Explaining the Folk Ways of Political Washington: "Vote-a-rama"

The Senate today is debating the fate of the “Big Beautiful Budget Bill”, and we are now in the beginning of a very odd process known as “Vote-a-rama.” I thought it might be useful to explain this process—noting its purpose, and the surprises that might result.

The House and the Senate are very different institution. In the House, the majority party controls what gets on the floor—including amendments. The Senate is much more favorable to the minority. Vote-a-rama is a good example.

Vote-a-rama is the term used by congressional insiders to describe a procedure in the U.S. Senate that allow Senators (regardless of party) to offer an unlimited number of amendments to budget-related bills, such as budget reconciliation bills. The Big Beautiful Budget Bill is subject to Vote-a-rama.

Under this procedure, each proposed amendment is designated a single sponsor and a single opponent, who each have 30 seconds to debate the amendment. After this minute of debate, a roll-call vote is taken on the proposed amendment. The Senate has held as many as 44 votes in a row in this process. There have been 44 Vota-a-ramas. Today will be the 45th.

The point of the amendments is rarely, if ever, to actually amend the bill. At this point, there generally has been a hard-fought deal on what will be in the bill, and the majority leadership will instruct its Members to vote no on the amendments. The point instead is political messaging—to have a record of roll call votes that can be used in future political campaigns. Indeed, Senator Moreno (R-Ohio) told USA Today that “I want everybody watching this to remember this as you listen to probably what’s going to be 30-plus hours of complete nonsense from the other side."

This may well be political theater, but it is important political theater. It is they way that the minority party can hold the majority accountable for their votes. Absent a Vote-a-rama, Senators can claim that that they had no choice in voting yes on a big budget bill that included a provision very bad for their constituents. A Vote-a-rama vote on an amendment to delate this bad provision means that the Senator indeed had a choice.

And it appears that even some Republicans will offer amendments. Senator Rick Scott is sponsoring an amendment that would make even further cuts to Medicaid. The amendment would prevent States from receiving the 90% federal match for Medicaid expansion states for nondisabled adults without dependent children. Apparently, this is part of a last minute deal to get the Senate conservatives on board. This will be a very tough vote for Senators from Medicaid expansion states.

Rand Paul, an opponent of the Bill has several amendments as well.

While rarely successful, it is also at least theoretically possible that an amendment—if adopted—can act as a poison pill making passage of the bill unlikely. The vote on the Big Beautiful Budget Bill in both the Senate and the House is very close, and the result of careful negotiation between moderate and conservative Republican. This shaky compromise could be completely upended if certain amendments are adopted. For example, if the provision raising the cap on deduction on state and local taxes were removed, many House Republicans would no longer support the Bill. Similarly, if many of the Medicare cuts were removed, many conservatives in the House or Senate might vote no on the bill.

I doubt that this poison pill approach will work, but given the shaky nature of the compromises made in this Bill, it is a possibility.

History, by the way, suggests that sometimes amendments designed to be bill killers don’t accomplish that goal even if adopted. During the debate on the Civil Rights Act in 1964, Representative Howard W. Smith of Virginia—a segregationist and opponent of the Act—offered an amendment to add “sex” to the text of the Bill. His intent was to kill the bill, believing that some supporters of the Civil Rights Act would not support the addition of sex to the list of protected categories. Indeed, many labor unions that were supporting the bill were adamantly opposed to adding sex discrimination to the bill. In the end, thanks to effectively lobbying by groups such as the National Women’s Party, the Civil Rights Act passed with “sex” included in the test.

Sometimes what looks like a poison pill makes history.

You can see the proposed amendments—and the resulting votes at this very useful website.