From the Heritage Foundation, I'm Michelle Cordero, and this is Heritage Explains.

Joe Biden has been inaugurated as president of the United States, and Democrats are fired up and ready to start passing their liberal agenda.

But with the Senate split 50-50

and Vice President Kamala Harris casting tie-breaking votes,

all eyes are on the filibuster.

Rumor has it that Democrats want to abolish

the historic procedure in order to ram through their most contentious legislation. Think government-run

health care, the Green New Deal, and packing the Supreme Court, and that's just for starters.

You see, in the Senate, when voting on highly

controversial bills that are likely to pass or fail by extremely small margins, lawmakers can

use this procedural move to encourage more debate. To end this additional debate, otherwise

known as the filibuster, the Senate must have 60 votes instead of 51 votes.

You can see how this tool would be helpful to the GOP minority right now.

Last week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell threatened to delay an agreement on organizing the Senate

unless Democrats make a commitment to keep the filibuster.

Twenty years ago, there was no talk, none whatsoever, of tearing down long-standing minority rights on legislation. The legislative filibuster is a crucial part of the Senate. Leading Democrats like President

Biden himself have long defended it. Democrats themselves just six, just spent six years

using it literally to block bills from Senator Tim Scott's police reform to coronavirus relief.

And less than four years ago, when it was Republicans who held the Senate, the House, and the presidency,

27 current Democrats, plus Vice President Hyde Harris, signed a letter insisting this longstanding rule should not be broken.

Critics of the filibuster say that it's broken our political process, holding up too many bills and that nothing ever happens.

Today, Thomas Chipping, Deputy Director of Heritage's Mease Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, explains why the filibuster was created, what Americans would face if it was eliminated,

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