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MORNING GLORY: Just say no to the 'Talking Filibuster' — it's a waste of time

The 'Talking Filibuster‘ is a terrible idea on many levels

By Hugh Hewitt Fox News

Published February 17, 2026 5:00am EST

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Debate grows about ending the filibuster post-government shutdown

Fox News contributor Hugh Hewitt discusses growing debates about ending the legislative filibuster after the America’s longest government shutdown on ’Sunday Night in America.’

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Time is not fungible.  The time you spend reading this column cannot be "reclaimed."  It is gone and it won’t be back.

 Which is why the "talking filibuster" proposal for the United States Senate is such an awful idea.

I wrote the first paragraph fully aware of the jests it will bring forth — thank you for underscoring my point by posting a comment along the lines of "That’s five minutes I will never get back." You are correct. You won’t get it back. Hold that thought. It applies to the United States Senate too.

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Another debate has come around about the rules of the United States Senate. The debate is welcome provided it occurs in columns and in studios and doesn’t take up "floor time" in the Senate. "Floor time" in the Senate is a subset of time, a particularly valuable subset. It, too, cannot be gotten back once it passes.

"Floor time" in the Senate is a precious commodity. It is the "rare earths minerals" of the legislative process. Nothing, absolutely nothing, gets done in the Senate unless it is done out in the open, on the Senate floor, after every procedural hurdle is crossed, and there are many such hurdles. The Senate’s rule book evolved over the 161 years since the Civil War ended to protect the rights of the minority party as well as some prerogatives of individual senators. These rules are many and obscure, but they all act together to slow down everything the Senate and thus the Congress does.

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The Senate is anti-majoritarian and purposefully so. It was an essential element to the founding of the country. The only part of the Constitution that cannot be amended is the makeup of the Senate. Article V ends with the absolute statement "that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate." Thus, states like Delaware and Wyoming get two seats in the Senate and so does California. In a recent interview, former President Obama said this needed to be amended, but the former Constitutional Law professor had forgotten Article V. The........

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