses on the filibuster's use to preserve racial injustice. As documented by the Senate Historical Office, Southern senators filibustered anti-lynching bills in 1922, 1935, and 1938. They filibustered bills to abolish poll taxes in 1942, 1944, and 1946. They filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for more than 24 hours. The filibuster was the primary tool used to delay federal civil rights legislation for nearly a century after Reconstruction.
The urgency argument centers on climate change, voting rights, and economic inequality — crises that progressives argue require immediate legislative action. The For the People Act, a comprehensive voting rights and democracy reform bill, passed the House in 2021 with unanimous Democratic support and the backing of more than 150 civil rights organizations. It died in the Senate when Republicans filibustered and Democrats could not reach 60 votes.
Similarly, the Build Back Better Act — which included major climate provisions, expanded health care, and universal pre-K — could not pass as regular legislation because it lacked 60 votes. Democrats were forced to scale it down dramatically and pass a narrower version through budget reconciliation as the Inflation Reduction Act, leaving out many provisions that did not qualify under reconciliation rules.
Organizations like Fix Our Senate, a coalition of more than 60 progressive groups, argue that the filibuster makes the Senate "a graveyard for popular legislation" and prevents elected majorities from governing. They point to polling showing majority support for policies like universal background checks for gun purchases (supported by 84 percent of Americans in a 2023 Pew Research Center survey), a $15 minimum wage (supported by 62 percent in a 2021 Pew survey), and expanded voting access (supported by 61 percent in a 2021 Monmouth University poll) — all of which have been blocked by the filibuster.
What would change if the filibuster were abolished?
Eliminating the filibuster would transform the Senate from a supermajority institution into a majority-rule body, making it easier for the party in power to pass its legislative agenda. The consequences would be immediate and significant.
Voting rights legislation would likely pass first. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore federal oversight of state election laws, and the Freedom to Vote Act, which would establish national standards for voter registration and ballot access, both have majority support among Senate Democrats but have been blocked by Republican filibusters. Without the 60-vote threshold, both would become law if Democrats held 51 seats — though Supreme Court challenges to voting rules could still limit their reach.
Climate legislation would expand dramatically beyond what can fit into budget reconciliation. The Senate could pass regulations on industrial emissions, mandates for renewable energy adoption, and investments in public transit and green infrastructure without having to structure everything as tax credits and spending programs that qualify under reconciliation rules.
Labor law reform would become possible. The Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would make it easier for workers to form unions and would ban many anti-union tactics used by employers, passed the House in 2021 with 225 votes but died in the Senate when it could not overcome a filibuster. Without the 60-vote requirement, Democrats could pass the most significant expansion of labor rights since the 1930s.
The Senate would also become more volatile. When control of the Senate flips, the new majority could repeal much of what the previous majority passed. Republicans could ban abortion nationally with 51 votes. Democrats could pass single-payer health care with 51 votes. The policy landscape would shift more dramatically with each election.
This volatility is the primary argument defenders of the filibuster make: that it forces compromise and prevents wild policy swings. But as political scientist Sarah Binder of George Washington University noted in testimony before the Senate Rules Committee in 2021, the filibuster does not produce compromise — it produces gridlock. When the minority knows it can block legislation with 41 votes, it has no incentive to negotiate.
The experience of budget reconciliation supports this. The 2017 Trump tax cuts and the 2021 American Rescue Plan both passed on party-line votes with zero support from the minority party. The 51-vote threshold did not produce bipartisanship. It simply allowed the majority to govern.
A filibuster-free Senate would look more like the House of Representatives, where the majority party sets the agenda and passes legislation with majority votes. It would also look more like nearly every other legislative body in the world. According to research by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, the United States is one of only a handful of democracies that requires a supermajority to pass ordinary legislation.
For progressives, this is the point. The filibuster does not protect minority rights — it protects minority rule. It allows a party that loses elections to continue blocking the policy agenda of the party that wins. And in a political system already tilted toward rural and conservative states through the Senate's structure and the Electoral College, the filibuster is one more barrier between what voters want and what government delivers.
The question is not whether the filibuster can be eliminated. The question is whether 51 senators will ever be willing to eliminate it — and whether they will do so before the next crisis that requires urgent legislative action becomes unsolvable. The stakes of that question are visible in real time, as Republican lawmakers face political retribution for opposing voter legislation, and as Congress operates without basic disclosure rules that most Americans would consider common sense.
