When Chuck Schumer takes over as Senate majority leader in eight weeks, he should move to restore the filibuster back to where it was before the power of the minority to slow down the chamber was eroded by former Majority Leaders Harry Reid (a Democrat) and Mitch McConnell (a Republican). Both Reid and McConnell chipped away at the filibuster for immediate political advantage, but doing so damaged the Senate and hurt the country.

For all his six years in the Oval Office, Donald Trump has always had a Republican Senate to confirm his nominees to his administration and judgeships in the federal courts, from the Supreme Court on down. That changes on Jan. 3, when the 120th Congress convenes with Schumer as majority leader of at least 54 Democrats.

Schumer has been minority leader for Trump’s six years and was majority leader only during Joe Biden’s term, so this is his first time running the place with a president of the other party. He must use this situation to start repairing the damage done to the institution, advance a Democratic agenda and still push back against Trump during the next two years.

In 1975, the post-Watergate Senate lowered the number of votes needed to stop a filibuster by ending debate, called cloture, from 67 to 60 votes, and there it stayed until 2013.

For most of those decades, comity ruled and important matters needed the support of three-fifths of senators to proceed to overcome a filibuster. But it was McConnell who decided to abuse the privilege of the minority to engage in a filibuster and delay the proceedings.

McConnell was determined to thwart Barack Obama’s nominees by forcing a cloture motion needing 60 votes to end debate on every nominee. McConnell’s misuse of the filibuster was terrible and his political scheme pushed Reid, acting out of frustration, to evoke the nuclear option, blowing up the filibuster by lowering the threshold to end debate to a simple majority of 51 votes on all nominees except for the Supreme Court. Reid got through more of Obama’s picks after that, but it wasn’t worth the price in the long run.

By 2016, McConnell was majority leader and abused the Senate again, this time by blocking even a committee hearing on Obama’s nomination of the superbly qualified Merrick Garland for the high court. In 2017, McConnell went the final step on Reid’s filibuster changes by getting rid of the Supreme Court exception, allowing Trump to install Neil Gorsuch into the open seat.

In 2020, McConnell rushed through the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. Gorsuch and Barrett only got their lifetime jobs because of what Reid started in 2013.

Reid was wrong, as was McConnell. Reid is long dead and McConnell will be gone from the Senate in January. Schumer should return the Senate back to a place where consensus is rewarded, not sharp partisan division. The House is the place where its always been majority rule all the way. The Senate should not be a mirror.

Giving the minority more say, provided they use it responsibly, will make the country better off as the Senate will need to find agreement on legislation and nominees.

Trump urged GOP Senate Majority John Thune to remove the filibuster entirely, claiming the Democrats would eliminate it once they had a chance. Thune was right to refuse and what Schumer should do is put it back to where it was before Reid weakened it in 2013.

The country is better off when the Senate has to find consensus.

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