It’s budget week on the Senate side (as well as confirmation week). The Senate is expected to start their all nighter on Wednesday. The Senate Democrats have vowed to take up all the debate time allotted (and more).
The bare-bones budget resolution, S.Con.Res. 3, released last week includes instructions to relevant committees to draft legislation aimed at repealing the health care law through reconciliation, a process that sidesteps the threat of Democratic obstruction or filibuster in the Senate. Getting the budget measure passed requires allowing Democratic Senators an almost endless opportunity to offer amendments aimed at expressing their opposition to repeal.
What the Senate will tackle this week is unique, since most measures can be filibustered. The 1974 Congressional Budget Act inoculates the consideration of any budget resolution from a filibuster and limits debate to 50 hours total. Once the time is up, everything must be voted upon.
What makes a budget resolution different is the clock. Once cloture is invoked on a customary bill, all motions, amendments, and passage must conclude by the end of debate time, which is 30 hours. Already, a budget bill receives 20 additional hours of debate. Furthering the curiousness of the Senate budget process, however, is that any amendment that is offered must be disposed of before adoption of the resolution.
That means, regardless of the fact that the allotted debate time may expire Wednesday, any Senator may call up additional amendments and get a roll call vote even after debate time has expired. This is when things get fun. Senators may (and do) continue to seek votes on amendments after time has expired making the session can drag on and on. (No joke, there are cots for Senators to sleep on for the all nigher.) While Senators do not receive any additional debate time, past precedent has allowed a minute or two for Senators to explain their amendments before the vote. This barrage of a series of votes is what is known as “vote-a-rama”.
Once a vote-a-rama stretches late into the next day, the minority party will often relent and allow a final vote once they have had enough opportunities to get Senators on record usually defeating amendments containing popular priorities, used primarily for messaging purposes.
The House is expected to fast track the legislation after the measure passes the Senate.
The measure also comes as a growing number of Republicans say that any repeal legislation should await a replacement plan, which might be difficult given the Budget resolution asks the various committees to produce a plan by January 27th.
Meanwhile, the Senate has a busy week with a number of confirmation hearings both this week and in the coming weeks.