“Half of official Washington is here to see democracy’s finest show, the filibuster. The right to talk your head off. The American privilege of free speech in its most dramatic form.” – H.V. Kaltenborn in the film “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”

You may have heard the word filibuster bandied about in the last few months.

A lot of that has to do with President Donald Trump’s distaste for the procedure. He has tried to get U.S. Senate Republicans to do away with the filibuster to pass more bills he supports.

Senate Republicans have so far resisted Trump’s sustained cajoling on the topic, though.

I think most folks are probably familiar with the idea that the filibuster is used to stop a bill from passing. But I thought now might be a good time for a little filibuster 101 about how it works and why it exists.

First, you need to know the main difference between the House of Representatives and the Senate. The House – which does not allow filibusters – has way more people in it.

If you have ever tried to run a meeting, you know the more people involved, the more difficult it becomes to decide anything, so the speaker of the house runs its sessions similar to a dictator.

Nothing much would get done in the House without a powerful leader and strict limitations on debate.

Though the Senate does have leadership positions, it is much more like a group of equals. Any senator has the power to slow down the operations of the chamber through several methods, the most powerful being the filibuster.

One senator can hold a filibuster like Jimmy Stewart’s character does in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” but it ends when that person eventually tires and has to yield the floor.

A truly effective filibuster requires a group of senators who will take turns talking to keep debate on a bill going indefinitely. Not only will a filibuster keep a bill from coming up for a vote, but it keeps the Senate from getting anything else done either, essentially shutting down the chamber.

To end a filibuster, three-fifths of the Senate – 60 senators in total – have to support making a motion to invoke cloture. Invoking cloture sets a deadline for debate on a bill, so it must come up for a vote.

To Trump’s point, the filibuster is something of an artificial roadblock. The Senate makes its own rules for debate. There is nothing in federal law that requires the Senate to allow for filibusters.

In fact, in recent decades the Senate has amended its rules to say filibusters cannot be used on the specific issues of approving presidential appointments as well as certain budgetary topics like debt, taxation and benefits provided through programs such as Medicare and food stamps.

So why keep the filibuster at all? There are a couple of reasons. The first is the Senate has a tradition of not allowing the minority political party – meaning the party with fewer senators – from having no power and being railroaded on every bill.

You may be thinking, though, the people elected the majority party to get things done, so why is this filibuster rule holding back the will of the people?

And that is a reasonable thought to have because Congress has not gotten much done in recent years. This is primarily due to the minority party, at times Republican and at other times Democrat, often threatening to filibuster to block legislation.

The best response I can provide to that is to use an example of recent history. Democrats controlled the presidency and Congress in 2009. Republicans controlled the presidency and Congress in 2017. Democrats took back over in 2021, and now Republicans are in charge again.

On most issues the two parties take opposite sides. So imagine a world where there is no filibuster. You have one party gain control and pass everything it wants, and four to eight years later the other party comes in and passes legislation to do the exact opposite of what the first party did.

As this happens over and over, you have a government constantly chasing its tail by carrying out new policies every few years that completely undo what the previous policies were supposed to accomplish.

It would be maddening to work in government in that world, and the public would remain perpetually confused as to what the laws actually say.

This is why the filibuster has held up so far. Not a lot of stuff gets passed right now because of it, but the stuff that does pass tends to stick.