Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent showed up on Meet The Press this weekend and did something Republicans in Washington rarely do. He actually threw down a warning. He told Kristen Welker that GOP senators are on notice, meaning they had better be ready to end the filibuster if Democrats try to grind the government to a halt again at the end of January. It is amazing that Democrats can cause a shutdown, blame everyone else, and still expect Republicans to play nice. Bessent is signaling that those days are over.
President Trump already urged John Thune to pull the plug on the filibuster during the Democrat led shutdown last month. Thune basically shrugged and said it was not happening. He insisted the math is not there, which is Washington talk for let’s just let Democrats run circles around us again. Now Bessent is pushing back, and he is using both the media circuit and an op ed in the Washington Post to make sure no Republican senator can claim they did not see this coming.
🚨 BREAKING: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent demands Senate Republicans NUKE the 60-vote filibuster so all MAGA items can be passed swiftly
I'm with Bessent. DO IT.
BESSENT: "Senate Republicans should not shy from doing what Democrats are certain to do." pic.twitter.com/dboLZCavOv
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) November 23, 2025
In that op ed he laid out the economic wreckage from the last shutdown. The country took an eleven billion dollar hit to GDP and had 1.4 million workers stuck in furlough limbo. He made it clear that the blame sits with Senate Democrats. But he also pointed out the obvious tool they used to pull it off, the filibuster. According to him, the filibuster has become nothing more than a weapon for Democrats to hold the country hostage whenever they feel like throwing a tantrum.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent: “If Senate Democrats close the government again [on January 30], then Senate Republicans should immediately abrogate the filibuster.”
Nuke it! pic.twitter.com/quF8bUYft0
— RedWave Press (@RedWave_Press) November 23, 2025
He argued that Republicans cannot let this game repeat itself when funding comes due on January 30. If Democrats try the same stunt again, then Republicans should immediately end the filibuster. Not debate it for six months. Not form a bipartisan working group. End it. Bessent is laying out the choice as plain as possible. Either Republicans stop letting Democrats weaponize the rule, or they get dragged back into another costly shutdown.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has already hinted that Democrats are perfectly willing to do this all over again if they do not get their way. That alone tells you what Republicans should expect. Bessent even pointed to Ezra Klein’s recent piece in the New York Times as proof of the real motive. Klein admitted the fight was not about healthcare, it was about so called stopping totalitarianism, meaning stopping President Trump by any means necessary.
Bessent summed it up bluntly. Democrats could not stop President Trump in the courts. They could not stop him in the media. So they turned to harming the public to score political points. If they try it again, he says Republicans should kill the filibuster on the spot. At this point, it sounds like the only way to stop another manufactured crisis.
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