An Open Amendment Process for the Senate?

At the start of the 114th Congress, newly minted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced he was returning the chamber to “regular order.” While the phrase “regular order” is ambiguous, McConnell made clear his new approach would end the contentious practice of “filling the tree,” wherein the majority leader blocks meddlesome amendments from the floor by stacking the available slots with his own amendments. The strategy of filling the tree had been attacked both within and outside the chamber as an undemocratic restriction on the rights and duties of individual senators. McConnell and his fellow Republicans, then in the minority, highlighted former Majority Leader Harry Reid’s use of the technique in their 2014 campaign, suggesting it was the primary cause of the legislative inefficiency that plagued the chamber.

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