Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren is wasting no time in getting down to business. In a blog for The Huffington Post on Thursday, she wrote that all the things she wants to do for the people of Massachusetts will never get done “if we can’t get up-or-down votes in the Senate.” Any Senator can use the filibuster against a measure to which he/she objects and bring the chamber’s business “to a screeching halt.”

Current Senate rules allow a senator, or a series of senators, to continue speaking on the topic of their choice for as long as they want unless three-fifths of the members (60 out of a 100) vote to bring the discussion to an end. Warren was the proposed target of a Republican filibuster in 2011 when it appeared that President Obama was going to nominate her to head the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Forty-five senators pledged to filibuster any nominee to head the agency because they objected to its existence, and the President backed off. (Now, they have to deal with Warren as a Senator who is willing to tackle both filibuster reform and banking reform from within. File that under “unintended consequences.”)