Dec. 27 (UPI) — President Donald Trump and Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent has urged an end to the Senate’s filibuster rule ahead of an anticipated budget battle in January.
Bessent submitted an op-ed that The Washington Post published on Saturday blaming Senate Democrats and the filibuster for blocking passage of a resolution to keep the federal government open while negotiating the fiscal year 2026 budget and causing a record 43-day shutdown of the federal government.
“The American people are still emerging from the longest and most devastating government shutdown in US history,” Bessent said.
“While Senate Democrats are to blame, we cannot ignore the weapon they used to hold the country hostage: the legislative filibuster,” Bessent wrote.
With the resolution continuing to expire on January 30, Bessent said there is a high probability that Senate Democrats will again use the filibuster to block the passage of a budget and force the government to shut down again.
“Democrats have inflicted great harm on the nation, including $11 billion in permanent economic damage” as the federal government was “held to ransom by the demands of the left,” Bessent said.
He said the shutdown caused the nation to lose 1.5 percentage points in gross domestic product growth during the fourth quarter, led to 9,500 canceled flights and caused 1.4 million federal workers to lose their pay.
He called the filibuster a “historic incident that evolved into a permanent veto for the [Senate] minority and license for paralysis.”
The Constitution does not mention a filibuster, and its “framers envisioned debate, but expected majority rule,” Bessent said.
He said the filibuster has its roots in an 1806 Senate rules decision that struck down a “previous question” motion, inadvertently removing the Senate’s mechanism to end debate by a majority vote.
Senators later realized they could “delay or block” legislative action with endless debate, and the mere threat of a filibuster is enough to trigger the filibuster rule that requires a supermajority of 60 votes to end it, Bessent explained.
He said it is likely that Senate Democrats will again force the federal government to shut down at the end of January by blocking a vote on the fiscal year 2026 budget.
President Barack Obama has called the filibuster a “‘relic of Jim Crow,'” but Bessent said Senate Democrats always use it to their advantage whenever possible, and the president agrees.
“It’s time to end the filibuster,” Trump said while agreeing with Bessent in a social media post that included Bessent’s op-ed.
He also told Politico that the GOP wants to end the filibuster when interviewed Friday night.
If he does this, he will help his administration to remove the damage that he said was caused by the Biden administration and led to very high inflation that he is trying to fix to make life more affordable in the United States, said Trump.
The president urged Senate Republicans to end the filibuster as soon as possible and said Senate Democrats will make it the first chance they get when they eventually win a majority in the Senate.
Senate Democrats in September overwhelmingly opposed a clean-cut continuing resolution to keep the federal government open and instead submitted a resolution that would add $1.5 trillion in spending over the next 10 years to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies that expire at the end of December.
Senate Democrats control 47 seats, including two held by independents who caucus with Senate Democrats, while the GOP controls 53 seats, so neither party can overcome the filibuster rule without help from the other.
The Senate GOP was unable to muster the 60 votes needed to defeat the filibuster rule until eight Senate Democrats joined most Senate Republicans in supporting the continuing resolution to end the 43-day government shutdown that began when fiscal year 2026 began on Oct. 1.
Senate Democrats in 2022 tried to end the filibuster rule but couldn’t get a simple majority because of opposition from Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, both Democrats but retired from politics.