The House adopted amendments on a two-bill spending package last week purporting to redirect sums ranging from $100,000 to study the impact of a mineral found to cause cracking in concrete home foundations, to $36 million for “public safety and justice facility construction” at the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

There’s just one catch: the provisions simply give the illusion of moving money around — with no real-world impact on agency funding priorities. The net financial impact of all 14 such amendments considered during debate on the $58.7 billion Interior-Environment and Financial Services measure — out of 87 total floor amendments on the bill — was precisely zero.

The standard language of this type of provision goes like this: “Page X, line X, after the dollar amount, insert “(reduced by $X)(increased by $X).” There’s nothing binding on the agency in question to spend the money a certain way. While ineffectual in practice, such amendments can hold symbolic value: they allow sponsors to tout their influence on the spending process, including in official descriptions circulated in advance of the vote and in floor speeches and news releases.

These so called plus-minus amendments also allow the majority party to appear charitable to the minority by allowing them floor time, and generally accepting such amendments, safe in the knowledge that no real money will change hands. In fact, of the 14 such amendments debated on the floor last week, 13 were sponsored by Democrats; in all, 11 of the Democratic amendments were adopted, all by voice vote.

Nonetheless, no Democrats ultimately voted in support of the underlying two-bill package, which passed the House on a 217-199 vote Thursday.