![]() senator means that you don’t have to ask permission to offer an amendment.īut that experience is as outdated as “I’m just a bill…” McConnell, expanding on a precedent set by his immediate Democratic predecessor, Harry Reid of Nevada, routinely employs a once-arcane tactic known as “filling the amendment tree” to ensure that there’s no opening for new initiatives. Watching these sad spectacles from the perspective of a former Senate staffer, albeit from the 1990s, I wanted to shout at the TV: “Here’s how you get the Senate to consider your idea: You stand up, ask for recognition and say, ‘I’ve sent an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.’” After that, the Senate might take up the amendment, debate and vote on it, or the senator proposing it might agree to withdraw it in exchange for, say, a promise by a committee chair to hold hearings on a freestanding bill. From Mark Warner to Josh Hawley, senators from both parties, all ideological factions, and all levels of seniority have run up against the same impassive resistance. ![]() ![]() Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy by Adam Jentleson Ī frequent sight on C-SPAN’s feed from the Senate floor over the last few years has been a senator passionately pleading for the institution to consider some new idea or piece of legislation, while acknowledging that such entreaties would leave the diffident Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, unmoved. ![]()
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