Interbranch Warfare: Senate Amending Process and Restrictive House Rules

• Author: Anthony J. Madonna,Ryan D. Williamson
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129221082321
• Published date: 01 March 2023
• Date: 01 March 2023

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2023, Vol. 76(1) 279–291

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129221082321

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Interbranch Warfare: Senate Amending

Process and Restrictive House Rules

Anthony J. Madonna

1

and Ryan D. Williamson

2



Abstract

While the U.S. House and Senate differ in many signif‌icant ways, perhaps the most important is the ability of House

leaders to control the legislative process through the usage of special rules, which establish the terms of debate on a bill

and can limit the number and content of amendments allowed. House members of both the majority and minority party

have complained about their recent increased usage. In contrast, the Senate lacks a comparable tool and scholars have

reported sharp increases in the number of f‌loor amendments being proposed. In this paper, we examine the increase in

proposed f‌loor amendments in the Senate; arguing that, in addition to an increased value from electoral position-taking,

the procedures employed in the House inf‌luence the f‌loor behavior of senators. Specif‌ically, we f‌ind that senators are

more likely to offer amendments to bills that were passed under a restrictive rule in the House.

Keywords

senate, house, procedure, amendments, rules, reform

As Sinclair (2000, 65) explicitly states, “The Senate

operates under the most permissive f‌loor rules of any

legislature in the world.”As a result, by the end of the

113th Congress, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-

NV) was under siege. Responding to an increased number

of minority party amendments, Reid frequently employed

a strategy of “f‌illing the amendment tree”to bar these

amendments from the f‌loor. He was criticized for this by

members of both parties. For example, Senator Orrin

Hatch (R-UT) referred to the Senate under Reid as “a

sham”and argued that under his “heavy hand, the twin

pillars of the Senate’s careful deliberation –unlimited

debate and an open amendment process –have been

almost entirely curtailed”(Hatch 2014). Senator Chris-

topher Murphy (D-CT) went so far as to say that he “got

more substance on the f‌loor of the House in the minority

than I have as a member of the Senate majority”(Raju and

Everett 2014). Most notably, the minority leader, Senator

Mitch McConnell (R-KY) claimed Reid and the Demo-

crats “have turned the Senate into a graveyard of good

ideas and good democratic debate”(Hulse 2014) and

pledged to restore a more open amending process should

Republicans control the Senate in the 114th Congress.

Republicans did pick up enough seats to control the

Senate in the 114th Congress. However, McConnell was

unable to keep his pledge to not f‌ill the amendment tree in

all cases. He allowed an open amendment process on the

Keystone Pipeline bill—the f‌irst major bill considered in

the Senate—and was greeted by nearly 300 f‌iled

amendments. Later, House and Senate Republicans crit-

icized McConnell for f‌illing the amendment tree to ensure

a vote on a “clean”funding bill for the Department of

Homeland Security. In response, a Republican staffer

called it “frustrating,”pointing out that they made f‌illing

the tree a central argument against Reid’s leadership

during the election (Bolton 2015). In June, after suffering

what was dubbed his “biggest legislative defeat”of the

Congress, members of both parties criticized the Majority

Leader for barring amendments to the U.S.A. Freedom

Act (Zeller 2015).

Defenders of the practice of f‌illing the amendment tree

point to the massive increase in f‌iled amendments in the

Senate in recent congresses (see e.g. Lee 2016;Madonna

and Kosar 2015 for more on the rise of messaging

amendments in the Senate). As Smith (2010,23–24)

states, “both majority and minority senators exploit

1

University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

2

Auburn University, Auburn, AL, USA

Corresponding Author:

Ryan D. Williamson, Department of Political Science, Auburn University,

7080 Haley CenterAuburn, AL 36849, USA.

Email: rdw0035@auburn.edu