Californians don’t have to imagine what unchecked majority rule looks like. They see it in Sacramento. The Legislature pushes through hundreds of bills, often moving from committee to the governor’s desk in a matter of days. Debate is limited, minority viewpoints rarely shape the final text and major bills appear at the end of the session with little public scrutiny. Even with the state’s 72-hour rule, the volume of end-of-session action leaves little time for meaningful review.
That speed may look efficient, but it comes with trade-offs. Rushed lawmaking can produce complicated bills that require cleanup in the next session. California regularly enacts major policies because the Legislature lacks the procedural guardrails the U.S. Senate has. That allows bills to move quickly, but it also means fewer opportunities for debate or bipartisan negotiation.
This is precisely why the Senate’s filibuster, which has recently endured bipartisan criticism, still matters. Most critiques of the filibuster rest on the assumption that a Senate majority cannot advance legislation if the minority objects. But that view misunderstands how the Senate’s debate rules actually work. For more than two centuries, senators have been allowed to speak on the Senate floor as long as they wish, which means a determined minority can delay a vote by physically “holding the floor” with speeches.
In 1917, the Senate added a procedure allowing a large group of senators to end debate. Over time, this changed the chamber’s habits. Instead of forcing their opponents to keep talking until they run out of steam, today’s leaders often jump straight to this debate-ending vote. Because the vote to end debate requires a supermajority, while the vote to pass the bill requires only a simple majority, the process can make the minority seem stronger than it actually is.
Historically, the filibuster was not an automatic blockade. The possibility of extended debate pushed senators toward negotiation. Senate-passed bills often included provisions important to both sides. But as polarization in the Senate has increased, senators have increasingly treated the filibuster as if it were a veto — even though the rules do not give it that power.
Today’s Senate often relies on what’s commonly called a “silent filibuster.” Nothing in the rules requires it. It exists because Senate leaders structure what takes place on the floor in a way that allows the minority to halt a bill without speaking at all. Instead of demanding real debate, the majority moves directly to the debate-ending vote, turning the entire fight into a numbers game. This lets a minority object with almost no effort while avoiding the public cost of actually arguing its case.
But the Senate’s rules still allow for something different. Under those rules, a genuine talking filibuster is entirely possible. If the majority enforced the procedures as written, the minority would have to hold the floor. That means real debate — visible and time-consuming. Senators would rotate through hours of talking and eventually, when no one seeks recognition, the Senate would move immediately to a vote. If senators were required to speak continuously to sustain a filibuster, many standoffs would collapse far more quickly. The rules already permit this; Senate leadership simply chooses not to use them.
Another procedural shortcut complicates matters further: the “nuclear option.” The phrase sounds dramatic, but the idea is simple. Instead of changing the written rules, which requires a supermajority, a simple majority can reinterpret those rules by a vote. That’s what happened in 2013, when Senate Democrats used this tactic to make it easier to confirm executive-branch nominees. It did not improve the Senate’s overall functionality, but it did make it easier for future majorities to push the boundaries further.
Eliminating the legislative filibuster would be the most destabilizing shortcut yet. Without it, a bare majority could enact major national laws on healthcare, immigration or environmental policy — only to see them reversed when control changes. States, families and businesses would be forced to adjust to a federal government that could rewrite foundational policies every two years.
Californians understand what rapid, wide-ranging legislative action looks like in practice. At the national level, with a politically diverse country and higher stakes, it is even more important that major laws endure long enough to matter. The Senate’s design slows things down so that the laws that do pass are more broadly supported and likelier to last.
The Senate’s guardrails can be frustrating, especially when a majority has the votes to act. But Californians know better than most what happens when a legislature can move major bills at high speed with little debate. The Senate’s deliberate pace exists because laws that survive genuine debate tend to be better laws, and laws that swing wildly every two years help no one.
Jeremy Dalrymple is the Associate Director of Governance at the R Street Institute and a former Senate counsel specializing in congressional procedure, oversight and strengthening Congress as the First Branch.