Senators from Kansas and Missouri are preparing to pull a possible all-nighter Thursday to vote on dozens of budget amendments ranging from a call to arm Ukrainian troops against the Russians, to a bid to cover “virtual colonoscopies” under Medicare.
The marathon voting session known on Capitol Hill as a “vote-a-rama” is expected to stretch into the wee hours of Friday morning as bleary-eyed lawmakers cast back-to-back ballots every 10 minutes or so.
None of the hundreds of amendments under consideration will have the force of law.
The rapid-fire series of votes is merely symbolic: a quirky bit of political theater in the Senate that gives lawmakers an opportunity to gauge support for pet causes – and force colleagues across the aisle to stake out positions on contentious issues.
“It gets your colleagues on record,” said Sarah Little, a spokeswoman for Republican Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas.
Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, dismissed the vote-a-rama process as “a giant political gotcha exercise.”
“It’s dumb,” McCaskill told reporters. “We’ll stay up all night voting on amendments that don’t have the force of law. It’s crazy.”
Senators feel compelled to participate because skipping so many votes could hurt them in the next election, she said.
Lawmakers should “come to mutual truce” and focus their energies on a transparent appropriations process, McCaskill said.
McCaskill’s distaste for the exercise didn’t stop her from offering half a dozen budget amendments of her own during the last vote-a-rama in 2013, including measures that supported the reform of trade tariffs and made it easier for veterans to transition to the civilian workforce.
That time, the vote-a-rama in the Democrat-controlled Senate ran more than 13 hours, ending shortly before dawn. Senators voted on nearly 100 amendments to the budget resolution, none of them legally binding.
The resolution itself is a non-binding proposal intended to set funding levels for federal government agencies. A 1974 law allows senators to offer unlimited amendments on the resolution, and votes can’t be blocked, or filibustered, using normal parliamentary procedures.
This year, the voting is expected to start around noon on Thursday and last into the early hours of the morning on Friday. More than 285 amendments were pending for consideration on Wednesday.
The Republican members of Kansas’ and Missouri’s Senate delegations have proposed more than a dozen amendments among them.
Amendments introduced by Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt support, among other things, allowing states to opt out of greenhouse gas regulations and creating a fund to provide “defense articles” and training to Kurdish forces in their battle against the self-proclaimed Islamic State.
Other amendments offered by Roberts include one that aims to block federal employees who owe back taxes from receiving bonuses and another that repeals a part of the Affordable Care Act that keeps individuals from using money in their medical savings accounts to purchase over-the-counter medications.
Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas has proposed amendments that endorse preserving access to rural hospitals in Medicare, increasing funding for the National Institutes of Health, extending tax exceptions for renewable energy companies, and providing veterans access to non-VA doctors if they live more than 40 miles from a Veterans Affairs hospital.
Moran said in a statement that the vote-a-rama is a great opportunity to focus legislators on issues that desperately need attention.
“By offering amendments to the budget resolution,” he said, “each U.S. senator has a chance to highlight policies of significance to Americans.”