Backgrounder: The Senate's Vote-a-Rama

Excerpted from America's Priorities, by Charles S. Konigsberg

During the 1980s, Senators began offering scores of Floor amendments to the Budget Resolution to ostensibly increase discretionary spending for particular programs.However, the Budget Resolution does not include program detail. (That responsibility belongs to the Appropriations Committee.) For example, if a Senator offers an
amendment intended to move money from a natural resources program into a discretionary health program, the amendment itself would simply reduce the function 300 (natural resources) spending levels and increase the function 550 (health) spending levels. But there would be no practical impact because total spending levels would not change and the lump sum 302(a) committee allocation to the Appropriations Committee would not change.

The Senate Budget Committee also permits Senators to offer amendments that increase spending in one area and “offset” the cost with a negative number in an artificial “Budget Function 970,” innocuously called “Allowances,” to ensure that total spending and committee allocations do not change.

Despite the fact that these amendments actually do nothing, they have proliferated to the point where dozens of such amendments are offered every year.When the fifty hours of Senate debate time on the Budget Resolution expires, the Senate must still vote on all amendments that are offered, albeit without debate. The result is the now infamous
Budget Resolution “vote-a-rama”—a series of votes, sometimes taking an entire day, on amendments that for the most part have no impact.

(A new twist on the annual vote-a-rama came to pass during debate on the FY 2008 Budget Resolution when Senators offered numerous amendments to create Reserve Funds that, as explained earlier, do not actually provide any funds.)

The Budget Resolution vote-a-rama has caused the unfortunate misperception that all amendments to the Budget Resolution are just “message” amendments that have no real impact. The reality is that some amendments to the Budget Resolution have a tremendous impact on our nation’s fiscal policy.