The Budget Amendment Process

So, how does the amendment process work anyway.  In a nutshell, once the Ways and Means Committees report the budget on the House and Senate side, the other members of the House and Senate get their crack at the budget.  There are 160 Representatives and 40 Senators.  During a typical budget season, the House will debate the budget on the floor for an entire week, normally the week after House Ways and Means has released the budget. The 160 members typically file between 1000 and 1600 amendments, or about a half dozen to ten apiece.  Some file more, some file fewer.  

On the Senate side the numbers are lower, as the Senators typically file under a thousand floor amendments.  Of course, with only 400 of them, that means that they can each put about twenty in the can.  One of the perks of being a Senator.  The Senate Floor debate is usually a little shorter, often wrapping up after three days (as opposed to five for the House).

Now, it is axiomatic that neither body can really debate 1000, let alone 1500 amendments. That would take more like a year than a week.  As a consequence, what happens in practice is that amendments get bundled.  Especially on the House side, probably 95% of the amendments get thrown in a bundle, and only 5% actually get debated.  On the Senate side, the number that gets debated is a little higher.

The Ways & Means Committees, with some input from the individual members, put together the bundles.  The way it used to work is this:

• The Ways & Means Committee put together "yes" and "no" piles.
• A member could pull a cherished amendment from the "no" pile and have it debated individually.
• Most of the time, these individually-debated amendments were voted down.

I don't know if it still works this way.  What the House now does is to take the bundled amendments, rewrite them (often with a different number for the earmark or the increase) and simply propose the bundle as one "consolidated" amendment.