The filibuster debate has become exhaustingly binary. The majority party wants to kill it. The minority party wants to preserve it.
Both sides are treating this as an all-or-nothing fight, and both sides are wrong. There's a third option nobody's seriously proposing, and it's so obvious I'm surprised it hasn't gained traction: reduce the threshold to 55 votes.
Here's what most Americans don't know about the filibuster. The 60-vote requirement is only 50 years old. Before 1975, it took 67 votes, two-thirds of the Senate, to break a filibuster. The Senate reduced it because two-thirds was too high a bar for a functioning legislature. They just didn't go far enough. And the filibuster itself? It wasn't even intentional. It emerged accidentally in 1806 when the Senate removed a procedural rule, creating a loophole that allowed unlimited debate. The Founders intended specific supermajority requirements for things like treaties, veto overrides, and constitutional amendments, and wrote those thresholds explicitly into the Constitution. For regular legislation, they deliberately chose simple majority rule.
But we've now spent two decades watching 60 votes function not as a speed bump, but as a brick wall. In an era of 50-50 Senates, give or take five seats either way, 60 has become effectively impossible without one party controlling a filibuster-proof supermajority. That happened twice in the last 50 years, and both times it lasted less than a year. The result is governance by continuing resolution, executive overreach, and a legislative branch that's abdicated its constitutional responsibility. The Senate has become a place where legislation goes to die, not where it gets refined.
Fifty-five votes would do a lot to help. It's achievable in a way that 60 isn't anymore. In a 50-50 political environment, getting to 55 requires either winning a genuine wave election, which arguably reflects a real mandate from voters, or reaching a genuine consensus, Newt Gingrich’s elusive 80-20 benchmark, and us peeling off three to five votes from the other side. It's hard, but not impossible. It's a real hurdle, not an impenetrable fortress. Both parties have realistic paths to 55 votes. Republicans could get there in a strong midterm. Democrats could get there with presidential coattails. It's within reach for whoever makes the better case to voters, which is exactly how democracy is supposed to work.
More importantly, 55 preserves what the filibuster was meant to protect: minority rights. A bare majority still can't ram through whatever it wants on a party-line vote. The minority still has real leverage. But that leverage becomes negotiating power rather than an absolute veto over everything. You can block genuinely bad legislation; you just can't block all legislation as a matter of course. If you have 52 seats and need 55, you're negotiating with your chamber's swing voters. That's not a bug, it's a feature. Legislation that can attract crossover appeal is probably better, more durable legislation.
The beauty of this compromise is that it doesn't require either party to trust the other. Republicans don't have to trust Democrats not to abuse a 51-vote threshold. Democrats don't have to trust Republicans to ever let anything pass at 60. Both sides get something real. Democrats get a Senate that can actually function and respond to electoral mandates. Republicans get meaningful minority protections that might actually matter when they're in the minority, rather than a theoretical safeguard that's made the entire institution irrelevant.
Here's the key that makes this more than just another arbitrary number: once the 55-vote threshold is established, it requires a two-thirds vote to change it again. Make it 67 votes to amend the filibuster rule itself. This is entirely possible under Senate procedures, and it transforms the proposal from a temporary partisan advantage into a durable institutional reform. Neither party could unilaterally lower it further or raise it back up without truly broad consensus. It becomes a stable new equilibrium rather than just another move in an escalating procedural war.
Compare this to the current standoff. The majority party threatens to eliminate the filibuster entirely if they get the chance. The minority defend 60 votes while watching the institution become increasingly irrelevant and voting rights, judicial nominees, and other carve-outs multiply. Neither outcome is good for the country, and neither is stable long-term.
The Senate was supposed to be the "cooling saucer" for legislation, not a deep freeze. Fifty-five votes preserves the cooling function while preventing permafrost. This isn't about helping one party or the other; both will control the chamber at different times. Whoever's in charge should be able to govern, but with a meaningful requirement to bring some of the minority along.
The current system is generating contempt for democratic institutions. When the legislative branch can't legislate, voters lose faith that elections matter. When elections don't matter, people look for other ways to exercise power. Reducing the filibuster to 55 votes isn't radical reform. It's recognition that the last compromise didn't go far enough, and that our current system has made the perfect the enemy of the functional. It's time to stop fighting over whether the filibuster lives or dies, and ask what number lets the Senate do its job. The answer is 55.
