“Just 15 roll call amendments, that was in all of 2014,” Murkowski says. Senate to shatter 2014's amendment milestone The Senate held just 15 votes on amendments in 2014. This year, it’s set to surpass that mark after just three weeks.

The Senate is about to reach a milestone: By the end of this week, it will have held more amendment votes than it did in all of 2014.

On Thursday — just three weeks into the new year — the chamber is set to surpass last year’s total of 15 amendment votes, thanks to a flurry of voting centered almost entirely on the Keystone XL pipeline. The only non-Keystone vote so far this year came on an amendment by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on changes to the Dodd-Frank financial law.


Thursday’s milestone followed a raucous two-day period of votes in the Senate on multiple proposals regarding climate change, including the adoption of an amendment that says climate change is real — but doesn’t pin the blame on humans.

“Just 15 roll call amendments, that was in all of 2014,” said Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). “My hope is that we’re going to exceed last year’s total, hopefully here today.”

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has made opening up the Senate’s amendment process a key mark of his new reign. Thus far, he’s been amenable to allowing votes on Democratic messaging amendments on climate change on the Keystone bill, a measure that’s still headed toward a presidential veto.

“It’s great to see a real debate on the floor of the Senate again,” McConnell said Thursday. “I saw some action in the chamber yesterday, even some unpredictability.”

But Democrats are expressing happiness about the trend too: With seven Republicans up for reelection next year in blue states that President Barack Obama won in 2008 and 2012, Democrats hope to pile up the votes as ammunition on the campaign trail. As one example of potential attack-ad fodder for 2016, aides mentioned Republican votes that torpedoed an amendment aimed at requiring U.S. steel to be used to build the Keystone pipeline.

“We would love nothing better than for Senator McConnell to make his members take as many amendment votes on as many bills as possible, and his caucus members would love nothing less,” said one Democratic aide.

Aside from a bill preventing cuts to the U.S. Postal Service, Democratic leaders have mostly focused on environmental and energy amendments to Keystone. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democrats’ top message man, said the focus for now is on relevant amendments but, eventually, they may turn to non-germane amendments.

Asked recently about whether Democrats may offer amendments on proposals like raising the minimum wage and encouraging pay equity between men and women, Schumer responded: “You will see those.”

“There will certainly be times when we do non-relevant amendments, since we believe almost everything can be seen through the prism: We’re helping average Americans,” Schumer said.

Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada has taken most of the blame for producing last year’s dearth of amendments by using Senate procedure to protect bills from alteration. But the Senate’s byzantine procedural rules also make things more complicated given that any senator can reject an agreement to vote on amendments.

Last year, red state Democrats up for reelection balked at votes on divisive energy, health-care and social issues that Republicans were pushing in a rash of unrelated amendments to bills. A number of bills also never advanced past initial filibusters into the amendment stage.