Senate Majority Leader John Thune and his leadership team know that another Democrat-fueled government shutdown is fast approaching on Jan. 30, 2026.
Americans have never seen anything like the deplorable hostage taking tactics being employed by the minority party in the Senate before, and they must be confronted. It’s time to follow President Donald Trump’s lead and recognize that there must be a strategy to reform archaic filibuster rules to save America from the radical left without delay.
When the Founding Fathers designed the United States Senate in 1787 and when Senators first established the cloture rule in 1917, no one could have imagined the situation that the upper chamber of Congress finds itself in today. In a grotesque display that is patently un-American, far left-wing Democrats in the Senate have chosen not to participate in the legislative process out of pure hatred for Trump and his America First agenda. Their lunacy is driven by a crazed and well-funded base of supporters who are hellbent on transforming our beloved constitutional republic into the world’s next failed socialist state.
Look no further than the recent record-setting 43-day government shutdown that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer orchestrated simply to make people suffer and demonstrate that he’s sufficiently stricken with the incurable condition known as Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). The truth is that the Schumer Shutdown was based on a lie and was always going to result in an embarrassing defeat for the rudderless Democrats.
The left’s central talking point — that Republicans control the U.S. House, U.S Senate, and the White House and therefore the shutdown is their fault — was an insult to millions of Americans who smelled a rat from the get-go. Folks know full-well that it takes 60 votes to pass spending bills in the Senate and Republicans currently have a 53-seat majority. So, it seems Schumer underestimated the American people and hopefully his contempt will cost him his job.
That being said, the disgraceful shutdown created a flashpoint and rightly reignited the debate over the 60-vote cloture rule in the Senate. Trump has called for Majority Leader Thune and Senate Republicans to “terminate” the filibuster once and for all — and his frustration is abundantly justified. The president is already looking forward to the next potential shutdown date just 10 short weeks from now. This is when government funding will run out once again and represents the next opportunity for unhinged Senate Democrats to play their dangerous leverage game of shutdown politics at the expense of innocent Americans who rely on government assistance for health care and food. It’s just common sense for Trump to advocate for a pragmatic way to avoid another Schumer Shutdown.
After all, our republic is based on majority rule, the will of the people, and different political factions coming together to find common ground on important issues to make life better for the people they represent. But now our great nation is faced with an alarming situation where one of the political parties is decaying before our eyes and refusing to play by the rules and traditions that have allowed America to prosper for nearly 250 years. Sadly, the party that was once led by the likes of Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and even Bill Clinton is out of fresh ideas, so it’s resorted to extortion and holding the hopes, dreams, and well-being of patriotic families hostage to appease their puppet masters who yearn for a Marxist-Leninist America.
Abusing the outdated cloture rule to punish the majority and thwart the agenda that the American people voted for is intolerable and allowing it to continue unabated is unacceptable. It takes just a simple majority of 51 votes in the Senate to overturn Senate Rule 22 and return power to the majority where it belongs. However, there are other alternatives to “nuking the filibuster.” The Senate rules have always provided a way to break a filibuster the old-fashioned way — by “making them talk.”
Republican leadership in the Senate should begin enforcing Rule 19, which is designed to limit debate by allowing Senators only two speeches per legislative day. Another potential avenue of reform is a live quorum “exhaustion” strategy that only requires a united caucus of GOP senators willing to put in the work to meet this important moment.
These aren’t strategies that are out of date or require a change in the rules. These are tactics that Republicans could be using right now to make Democrats pay a physical price for current and future obstruction. It’s easy for Senators to obstruct when they can just vote no, only work two and a half days a week, and enjoy every weekend at home. It gets a lot harder to sustain when the majority party is making filibustering senators stand on their feet 24/7 or answer a live quorum call at unpredictable times. In the absence of “nuking the filibuster,” “making them talk” should be the baseline response from the GOP majority.
It’s important to remember that just a few short years ago the concept of returning to majority rule in the Senate had the support of many current Democrat senators, including Chris Murphy of Connecticut who stated, “I just think the filibuster is fundamentally anti-Democratic.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, also of Connecticut, who said “I think we ought to end the filibuster, unquestionably,” and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts who proclaimed, “We are willing to roll back the filibuster, go with the majority vote and do what needs to be done for the American people.”
Since Trump’s historic return to the White House in January, it’s become abundantly clear that the next time Democrats are in power, they’re going to get rid of the filibuster on day one. So, Trump’s message to Senate Republicans to do it preemptively on their own terms is spot on.
With a change of the rules or a shift in strategy, Leader Thune and his conference can ensure the end of future Schumer shutdowns, pass fiscally responsible appropriations bills on time through regular order, make national Voter ID a reality, enact census reform that only counts citizens, require proof of citizenship to register to vote, ban late term abortion, dismantle wide swaths of the federal bureaucracy, and outlaw insider stock trading by members of Congress. This set of basic reforms would be nothing short of a game-changer to dramatically strengthen the republic we are fighting to keep, to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin.
The Democrats’ decision to hijack the Senate’s cloture rule in order to hasten America’s decline into the socialist abyss must be confronted with robust action. The time for consequential filibuster reform is now.
David Bossie is the president of Citizens United and served as a senior adviser to the Trump-Pence 2020 campaign. In 2016, Bossie served as deputy campaign manager for Donald J. Trump for President and deputy executive director for the Trump-Pence Transition Team.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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