Don’t Eliminate the Filibuster. Reform It.

Instead of using it always or never, let it be used sometimes and selectively.

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(Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.)

The Senate’s power-sharing agreement, key to proceeding with the Biden Administration’s agenda, has finally been resolved after Mitch McConnell dropped his demand for a guarantee that Chuck Schumer won’t scrap the legislative filibuster.

Schumer knows the benefits to his caucus that come with the threat of eliminating the filibuster, and many prominent Democrats have called for the legislative filibuster go the way of the judicial filibuster, which was partially eliminated in 2013 by Democratic Sen. Harry Reid and then eliminated entirely in 2017 by McConnell.

Completely eliminating the legislative filibuster is a shortsighted policy that overlooks legitimate concerns about a majority party becoming a legislative steamroller, passing seismic bills on thin majorities in a sharply divided country.

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