Senate Amendment Process: General Conditions and Principles

Senate Amendment Process: General Conditions and Principles

Order Code 98-707 GOV
Updated February 20, 2001
CRS Report for Congress
Received through the CRS Web
Senate Amendment Process:
General Conditions and Principles
Walter J. Oleszek
Government and Finance Division
The amending process in the Senate provides lawmakers an opportunity to make
changes in the text of a measure (or pending amendment) during its consideration.
Senators generally have wide freedom to offer as many amendments as they want,
including nongermane changes. In fact, an important feature of the Senate is that it lacks
a general germaneness rule. This absence grants any Senator an opportunity to raise issues
and to offer extraneous “riders” to pending legislation. However, Senators' freedom to
amend and to offer nongermane amendments can be restricted in certain circumstances,
such as when the Senate invokes cloture (which limits further debate on a measure) or
agrees by unanimous consent to impose restrictions on the offering of amendments.
The Senate's amending process can be complex, but it is subject to certain conditions
and principles. Whether these conditions and principles apply in all circumstances may be
problematic, because the Senate might waive them by the unanimous consent of the
membership. The point to remember is that sometimes there may be a gap between
amendment theory and senatorial practice. (For discussion of details associated with the
types (perfecting and substitute), degrees (first degree and second degree), and forms
(motions to strike, to insert, or to strike and insert) of amendments, see CRS Report 98-
614 GOV, Amendments in the Senate: Types and Forms and CRS Report 93-113 S, The
Amending Process in the Senate.)
General Conditions
A variety of general conditions influence the amending process. Three merit some
mention. First, there are certain factors which affect any Senator's eligibility to offer floor
amendments. One factor is spatial. Are there any “limbs” (or places) left on the
amendment tree? An “amendment tree” is one of several charts in Senate Procedure:
Precedents and Practices that depict the number and effect of amendments that may be
pending at the same time. Another factor involves time. Is the amending process
regulated by a time-limitation agreement that may specify when or in what order
amendments are to be offered and which limits debate on each one? Still another factor
is contextual. For instance, are there formal (the imposition of cloture, for instance) or
informal (the floor managers want to pre-approve changes to the pending measure)
circumstances that impinge on the amending process?
Congressional Research Service ˜ The Library of Congress

CRS-2
Second, when a measure is the pending business on the floor, several amending
practices are typically in play right at the outset. For example, (a) amendments are to be
read unless the reading is dispensed with by unanimous consent. (b) Committee
amendments, and amendments thereto, take priority over floor amendments to the bill. (c)
The measure is open to amendment at any point (unless the Senate by unanimous consent
decides to do it another way). Unlike the House, the Senate does not proceed section-by-
section or title-by-title when it amends legislation. (d) Amendments may be debated at
length subject to the invocation of cloture or the motion to table. (e) An amendment may
amend the underlying question in only one place. Third, under Senate Rule XIX, the
presiding officer is obligated to recognize the first Senator who addresses the chair.
Senate precedents modify this stricture by granting priority recognition first to the majority
leader, then to the minority leader, and then, respectively, to the majority and minority
floor managers of the legislation. These preferential recognition precedents grant the
majority leader the option to control the floor and to fill the amendment tree.
Principles
Senate Procedure outlines a large number of principles that guide the amending
process. Some of them include:
! The original text of a measure is amendable in two degrees. (A first
degree amendment is a change to the text of the bill; a second degree
amendment proposes to change the first degree amendment.)
! Senators are free to modify or withdraw their amendments until the
Senate takes “action” on them. Precedents stipulate, for instance, that
action includes ordering the yeas and nays on the amendment.
Sometimes Senators immediately get “action” on their amendment. The
result: they may lose their right to modify their proposal but they gain the
right to amend it. Under cloture, it requires unanimous consent for a
Senator to modify his or her amendment.
! In general, it is not in order to re-amend previously amended text, nor is
it in order to reoffer rejected amendments unless they have been modified
substantively.
! Any Senator may demand the division of an amendment if it contains
separate and distinct parts that can stand on their own. However, under
Senate Rule XV, any amendment to strike out and insert is not divisible.
Under cloture, an amendment may not be divided by a Senator as a matter
of right.
Worth another mention is the Senate's principle of germaneness. There are four
instances when the Senate may function with a germaneness requirement for amendments.
They are as follows: Senate Rule XVI requires the germaneness of amendments to general
(but not special) appropriations bills; when cloture has been invoked; if the Senate enters
into a unanimous consent agreement that stipulates that amendments are to be germane;
and when statutes such as the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 require that amendments
be germane, in this case to concurrent budget resolutions and reconciliation bills.