Process III

TERMINOLOGY

• CQ Weekly and  CQ Researcher
• Roll Call

The floor

• Rules Committee
• The suspension calendar
• The end of open rules in the House
• Motion to proceed -- health care example
• Filling the tree -- Cruz gets personal
• Senate floor debate can get ... testy

The Basic Amendment Tree, Senate Version -- See Straus 218-220:

A CRS report on Senate amendments:

Senate precedents set out three principles of precedence among amendments that are directed to the same text: 

1. A second-degree amendment has precedence over a first-degree amendment;
2. A motion to insert and a motion to strike out and insert have precedence over a motion to strike out; and
3. A perfecting amendment (and an amendment to it) has precedence over a substitute amendment (and an amendment to it). 

The first of these principles is axiomatic. A second-degree amendment is an amendment to a first degree amendment, and it must be offered while the first-degree amendment is pending—that is, after the first-degree amendment has been offered but before the Senate has disposed of it. The Senate also acts on an amendment to a first-degree amendment before it acts on the first-degree amendment itself. So this principle conforms to Senate practice under both meanings of precedence.

It may be helpful in understanding the second two principles to think about decisions the Senate needs to make about a text. Changing the text of an amendment, through a second-degree amendment, could “cure” a problem Senators may have had with the amendment’s original language. That could obviate the need to strike out the text 

Senate Procedure and Rule XIV  "I object to my own request"

Therefore, through objection, a bill after two readings is prevented from being referred to
committee and is placed directly on the Senate’s Calendar of Business. It is usually the majority leader (or a Senator acting in the majority leader’s stead), acting on his own or at the request of any other Senator, who objects to “further proceeding”—committee referral—on a measure.

Filibuster (Straus ch. 10) 

• Flip-flops
• Exception: Reconciliation
• Exceptions:  base closings and Fast Track (Straus, ch. 12)
• Exception:  THE NATIONAL EMERGENCIES ACT  -- HJ RES 46 

Other processes

• Vote-a-Rama  (Straus 226)
• Hotlining  -- recent example
• Earmarking into Phonemarking
• BTU'd
• Alternative to conference:  "message between houses" or Ping-ponging