300+ Citations On How Weaponized Transparency in Congress Drives Chaos and Corruption

300+ Academic Citations
Weaponized
Transparency
In 1830, a year before he died, lifelong
legislator James Madison underlined the
advantages of closed sessions during the
writing of the Constitution. For him,
privacy allowed members to approach
legislation with a “yielding and
accommodating spirit.” The same cannot
be said for publicity. As one former US
Congressman claims, open sessions bring
little but “combat and drama.” Such
observations have led us to introduce the
notion of weaponized transparency.
Weaponized transparency is a form of

legislative antagonism brought about by
increased legislative transparency. It is
sometimes known as messaging, bomb-
throwing, forcing embarrassing votes or
buncombe. This sunshine-based warfare
converts the amending process (and
other open legislative channels) into
proving grounds for ideological purity
instead of productive legislation. And it is
the principal driver of the surge in closed
rules.
By D’Angelo, Ranalli & King – February 4, 2022
   
Citations
Here we present citations (with links to original
sources). Each refers to examples of how
transparency is weaponized and how this
weaponization leads to chaos, gridlock and rancid
partisanship. Recently scholars have noted that
weaponization is also a principal driver of closed
rules, and some of the following citations reflect this
dynamic.
For a fuller description of this process of
weaponization, check our articles via the menu above
or browse this page here. For general citations on the
pitfalls of legislative transparency and how it
benefits lobbyists, click here. To see more on the
general link between transparency and partisanship,
click here or dig into the other menu items on this
page, where we also collect academic citations on the
power of secret ballots, brubery (the opposite of
bribery), perverse accountability and citizen
engagement (or lack thereof).
1
A huge percentage of time is spent on how
to use the political process to create a vote that
will embarrass the other side. You basically have
people working to make each other look as bad
and stupid as possible.
Rep Eric Fingerhut

Inside Congress (by Ronald Kessler 1997)
2
The number of restrictive rules rose partly
in reaction to heightened Republican efforts to
devise floor amendments that would force
Democrats to cast embarrassing votes.
Steven Smith 1987

O’Neill’s Legacy for the House
Weaponized Transparency - Part…

Part…
What is Weaponized Transparency? 3

4
Political-message bills have sprouted like
weeds... Elected officials have to show that
they’re doing something, so they propose bills
designed only to create a talking point against
the other side.
Editorial Board N.Y.Times 2012

The Bills to Nowhere
5
The point is not that transparency is bad
or good, but rather that it cannot be an end in
itself. It is a tool that is often indispensable for
democratic decision making, but it is a tool that
can also be used as a weapon.
Steven Aftergood 2019

Transparency vs. Good Government
6
We’ve lost out a lot with the camera
(televised proceedings), because it emphasizes
combat and drama rather than a thoughtful
analysis of issues.
Rep. David Obey 2010

Obey surveys House then and now
Senator Frank Murkowski 1996 - …
Senator Frank Murkowski 1996 - On the 7

Weaponization of the Amendment Process via
“Sense of the Senate“ Amendments
8
In the Constituent Assembly and during
the first years of the Convention (1792-95), the
radical left successfully developed the rhetorical
strategy of using roll calls as a weapon of
intimidation
Jon Elster 2013

Securities Against Misrule
9
Behind closed doors...buncombe is not
worthwhile. Only sincerity counts. Publicity
would lessen the chance for concessions, the
compromises, without which wise legislation
cannot in practice be secured. Men are averse to
changing their positions or yielding anything
when many eyes are watching.
Robert Luce 1926

Congress: An Explanation
1
Had the deliberations been open while
going on, the clamors of faction would have
prevented any satisfactory result; had they been
afterwards disclosed, much food would have
been afforded to inflammatory declamation.
Propositions made without due reflection, and
perhaps abandoned by the proposers
themselves, on more mature reflection, would
have been handles for a profusion of ill-natured
accusation.
Alexander Hamilton 1792

The Papers of Alexander Hamilton
1
The need to generate materials for
negative commercials also produces an ugly
blame game in Washington. Posturing for their
next campaigns, elected officials sometimes
introduce legislation designed to embarrass the
opposition. This sort of behavior has heightened
the gridlock in Washington over the past
decade.
Stephen Ansolabehere & Shanto Iyengar 1995

Going Negative
0:00
Wall Street Journal 2021 - McConnell 1

announcing that the Republicans will write
amendments designed solely to put Democrats
on the record – not to produce good legislation.
What he doesn’t admit is that these tactics also
push moderate Republicans to the edges as well.
1
The Republicans think that Reid has
tyrannically limited their ability to offer
amendments to legislation. Reid, on the other
hand, would argue that Republican
amendments in recent years have been
generally nothing more than political
grandstanding – proposals with no chance of
passage, introduced with the sole purpose of
making Senate Democrats take politically
embarrassing votes.
Rob Garver 2014

Insurance Bill Hits Political Snags
1
Business groups allied with Republicans
had demanded a roll call vote on full repeal,
even if the effort lost. They wanted to put
senators on the record and planned to use the
votes opposing the bill as a political weapon
against vulnerable incumbents in November.
Congressional Quarterly 2006

Opponents of Estate Tax Fall Short
1
For nearly a century after becoming a
standing committee, the Rules Committee
reported mostly open amendment rules... That
began to change when amendments offered in
the Committee of the Whole became subject to
rollcall votes beginning in 1971. Minority
Republicans seized on the new sunshine rule to
offer politically sensitive amendments.
Donald Wolfensberger 2015

Why Are Restrictive Rules Ratcheting Up?
Carl Hulse 2019 - Weaponizing Hot Button 1

Votes
1
What happens when you’re in the majority
is that your members don’t want to take any
tough votes, so they’re always beating on the
majority leader to file cloture or fill up an
[amendment] tree. Harry has filled up the tree
35 times, which is as many as the last five
leaders combined. I’ve got members that won’t
vote cloture unless they get amendments.
Mitch McConnell 2010 (in Chaddock)

Partisan Efficiency in an Open-Rule Setting
1
Lawmakers are consumed with trying to
trap one another with hot-button votes that
don’t have much to do with real legislative
business.
Carl Hulse 2019

Weaponizing Hot Button Votes
1
Publicity, first of all, can be used as a tool
of injustice and manipulated to skew public
opinion. Administrators who leak personal
information about political opponents or
publish documents to sabotage peace
negotiations use publicity in a way that is far
from neutral.
Sissela Bok 1982

Secrets - On the Ethics of Concealment
2
Party leaders might also request roll-call
votes to showcase an issue of concern to their
voters or to embarrass opponents by forcing
them to take an unpopular public stance on a
vote.
Carrubba, Gabel & Hug 2008

Legislative Voting Behavior
2
[Sometimes under an open & transparent
process] you bring a bill to the floor, the partisan
bomb throwers come out, right. They start
offering their poison pills and eventually so
many politically painful votes pile up that the
bill just sinks under its own weight.
Peter Hanson 2017

Legislative Branch Capacity Working Group
on Regular Order
2
Messaging is something that you see all
the time in Congress.
Matthew Green 2015

From the Library of Congress
James DAngelo 2019 - Transparency is a 2
Weapon
2
Shortly after television had entered the
House chamber, Democrats found themselves
on the receiving end of a daily barrage of
Republican verbal jabs during the morning hour
and special order periods. One House Democrat,
in reference to the practice, complained that the
periods were being used “to bludgeon us to
death each day on nationwide TV.”
Ronald Garay 1984

Congressional Television
2
Are members out there using the open
process to offer poison pills amendments – to
grandstand and embarrass the other party, or
maybe embarrass their own members – you
know some extreme member of the majority
party who want to embarrass leadership? Our
evidence suggests that there’s a lot of that kind
of activity…
Our takeaway point then is that when you open

the floor to debate you get a lot of legislating by
more ideologically extreme members of
Congress and probably amendments that are
designed to embarrass the other side or perhaps
embarrass their own members.
[Looking at the] ideologically extreme members

who are offering a lot of amendments, they’re
also not winning support even from their own
party. [Their] amendments are designed for
press releases position taking maybe
embarrassing other members. This is not what
we would define as productive legislating
Peter Hanson & Lee Drutman 2017

on Regular Order
2
To avoid tough questions and politically
embarrassing votes, the House and Senate have
even refused to consider a budget even though
they are required by law to adopt one.
Stan Collender 2018

Trump’s Path to Fiscal Ruin
Molly Reynolds et al 2019 2

Proposal to Ban Roll Call Amendments in the
Committee of the Whole
Option #5: Ban roll call votes on amendments in the Committee of the Whole, but enable members to call a 2
roll call on anything adopted in the COW after the bill is reported back to the floor Likely Consequences:
Prior to 1971, this was the practice followed in the House, with COW amendments disposed of via voice or
teller vote. Adopted amendments could get roll call votes later; failed amendments could not. This change
would potentially dis-incentivize the offering of pure messaging amendments whose sole purpose is to make
other members take difficult votes, as the value of so-called “gotcha” votes is lessened when the vote is not
publicly recorded. The majority leadership could, then, allow a more open amending process. Restoring this
approach would, however, reduce transparency in the House. In addition, it is unclear if the majority party
leadership would remain committed to allowing a more open process if politically embarrassing
amendments are getting adopted via the non-recorded votes in the COW.
For an explainer on weaponized transparency click 2

here.
3
Members of the House Select Committee
on the Modernization of Congress seem
universally disgusted by the cameras’ impact,
specifically how they’ve been weaponized for
made-for-TV partisanship now feeding a divided
country and 24-hour news cycle. The panel’s
hearing in March devolved into personal tales of
camera-bashing. John Lawrence, a former chief
of staff to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said the
decision four decades ago to open Congress to
the cameras created the “unintended
consequence” of fueling partisanship.
Geoff West 2019

Cameras as Cash Machines
3
House members feared that television
could be used against them in upcoming
elections. Republican Whip Robert Michel (R-IL )
took to the floor in October 1977 to warn his
colleagues that the House should carefully
consider the political impact of broadcasting the
House proceedings… Both parties began
gathering an arsenal of damaging clips of
opposition party members in a “video version of
mutually assured destruction.” Each party knew
that if it sanctioned the use of such clips, the
opposition would up the ante by unleashing its
own clips. There was little question that virtually
anyone could be made to look foolish by a
careful editing of comments.
Stephen Frantzich & John Sullivan 1996

The C-SPAN Revolution
3
Powerful committees like the House Rules
Committee, which schedules legislation, were
very hesitant to allow the cameras in. The
Republican minority regularly complained that
the Democrats closed such meetings out of fear
of political embarrassment.
Stephen Frantzich & John Sullivan 1996

The C-SPAN Revolution
Robert A. Caro 2003 - Master of The Senate. 3
Incident shows how LBJ (a proponent of secret
committees and secret voting) used roll call
votes to destroy his opponents.
3
The leadership also missed key
opportunities to set legislative traps for the GOP,
Burton told Rennert. O’Neill and Wright should
have forced the Republicans to cast recorded
votes that pitted their own region’s economic
interests, especially in farm areas, against
Reagan’s budget cuts. For example, Burton said
the leadership should have forced a roll-call vote
when the House passed a Reagan bill to reduce
dairy price supports. Even if a recorded vote
would not have changed the outcome, he said,
dairy Farmers at least would have known who
voted against them. “We must put Republicans
on the spot,” he said. “It’s time for them to show
their true colors – whether they’re Reagan
zealots or whether they’re more sensitive to
their own constituents.
John Jacobs 1997

Rage for Justice - Phillip Burton
3
Senate Democrats and Republicans
Thursday are breaking out their well-trod
strategy of forcing each other to cast politically
difficult votes, this time on amendments to a
budget “reconciliation” bill that would repeal
Obamacare. The amendments stand virtually no
chance of being adopted, but they'll make for
great campaign attack ads.
Katy O’Donnell 2015

Senate Votes Designed to Exact Political Pain
3
He dedicated the next few years to
comprehending the California Public Records
Act, the Brown Act mandating open meetings
and civil procedures. “For those who think the
Brown Act has no teeth, they are wrong,” said
McKee. “It provides us with the ability to
embarrass public officials.” And that’s just what
he did.
Christine Brownell 2002

Letting the Sunshine In
LoGiarto 2015 - GOP Civil War 3
McConnell got wind of an email sent by a Lee
aide to conservative activists that told of using a
planned show-vote on the Affordable Care Act
as a political weapon.
3
After a debate in the Commons on the
Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, in which a clause
offering commercial reciprocity to France was
defeated by 196 to 187, a handbill was put out to
publicize the division list (legislator’s votes) with
the obvious intention of damaging the electoral
interest of the minority.
J.R. Pole 1983

The Gift of Government
3
During the controversial governorship of
William Cosby in the 1730s, the Morrisite
opposition learned techniques of party warfare
that left their mark on the conventions of
legislative procedure. The Morrisites contributed
to the use of the press as a weapon of political
opposition. More than this, they saw that capital
was to be made from opening the debates of the
legislature to the public, and on at least one
occasion they got the House to vote to throw
open its doors. They wanted, moreover, to place
their own votes as well as those of their
opponents on the record, and in June 1737, the
assembly voted to record the names of
members voting “aye” and “nay” in divisions.
J.R. Pole 1983

The Gift of Government
4
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is
part of the basic weaponry of modern regulatory
war, deployable against regulators and
regulated alike. It differs, however, from other
weaponry in the conflict, in that it is largely
immune from arms limitation debate.
It is apparent that something went wrong. The

act and its amendments were promoted as a
means of finding out about the operations of
government; they have been used largely as a
means of obtaining data in the government's
hands concerning private institutions. They
were promoted as a boon to the press, the
public interest group, the little guy; they have
been used most frequently by corporate
lawyers.
Anton Scalia 1982

The Freedom Of Information Has No Clothes
4
Bach and Smith (1988) were the first to
emphasize the role that special rules play in
managing uncertainty in the House. They argue
that an unintended side effect of the 1970s
House reforms was to make floor action more
volatile and less predictable. The introduction of
roll-call voting on amendments in the
Committee of the Whole led to a large increase
in floor amendment activity, especially among
minority party members. Republican legislators
systematically offered amendments designed to
force Democrats to cast politically difficult votes.
Reductions in the prerogatives of full committee
chairs likewise made floor action less
predictable. As a result, the Democratic
leadership, via its control over the Rules
Committee, began to restrict amendment
opportunities on the floor. On major bills, the
percentage of open rules fell from over 70% in
1977-78 to under 14% in 1985-86.
C. Lawrence Evans 1999

Legislative Structure
Dr. Frances Lee & Rep Newhouse Discuss 4

Messaging in Congress
4
Since in our model the president wants to
appear moderate to voters, while Congress
wants him to appear extreme, Congress
sometimes writes a bill that it knows the
president will veto. Thus, despite Congress and
the president being completely informed, an
uninformed third party causes the outcome to
be Pareto inefficient.
Tim Groseclose & Nolan McCarty 2001

The Politics of Blame - Bargaining Before an
Audience
4
Our third result is consistent with
Gilmour’s notions of stalemates and bidding
wars. In each, the opposition members of
Congress pass an extreme bill, which is intended
to force the president to veto the bill so they will
have a campaign issue in the upcoming election.
Our fourth result where Congress and the
president reject compromises that they would
both prefer to the status quo is consistent with
Gilmour’s notion of strategic disagreement, a
phrase which Gilmour adopts as the title of his
book. In such cases “politicians frequently reject
compromise because the political advantages of
maintaining disagreements outweigh the
benefits of a modestly better policy achieved
through compromise (1995, 3).”
Tim Groseclose & Nolan McCarty 2001

The Politics of Blame - Bargaining Before an
Audience
4
Despite the encroachment on his power,
Mills stayed one step ahead of the posse. He told
the Rules Committee he preferred no rule at all
to a modified closed rule. He would take the bill
directly to the House floor and dare anyone to
amend it, in effect scuttling it. Mills knew
Democrats could not restrain themselves if
presented with such a rare and inviting target.
Chaos likely would ensue. Bolling, who agreed
with Burton on this issue, said the chairman’s
tactic was like offering a drink of water to a
person coming out of the desert and then
immersing him in a tub of water. Such “open”
rules, Bolling said, “made the House look idiotic
and totally ineffective.”
John Jacobs 1997

Rage for Justice - Phillip Burton
4
Democrat Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri
lamented how members routinely use the floor
to just “insult everybody” and that such
incivility is rewarded. He pointed to the example
of Republican Joe Wilson of South Carolina, who
was reprimanded by the House after yelling
“You lie!” at President Barack Obama during his
2009 health care speech to Congress but more
than doubled his typical fundraising on the way
to winning re-election the next year. Wilson is
still in office.
Geoff West 2019

4
The two parties have been battling for
months over amending Senate legislation.
Democrats say Republicans are only interested
in forcing politically embarrassing votes, while
Republicans say Democrats are autocratically
shutting down the chamber’s amendment
process.
Alan Fram (AP) 2014

Iran Sanctions Dispute
Sarah Ferris 2019 - House Dems React to GOP 4

‘gotcha’ votes
4
We conclude by considering the use of roll-
call votes as a political weapon, either to punish
one’s adversaries or to terrorize them.
Jon Elster & Arnaud Le Pillouer 2015

Semi-Public Voting in the Constituante
5
Nelson alleged that, behind the scenes,
GOP caucus leaders offered to withdraw the 60-
percent rule if Democrats would back off their
threat to force roll call votes on gender equality
and climate study amendment bills.
John Stang 2018

Lawmakers debate 30-plus budget
amendments
5
As [scholar Sarah] Binder points out,
Democrats imposed barriers against minority
dilatory tactics “continuously from 1975 through
1979” so that by the early 1980s they had fine-
tuned House rules to eliminate most minority
obstructionism. At that point, Binder continues,
“Democratic majorities turned to procedural
innovations to limit minority influence over the
agenda,” mostly in the form of restrictive special
rules from the Rules Committee.
The early tipoff to this new direction came in the

form of a letter sent in 1979 by Representative
John LaFalce (D-N.Y.), and cosigned by over forty
colleagues, to Speaker Thomas P. (“Tip”) O’Neill
and Rules Committee Chairman Richard Bolling
(D -Mo.) requesting more “modified open” rules
“limiting the number of... amendments” that
can be offered, “and the time permitted for
debate” on them. They conceded that some
might cry “gag rules,” but they claimed to be
interested only in greater institutional efficiency
“for the good of the House, its membership, and
the country.” However, it was obvious to most
observers that they were reacting to politically
embarrassing amendments being offered by
Republicans who took full advantage of the
rules authorizing recorded votes in the
committee of the whole and establishing a new
House television broadcasting system that had
gone live to the public earlier in 1979.
Bolling, who some said had put LaFalce and

friends up to writing the letter, was more than
happy to oblige and, shortly thereafter,
restrictive amendment rules were being granted
on more than just tax bills as had previously
been the case.

Changing House Rules
5
There was the concern voiced earlier by
members of the Rules Committee – if the bill
were overloaded with amendments, the whole
package would be endangered. Dealing with this
problem was more difficult than might be
imagined. With an open rule, it is virtually
impossible to prevent any member who wants
to propose an amendment from doing so, and
the reform coalition included many “bomb-
throwers” – members who desired sweeping
changes and who were viewed by their
compatriots as less than pragmatic…[and who]
pushed for less compromise and more action. In
this instance, the chief concern of the coalition
leaders was Representative Rees (the initiator of
the “beeper” experiment). He was an important
actor in the teller vote struggle, but he had also
drafted a large number of other possible
amendments to the bill and publicly expressed
his intention to introduce all of them, although
many (such as a negative pension plan) had no
chance of passage.
Norm Ornstein and David Rohde 1974

The Strategy of Reform - Recorded Teller
Voting
5
I discuss how particular tactics by the
minority party have developed since the 1970s,
then use case studies, aggregate data, or both to
explain why the minority uses them. Intent is
seldom obvious. For instance, a legislative act
(say, an amendment) might be offered in order
to alter a bill, make a political point, compel a
vote that embarrasses or discredits the other
party, or a mixture of these things. Floor
statements, news stories, legislative text, and
other clues are used to infer the motivation
behind minority party activity whenever
possible.
Matthew Green 2015

Underdog Politics
5
Messaging is very important. So now
amendments aren't necessarily offered to
influence a bill but rather to send a message.
Roy Blunt, who is, when he was in the House of
Representatives, after the 2006 elections and the
Republicans were in the minority, he wrote a
memo to Republicans saying look, we need to
offer key amendments or motions to recommit,
which is the guaranteed amendment to the
minority party, that will either win, they'll pass,
or they'll make Nancy Pelosi and Democrats
look bad. Either way, we win, right. So
messaging becomes central to what the
minority party does with the more classic
legislative tools that are at its disposal.
Matthew Green 2015

Partisan Football - President Harrison 1889 5

5
The best examples that I could find are
from times when new messaging tactics were
first developed. So the use of one minutes in a
partisan fashion, which really came about in the
late 70s, Republicans started doing it. That
really, really, Democrats really didn't know what
to do about that at first. And said why are you so
angry at us and talking about Ronald Reagan all
the time?
Matthew Green 2015

5
So what’s going on here? Both Democratic
and Republican representatives told me that
O’Brien and his allies used roll call votes as a
political weapon. They introduced bills and
demanded roll calls to get someone on the
record on an issue and then used it against them
in a political campaign. They used it as a tactic
to win power and tried to use it to keep power.
Votes that could have easily been determined by
a simple voice vote were put to roll call to try to
create “gotcha” moments, they said….State
Rep. Tim Copeland, R-Stratham, said this tactic
was used by Republicans to attack other
Republicans who didn’t toe the party line. “They
end up putting out these political notices in
people’s mailboxes and do snapshots of the
vote,” he said. “They try to argue you’re not
Republican at all.”
Howard Altschiller 2014

Roll Call Votes as Political Weapons
5
I was a little surprised that in discussing
messaging tactics, you didn’t include
amendment as a possibility. Certainly, putting
up an amendment... that you’re either going to
have to vote in favor of or look bad. That's
essentially the message,
Question posed to Matthew Green 2015

CRS Scholar Walter J. Oleszek ta…

ta…
Walter Oleszek on Transparency as a driver of 5

Partisanship 1999
6
[Writing about 1937] Further study is
needed to elucidate when the winning side will
seek a roll call vote. We conjecture that, in this
time frame, Republicans were generally
reluctant to seek roll-call votes because their
ties to southern conservatives depended in part
on downplaying partisan divisions. Forcing roll
calls solely to embarrass the Democratic
leadership would have made partisanship more
salient. During the court-packing fight of 1937,
Republicans generally kept quiet and allowed
President Roosevelt’s Democratic critics to take
the lead; they strategized that such discretion
would make Democrats less likely to see the
issue as primarily partisan and thus reduce the
pressure on wavering Democrats to stick with
their party (Patterson 1967).
Eric Schickler and Kathryn Pearson 2005

Agenda Control, Majority Party Power, and
the House Committee on Rules, 1937-52
Rise in closed rules driven by a weaponized 6

amendment process
6
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate
launched a final marathon session on
healthcare reform on Wednesday, with
Republicans forcing Democrats into a series of
politically tough votes before senators can pass
the last changes to the landmark law. Senate
Democratic leader Harry Reid ridiculed the
Republican attempt to force Democrats into
politically embarrassing stances. “How serious
can they be?” Reid said of Republicans.
“Offering an amendment dealing with Viagra for
rapists?”
John Whitesides & Donna Smith 2010

Vote Marathon on Healthcare
6
At a minimum, filling the tree stalls the
amendment process, which may be all that the
majority leader expects and wants. He may want
to buy time to negotiate an agreement to limit
or order amendments, or he may need time to
find additional votes for cloture and the bill. In
the meantime, filling the tree allows the leader
to delay consideration of unfriendly, irrelevant,
or embarrassing amendments and to avoid the
exposure of divisions within his party to public
view.
Steven Smith 2014

Senate Syndrome
6
Over the past few years, [Harry Reid] is a
Majority Leader who has acted tyrannically to
restrict the rights of all senators to debate and
offer amendments. He has used a parliamentary
tactic called “filling the amendment tree” to
block a free-flowing amendment process and
used a procedure to eliminate amendments
after the conclusion of debate... Reid showed his
true motivations when argued that he will
continue to prevent votes on “same-sex
marriage and abortion” because “I mean, the
American people aren’t interested in that.” This
is further evidence that reforming the Senate’s
rules is merely a means to stop difficult votes
for the majority party on revenue-neutral tax
reform, gun rights, entitlement reform and
traditional family values.
Brian Darling 2012

“Filibuster Reform” Is Power Grab
6
Democratic reformers are now pledging
less rigid controls... That sounds meritorious,
but a more open process might well conflict
with former (and possible future) speaker Nancy
Pelosi’s promise of a floor based on “civility,
fairness and transparency.”
In a highly polarized and competitive House, an

open floor has been an invitation to unrelenting
political warfare. Those Democrats of the 1970s
discovered as much when GOP strategists, as
one recalled, “took advantage of” loose rules to
target vulnerable Democrats. The number of
recorded votes skyrocketed from 177 in 1969 to
661 in 1975 and over 800 the next year, many
imbued with political, rather than legislative,
motivations...
Narrow margins, unrestrained special interest

money, inflammatory issues and social media
reward those who devise crippling and
embarrassing amendments. As a result, both
parties have circumscribed the amendatory
process lest members be subjected to recorded
votes designed to injure rather than improve.
John Lawrence 2018

Democrats Should Be Careful What They Wish
For
Leon V. Sigal 2006 - Negotiating Minefields 6
6
Republicans had ample reason at times to
filibuster; on many bills, to preempt the GOP or
simply to avoid embarrassing amendments,
Reid has “filled the amendment tree,” a tactic to
deny the minority any amendments on the floor.
Filibustering those bills, as a protest, is
understandable.
Norm Ornstein 2014

Yes, the Filibuster Is Still a Huge Problem
6
Majority status brings with it new
responsibilities to pass the party’s priority
legislation in a timely and successful fashion,
and that often entails severely restricting the
amendment process on major legislation to
avoid minority party obstruction and weakening
or politically embarrassing amendments.

Why Are Restrictive Rules Ratcheting Up?
Rise in Cloture Motions 6

7
Congress’s work on the 12 annual
appropriations bills ground to a halt in July,
when House lawmakers became embroiled in a
contentious battle over the confederate flag…
Rather than risk a series of politically
embarrassing votes on the subject, House
Speaker Boehner halted debate on the Interior
spending bill, and said there would be no
further action on appropriations bills…at least
for now.
Tom Steiger 2015

Health Policy Report
7
A motion to recommit, or MTR, is one of
the few procedural tools the minority party has
to get its message across. While the procedure
can be used in a way that actually makes
substantive changes to legislation, most often
the minority’s goal is to send a political
message, not improve the bill.
Lindsey McPherson 2019

Democrats Struggle with Messaging Votes
Lewis, Roberts 2014 - Mike Lee Defends 7
Procedural Stunt
7
At the end of the 20 hours, any
amendments that have not already been voted
on will be literally stacked into a pile and voted
on with very limited debate in what is known as
a “vote-a-rama.” The number of amendments is
unlimited, at least up until the time votes begin.
Democrats will file many, many amendments 7

designed to force Republicans to take difficult or
politically embarrassing votes.
Republicans may interrupt all the Kabuki theater

with actually significant amendments aimed at
influencing the ultimate bill. In other cases,
Republicans may, for symbolic purposes, offer
amendments they know will be ruled out of
order by the chair on the advice of the Senate
parliamentarian because they violate the rules
limiting budget bills to items strictly affecting
federal spending and revenues, or violate the
budget resolution that set up the whole process.
Ed Kilgore 2017
Procedural Madness Ahead
7
There is more party-line voting in the
contemporary Congress in part because floor
votes have been enlisted as a weapon in the
battle for party control of Congress.
Frances Lee 2016

Insecure Majorities
7
Forcing (transparent/public) votes on
divisive “hot-button” issues provides campaign
ammunition to party colleagues and supporters
back home.
Walter Oleszek 2015

Congressional Procedures and the Policy
Process
7
Most roll calls occur on amendments,
especially those designed to divide [Members]
for election purposes.
Walter Oleszek 2015

Congressional Procedures and the Policy
Process
7
Harry Reid & Mitch McConnell attempt to limit 7
embarrassing roll-call votes and weaponized
gotcha amendments by dispatching
amendments by voice vote. Reference is made
to foolish votes on viagra for prisoners.
click here to see original C-SPAN broadcast
8
It really is true that too much business in
Congress is determined by whether members
are willing to take politically motivated
messaging votes. Thus, other members –
particularly in the minority – deploy messaging
votes whenever they don’t like said business. My
favorite example of this was when Senator Tom
Coburn tried to derail health care reform in 2010
by introducing an amendment that would’ve
prohibited exchange health plans from
providing Viagra and other erectile dysfunction
to convicted sex offenders. As it happens,
Democrats were determined enough to pass
Obamacare to vote down many of these kinds of
amendments. But the threat of similar, less
outrageous poison pills has deterred them from
pursuing lower priority legislation in the Senate
since they lost the House in 2011.
Brian Beutler 2014

Mitch McConnell Strategy to End Senate
Gridlock
Peter Hanson 2014 - Abandoning the Regular 8
Order/p>
The narrow Republican majority in the Senate faced an onslaught of Democratic amendments
aimed at scoring “pre-election” points by forcing Republicans to cast difficult votes on guns,
terrorism, health care and drugs. Progress on the bills ground to a halt. Fed up with the
political battering they were taking, Majority Leader Lott and Speaker Newt Gingrich
announced that the Senate would abandon its effort to pass spending bills on an individual
basis. Instead, both chambers would package them together into an omnibus spending bill: It
is clear that Senate Democrats are using delaying tactics and political stunts designed more for
the upcoming elections than for the completion of the people’s business. Packaging the
remaining spending bills together in conference meant that two of the bills would not reach the
floor on an individual basis and the Senate would have no opportunity to offer amendments to
them. The Republican majority’s further aim was to bring the omnibus itself to the floor as a
non-amendable conference report to preclude amendments when it was debated. After
additional haggling with the Democrats, an omnibus package containing six spending bills was
brought to the Senate floor and passed without amendment.
8
The majority uses its control of the Rules
Committee to limit amendments by the minority
and avoid politically embarrassing votes.
Thomas Mann 1993

Testimony - House Congressional Record
Alan Fram 2018 - Democrats using 2017 8
‘Obamacare’ vote as political weapon
Democrats battling to capture House and
Senate control in November’s elections are
trying to weaponize that roll call, in which 217
Republicans voted yes.
8
Brian Beutler writes today about the
recent Republican practice of gumming up the
Senate by deluging every bill with a tidal wave
of awkward, superfluous, or just plain dumb
amendments designed to force Democrats to
cast politically embarrassing votes (“Is Senator
Catnip really opposed to free flag pins for all
vets?”):
To deny Democrats even symbolic victories, 8

Senate Republicans have flooded each
legislative debate with amendments – some
pertinent, some absurd – that Democrats didn’t
want to vote on, or that threatened the
legislative coalition behind the underlying bill.
When Reid has stepped in to protect his
members from these votes, McConnell has used
it as a pretext to filibuster.
So… I’d put this in the general category of 8

generic blather that switches sides whenever
the parties trade majorities. For the past few
years, McConnell has been for filibusters and
against limitations on amendments. Starting in
January, some alleged Democratic perfidy will
quickly give him cover to switch his position,
and Harry Reid will switch his too. Life will then
go on exactly as before. You heard it here first.
Kevin Drum 2014

No Change in the Senate
8
Amendments are opportunities to weaken
bills or embarrass the opposition, not to
improve the legislation. And votes on
complicated bills become fodder for
thirtysecond campaign ads.
Bruce Cain 2016

Is our government too open?
8
Pretty soon vulnerable Republican
incumbents like Kelly Ayotte and Rob Portman
will be asking McConnell to shield them from
tough votes themselves.
Brian Beutler 2014

Gridlock
Peter C. Hanson - Restoring Regular Order 8
9
The increase in transparency brought two
marked changes: a substantial increase in the
number of issues debated, and a seismic
increase in what is euphemistically known as
“messaging.” Some mistakenly claim this
onslaught of weaponized amendments was an
unforeseen consequence of sunshine. But the
dynamic was investigated by the Framers.
Alexander Hamilton insisted on secrecy
specifically to limit animosity. Had members
crafted legislation in sunshine, he wrote, “much
food would have been afforded to inflammatory
declamation.” James Madison agreed. To limit
partisan anger, the Framers employed rules of
secrecy in the Constitutional Convention and
placed a right to legislative secrecy in Article I.
But in the hearings and debates leading up to
the 1970 sunshine reforms, the ideas of the
Framers were overlooked. Worse, the spirit of
the Constitution was scorned. Future Speaker
Tip O’Neill brandished legislative secrecy like a
form of profanity, calling the secret amending
process a “cowardly system.” And no one
references the Constitution. But think of the
difference. Unlike the 1970 reformers, Hamilton
spoke from experience. In debates over the
Articles of Confederation, he suffered through
heated sessions of public debates. Contrast this
to O’Neill who had spent his early career
sheltered by a process permitting calming
secrecy.
James D’Angelo 2019

Transparency is a Weapon
9
Good government reformers have made a
decades-long push to make the activities of
members more transparent to the public so that
members can be held accountable for their
decisions. Some political scientists say these
efforts have been too successful, and that the
deal-making needed for orderly government is
now too difficult because members are
criticized the moment they stray from an
established public position (Binder and Lee
2013). One option would be to return to an
earlier system in which total vote tallies – rather
than the votes of individual members – are
reported for appropriations bills. Members
might be more willing to cast tough votes, and
there would be a reduced incentive for “gotcha”
amendments aimed only at causing members
political harm. The path of appropriations bills
through the floor would likely be smoother.
Peter C. Hanson 2015

Restoring regular order in congressional
appropriations
9
Senators prefer regular order, but turn to
omnibus packages because the Senate’s
individualistic rules permit appropriations bills
to be delayed or used to force votes on
politically painful amendments.

appropriations
9
Packaging bills together (via omnibus -
which is driven by weaponization) has the dual
effect of broadening the coalition of support for
the bill and reducing opportunities for
amendment relative to the regular order. It
trades an open legislative process for one that is
closed and restrictive. Political scientist Matt
Green has argued that the advantage of regular
order is that it allows members to challenge
problematic provisions in open debate and
strike or amend them. Unwise policies can be
adjusted and wasteful spending can be
removed. Abandoning regular order “risks
enacting substandard legislation” because it
eliminates this natural check in the legislative
process (Green and Burns 2010). Omnibus
legislating moves lawmaking behind closed
doors. Rank-and-file members are given few if
any opportunities to change the final package.
More errors, mistakes and waste may creep into
the final legislation as a result.

appropriations
9
The opening up of the process fosters
messaging politics and contributes to the harsh
partisanship characteristic of the contemporary
Congress.
Frances Lee 2019

Select Committee on the Modernization of
Congress
9
It really is true that too much business in
Congress is determined by whether members
are willing to take politically motivated
messaging votes. Thus, other members –
particularly in the minority – deploy messaging
votes whenever they don’t like said business.
Brian Beutler 2014

Gridlock
9
Today, most hearings are merely scripted
partisan theater, in which both sides present
witnesses not to persuade anyone, but to
generate sound bites; everybody’s mind is
already made up. In the current climate, party
branding and messaging dominate
congressional decisionmaking.
Lee Drutman 2017

Congress Wasn’t Always This Awful
Archival Footage 1940s – Weaponized 9

Transparency of Committee Hearings
9
Since the time of Newt Gingrich’s
speakership, wedge issues have been a
significant part of partisan efforts to use House
debates not just to advance legislative policy but
to drive a wedge between a congressperson of
the other party and his or her constituents by
forcing votes on amendments on which the
views of constituents and party leaders are at
odds. Before the 1970s, votes on amendments
were generally not recorded – House members
voted by voice, by raising hands, or by walking
down the center aisle to be counted. When small
groups of members began to insist that votes on
amendments, even those that reflected
intentionally divisive wedge issues, be “on the
record,” Congress became more transparent and
its members became more accountable, but at
the cost of turning the House into a
battleground for partisan advantage.
Mickey Edwards 2012

Parties Versus the People
9
When congressional majorities share the
party of the president, committee chairs are
reluctant to conduct regular oversight hearings
for fear of dredging up embarrassing
information that may harm the White House
politically. When government is divided,
congressional leaders are more likely to use
oversight as a political weapon against the
president, and federal agencies are less likely to
share information that committees request in
oversight investigations.
Democracy Fund 2017

Congress and Public Trust
1
November Amendments: Senators turn
up the political heat on colleagues as the
November elections get closer. A senator
pointed out that amendments were being
offered to one measure “with only one and only
one purpose in mind. Let us be realistic. [This] is
an opportunity for Senators on either side of the
aisle, whether it be Democrats or Republicans,
to develop ammunition to be used in some 30-
second spot ad in the next political campaign.
These votes are not about substance. They are
strictly about politics, positioning, window
dressing, and so forth.” The reverse approach is
to work to avoid troublesome votes. A
Democratic minority leader complained that the
majority leader was protecting Republicans who
had close November election contests from
having to cast votes on issues that might cost
them support back home. “They don’t want to
have votes on anything but naming airports,”
declared the minority leader. The majority
leader’s spokesman replied” “The Democrats
are just frustrated because we aren’t voting on
the things they want to vote on. Welcome to the
Minority.” Both parties allow senators in tight
election contests to offer popular amendments
that could win them votes back home.
Walter Oleszek 2015

Congressional Procedures
‘November Amendment’ is but one of the many

terms for weaponized amendments.
1
We also expect that the majority party will
attempt to bring up and pass “signature”
legislation that enhances its reputation, and
both parties will attempt to force roll call votes
on issues that pit the opposing party against the
preferences of most voters.
Gregory Koger & Matthew J. Lebo 2017

Strategic Party Government: Why Winning
Trumps Ideology
Sink 2012 – Weaponizing 1

1
November amendments are particularly
important in the contemporary Senate because
party control of the chamber can flip rather
quickly. As a result, majority and minority
leaders craft amendment strategies whose basic
purposes are, if in the majority, to hold power by
demonstrating the capacity to govern
effectively, or, if in the minority, “to build a
political case against the majority’s legislative
program” and majority members up for
reelection. Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill,
Mo., who faced a tough but successful 2012
reelection, exclaimed, “For the past two years
[Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell has been
trying to figure out what amendments he could
put on the floor to make my life miserable.
There have been so many gotcha votes.”
McConnell has been trying, she said, to devise
“some way to put something on the floor that
would get me to vote against my own mother.”
Walter Oleszek 2015

Congressional Procedures
‘November Amendment’ is but one of the many

terms for weaponized amendments.
1
To meet the “100 Hours” target, none of
the bills went through committee. In addition,
they were all brought up under closed rules
allowing no amendments. House Democrats
had promised a more open and bipartisan
legislative process and Republicans complained
bitterly about these departures from “regular
order.” Democrats argued that all of the
measures had been frequently debated, but
they clearly feared that, were amendments
allowed, consideration might stretch on and on
and that Republicans would likely propose
amendments that confronted their
vulnerable freshmen with difficult votes.
Barbara Sinclair 2008

Leading the New Majorities
1
The reforms of the 1970s helped to
facilitate stronger partisanship in Congress, as
members used the more open process to score
political points against their opponents. By
making it easier to force roll-call votes, the
reforms made it possible for members to design
amendments to embarrass members of the
opposing party. Such votes on hot-button issues
could then be shared with the campaign
committees, so members could claim that their
opponents had voted against a balanced
budget, for forced integration, and other
matters. Similarly, the televising of the House
and other transparency reforms of the 1970s
were also very useful to a minority party seeking
to force its issues into public view. As
Republicans seized these opportunities,
Democrats adopted more creative procedures to
clamp down and restrict opportunities to
participate. The feedback loop worked in favor
of increasing centralization of power in the
leadership. House leaders now govern the
House floor with a much heavier hand than they
did in the 1970s. In the words of forty-year
Republican Congressional staffer Don
Wolfensberger, “Every time you have a change in
party control, the party in the minority says, ‘If
we get in the majority we're going to be more
fair and open.’ They get into the majority, and
it's even more restrictive than it was.”
Casey Burgat 2015

Order in the House?
1
In the 1980s, Democratic House leaders
had developed the rules that govern floor
consideration into flexible and powerful tools
for managing floor time, focusing debate, and
sometimes shaping choices. When in the
minority, Republicans had labeled restrictive
rules dictatorial and illegitimate, and had
promised not use them if they took control. Yet
the new Republican majority in the 104th
Congress had promised to deliver on an
ambitious agenda, much of it in the first 100
days. And, in the mid-1980s, House Republicans
had given their leader the authority to appoint
Republican members of the Rules Committee, as
the Democrats had a decade earlier; thus the
committee remained an arm of the majority
party leadership. When Republicans brought
one of the early Contract items to the floor
under an open rule, Democrats behaved just as
the minority Republicans had when they had
been given the opportunity by an open rule:
they offered multitudes of amendments, many
designed to force vulnerable Republicans to cast
difficult votes. In response, and despite their
promise, Republicans began to bring most
major legislation to the floor under complex and
restrictive rules. The proportion of all rules that
were restrictive did go down from 70% in the
103d Congress to 55% in the 104th (Rules
Committee, Survey of Activities 1996, 92-97). On
major measures, however, 77% of rules were
restrictive in the 104th-compared to 82% in the
103d and 72% in both the 100th and 101st
Congresses. On this major legislation, the
restrictions, by and large, were more substantial
than just time limits on the amending process,
or the requirement that amendments be
“preprinted” in the Congressional record;
according to the Republican Rules Committee’s
own classification, 63% of the rules were either
modified closed or closed.

Transformational Leader or Faithful Agent
1
Whether or not a rule limits amendments,
the motion to recommit with instructions, in
order just before the passage vote, gives the
House minority an opportunity to amend the
bill. When Republicans were in the majority,
their leaders defined that vote as a procedural
vote which all party members were expected to
oppose. When Republicans began to use the
motion to recommit (MTR) as a weapon against
the new majority, the Democratic leadership
decided that asking all their members to vote
against every MTR no matter its content would
endanger some of the members they most
needed to protect. Of the 61 MTRs that
Republicans offered between January and the
August recess, 16 won. (Democrats averaged less
than two wins per year during the 12 years of
Republican control.) Those Democrats who
approve of their leaders’ permissiveness argue
that none of those were substantively
significant. Others, however, worried that once a
MC voted for an MTR, she lost the protection of
being able to claim votes on MTRs as just
procedural not substantive – and that
Republicans were setting up Democrats for
more difficult and destructive MTRs in the
future.

Leading the New Majorities
1
[In 1974], facing numerous embarrassing
amendments from Republicans, beleaguered
Democratic leaders tried to increase the number
of members required to generate a recorded
vote on an amendment from 20 to 40.
Eric Schickler, Eric McGhee and John Sides 2003

Remaking the House and Senate - The 1970s
Reforms
Note: In this citation, we see that Democrats –

in 1974 – were already attempting to defend
themselves from the rise in messaging votes
on embarrassing amendments. And unlike
later reformers (like LaFalce) the legislators in
1974 understood the cause for the rise and
they addressed it directly – they sought to
limit the ability for minorities to call for
recorded votes.
1
Another important outcome of the
sunshine reforms was the rise of so-called show
votes, or messaging votes. These votes, often on
amendments to unrelated bills, are designed
not as constructive efforts to improve legislation
but as pieces of political theater. Sometimes, the
goal is simply to make certain members look
good to their constituents. At other times, it is to
force rival legislators to take a stand on a
difficult issue or entrap them into a vote that will
serve as fodder for negative campaign ads that
make extreme claims about a candidate’s voting
record. Frequently employed for partisan
purposes, these votes also give rise to unique
forms of legislative dysfunction.
As with lobbying and partisanship, the surge in

show votes dates precisely to the rise in
transparency. With legislators more frequently
voting publicly, the temptation to pin them
down, on the record, proved irresistible. As the
congressional scholar Donald Ritchie has
written, Jesse Helms, a conservative Republican
senator from North Carolina, “pioneered the
tactic of repeatedly proposing controversial
amendments and demanding roll-call votes,
even though his side would likely lose.” Soon,
other members joined in, demanding repeated
recorded votes on hot-button issues, such as
abortion, same-sex marriage, and school prayer.
The number of these weaponized amendments
skyrocketed, gumming up the legislative
process.
James D’Angelo & Brent Ranalli 2019
The Dark Side of Sunlight (Foreign Affairs
Magazine)
Congressional Record 145 / 123, Sep 1999 1

1
Gingrich’s strategy was to use the new
openness on the House floor, including the
television coverage now provided by C-SPAN, for
political advantage. Soon, dissident Republicans
were offering regular floor amendments to bills
designed to put Democrats in embarrassing
positions whereby their votes could be used as
campaign fodder; and Republicans began to
take to the deserted House floor after regular
business, using a procedure called “special
orders,” to orchestrate colloquies that bashed
the majority.
Norman Ornstein & Thomas Mann 2006

The Broken Branch
1
One additional property of the shift to
electronic voting in the United States is worth
noting. Minority-party members – those most
likely to be dissatisfied with overall legislative
outcomes – were inclined to push amendments
that, when subject to recorded votes, would be
politically uncomfortable for the governing
majority.
John M. Carey 2009

Legislative Voting and Accountability
1
Imagine how much more productive
Congress might be if the legislative process
could no longer be co-opted to force politically
embarrassing votes. If both sides could no
longer spend their time in office attacking each,
might they find common ground? Get things
done? Come up with bold solutions to our
nation’s problems?
Jennifer Hoelzer 2013

How Not to be Partisan
1
We have not had a return to regular order.
We had some initial testing of the waters by the
Democratic leadership and they got belted
politically… And the more Republicans took
advantage of opportunities for amendments to
offer sort of wedge issues and politically
embarrassing votes, Democrats said we could be
fair and open and have nothing to show from
our substantive agenda or we could operate
more like the Republicans have in recent years,
and they have largely opted for the latter… The
backdrop is so poisonous and the need to sort of
deliver on an agenda versus the need to
dramatize the differences and the possibility of
embarrassing the majority party has kept the
reins pretty tight in the Congress.
Thomas Mann 2007

Is the Broken Branch on the Mend?
1
Members of Congress from both parties,
along with their families, would routinely visit
our home for dinner or the holidays... This type
of social interaction hardly ever happens today
and we are the poorer for it. It is much harder to
demonize someone when you know his family
or have visited his home. Today, members
routinely campaign against each other, raise
donations against each other and force votes on
trivial amendments written solely to provide
fodder for the next negative attack ad. It’s
difficult to work with members actively plotting
your demise.
Senator Evan Bayh 2012

Who Stole the American Dream?
1
Democrats forced Republicans to cast
politically embarrassing votes against such gun
control measures as trigger locks and
background checks at gun shows — votes that
Goodling tried to head off with repeated
scoldings that the measure “is not a gun bill.”
CQ Quarterly 2000
Back to Appropriations
1
Much important legislation will be put off
until election, too. The reason, to avoid putting
Congressmen on record with politically
embarrassing votes on the war and other vital
issues. Politicians, above all else, must survive
to serve. That's why the maneuvering.
Associated Press 1970

Back to Appropriations
Alexander Hamilton 1792 1

1
Senate Appropriations Committee
Chairman Ted Stevens (R Alaska) canceled all
subcommittee mark-ups this week because he
does not want them to be open to criticism over
the summer break, and there’s not enough time
to get them through committee and to the floor
before the Democratic Convention in late July.
With this in mind, the education appropriations
bill may not ever make it to the floor as a
separate bill, because the leadership wants to
avoid a series of politically embarrassing votes
to increase education funding.
Stephanie Glesecke 2004

Week In Review
1
Representative Emanuel was one of the
early adapters of a weaponized motion to
recommit and considered it a form of
psychological political warfare. “Obviously, they
are ‘gotcha’ amendments designed to give
people political problems,” said Representative
Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland and the
majority leader. “And by the way, that’s what we
did. So this is not a new, you know, invention of
the Republicans.”
Carl Hulse 2019

Weaponizing Hot Button Votes
1
The Democrats’ attempt to portray its
opponents as extreme is probably one of the
most common tactics in American politics.
Senate Republicans, for instance, tried to do
essentially the same thing when they offered
President Obama’s budget, which the Upper
Chamber soundly defeated. Similarly, it’s also
like offering “poison pill” amendments, which
one party offers to force votes on politically
unpalatable positions. This gives rise to
“November Amendments” – or amendments
whose entire purpose is to embarrass an
opposition amendment by forcing a vote on
something that will make a pithy, if misleading,
30-second campaign ad in the next election.
Mark Strand & Tim Lang 2013

Voting Present as a Legislative Tactic
1
At the same time, the Democrats’ greater
use of restrictive rules responded to a minority
party that had been demanding increasingly
more roll-call votes on floor amendments in the
wake of the 1970s reforms. A couple of the
interview subjects for this project referenced the
ironic way that the reforms of the 1970s wound
up over time redounding to the Republicans’
electoral benefit. “The reforms of the 1970s
[were] an important precursor” to the
strategies pursued by the COS, noted one
veteran Republican staffer. By making it
easier to force roll-call votes, the reforms
made it possible for COS members to “design
embarrassing amendments. The votes on
them would then be fed to the campaign
committees, so you could say, ‘Jack voted
against the balanced budget,’ or something like
that.” The televising of the House and other
transparency reforms of the 1970s were also
very useful to a minority party seeking to force
its issues into public view.
Frances Lee 2016

Insecure Majorities
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Senator Olympia Snowe 2013 – Effect of 1
Modern Partisanship
1
Open rules may facilitate productive
debate but also open the door to problems that
make effective deliberation more difficult, such
as dilatory tactics or efforts to politically
embarrass members... Regular order permits the
minority party to offer amendments that may
roll the majority party and potentially damage
its reelection interests.
Lee Drutman & Peter Hanson 2019

Can America Govern Itself?
Note: the authors leave out transparency as the

potential driver of these problems they address.
1
The blame was pointed at this
amendment (2016 Democratic amendment to
preserve order) for having injected partisan
politics into appropriations. So we see two kinds
of patterns here then, amending activity which
actually strengthens bipartisan coalitions and
amending activity which takes the bill that was
viewed as likely to pass and then injects a new
issue and that disrupts the coalition of support
for that bill. So our our key takeaway point here
then again for those calling for regular order is
to recognize what they are calling for is a double
edged sword. It is not simply opening the door
to productive debate, it’s decentralizing power
right and in particular it’s opening the door to
minority party legislative activity that might not
be in the majority’s interest.
Peter Hanson 2017

Note: the authors (Lee Drutman and Peter Hanson)

leave out transparency as the potential driver of
these problems they address. And this tactic is a
major reason why the issue base in Congress
increased dramatically from the 1970s on. New and
hot button issues can be weaponized.
Richard Bolling 1972 - Voting to Pressure a 1
Presidential Veto
1
We demonstrate that majority party
extremists refrain from offering amendments
despite the relative open floor setting.
Nevertheless, chamber majorities cannot
restrict minority legislators from offering
amendments designed to force them to cast
uncomfortable votes and delay the legislative
process… Minority party senators claim the use
of restrictive amendments led them to engage in
more obstructive behavior and force more
cloture votes. At the start of the 112th Congress,
Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Minority
leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) came to a
“gentlemens’ agreement,” in which Reid would
not block amendments and McConnell would
not force cloture votes on non-controversial
measures (Sanchez 2011). The agreement was
quickly broken. Democrats alleged this was due
to Republicans abusing their right to offer non-
germane “message” amendments, which
increased delay and could weaken or harm the
underlying legislation (Sanchez 2012).
McConnell countered that Reid wanted to
protect his members from casting “tough votes.”
Carson, Madonna, Owens 2012

Partisan Efficiency in an Open-Rule Setting
1
Amendments are also sometimes used to
force senators to go on the record, usually on
highly emotional issues such as abortion and
busing. The senators who offer such litmus test
amendments hope the results can be used by
their ideological allies to defeat senators who
vote incorrectly. Using roll call votes to create
campaign issues, while certainly not new, was
perfected in the 1970s and 1980s by members of
the New Right.

Transformation of the US Senate
1
The limited scholarly work on the topic
suggests that [the first recorded votes in
legislatures] originated in early American
legislatures. It appears to be one of the few
parliamentary devices where its regular usage in
the United States predated its employment by
the British Parliament… The first known
instance of this occurred in 1641, after a vote
ordering the execution of Thomas Wentworth,
the 1st Earl of Strafford. The names of those who
voted against the bill of attainder were
publicized as “betrayers of their country (Luce
1922, 355).” The vote passed and Strafford was
eventually beheaded.
Michael Lynch, Anthony Madonna 2019

Pre-publication (History of Congressional
Transparency)
What this citation suggests is that the very first

recorded votes in legislatures were weaponized.
1
A number of observers of early American
politics have argued that the lack of a sufficient
second clause led to an abuse of calls for the
yeas and nays in the Continental Congress.
Joseph Story (1833, 303), for example, argued it
had been “used to excess” by members of a
“dissatisfied minority, to retard the passage of
measures, which are sanctioned by the
approbation of a strong majority.” In a letter
published under the pseudonym “Leonidas,”
Benjamin Rush assailed the Congress for taking
far too many “yea and nay” votes, which he
suggested led to them failing the people on
substantive issues (Butterfield 1951).
Michael Lynch, Anthony Madonna 2019

Pre-publication (History of Congressional
Transparency)
What this citation suggests is that the very first

recorded votes in legislatures were weaponized.
1
The change in Senate styles, and the
impact of that change upon how the institution
functions, has, however, also created problems
for the Senate as a legislative body. The Senate
finds it more difficult to get its essential
legislative business done. The Senate's slowness
in passing legislation and its difficulty in making
decisions are, in part, the result of senators’
broader participation. When more senators
representing a greater diversity of interests and
opinions take part in legislative battles, decision
making will be more difficult. Narrow partisan
margins, conflicts with the president, and the
constraints imposed by huge budget deficits
have contributed to this difficulty. So too have
the ability and willingness of senators to pursue
their own agendas at the expense of the
institution’s agenda.
Senators’ unrestrained pursuit of their own

agendas can be highly divisive. When Senator
Jesse Helms and his like-minded colleagues
force other senators to go on the record over
and over again on such emotional issues as
busing, school prayer and abortion,
resentments are created. That the point is often
not to win but to provide ammunition for
future electoral opponents of senators who
disagree with Helms makes rhetoric that much
more divisive. When Senator William Armstrong
keeps the Senate in session most of the night
with an amendment to repeal a tax deduction
for members of Congress, Senate comity is
severely strained. When Senator Howard
Metzeobaum uses publicity and the Senate rules
to kill large numbers of special interest,
constituency-oriented bills, the mutual
accommodation that contributes to smooth
working relationships is disrupted.

Transformation of the US Senate
1
[If President Kennedy] suffers the normal
off-year election losses his hands will continue
to be tied at least until 1964… and therefore, the
most useful thing to do during this session
would be to concentrate on painting the
Republicans, and particularly the Republicans in
the House, in the worst possible light. This
might well make the current session even less
productive than it otherwise might be, but if it
results in a victory in November it will make his
first term as a whole a good deal more
productive than it otherwise might have been.
The tentative plans to force roll-call votes in the
House on a federal scholarship plan and on
medical care for the aged are other steps in this
direction.
Howard Margolis 1962

Kennedy's Politics: How To Make the
Republicans Look Nasty
1
Roll-call votes provide an obvious means
by which party leaders can monitor compliance
with their voting instructions...Legislative
parties may use roll-call votes specifically to
discipline their members. Roll-call votes allow
legislative party leaders to monitor their
members’ behavior, which is essential for
accurately doling out reward or punishment.
Carrubba, Gabel & Hug 2008

Legislative Voting Behavior
1
Former House Parliamentarian Asher
Hinds wrote that the procedure was “greatly
abused” by members who would draft
resolutions “of no practical standing in the
House, sometimes so artfully worded as to be
political traps, condemning many members to
political dangers in their districts, whether they
voted for or against them.”

Suspended Partisanship in the House
1
The 1980s marked a major procedural
change from past decades in House floor
amending practice. Whereas previously most
important bills had been considered under a
relatively open amendment process (closed
rules on tax bills being the exception), that
began to change in the 1980s as the House
became more partisan and some members saw
the amendment process as one place to draw
bright lines of distinction between the parties.
This in turn led to a counteraction by those who
resented the long hours spent considering
amendments, not to mention the politically
embarrassing votes they were being forced to
cast.

1
The intimidation factor is alive and well on
Capitol Hill, where most members, while
privately resenting the pressure, dutifully toe
the Israeli line. If voting were kept secret, I am
confident that aid to Israel would have long ago
been heavily conditioned – if not terminated – in
both chambers.
Rep. Paul Findley 2003

They Dare To Speak Out
1
(Because of the sunshine laws) more
constitutional amendments have been offered
in the past 32 years (5,449) than in the first 173
years of our history, virtually all of them ill-
conceived, trivial and politically driven. To the
Senate's credit, not one has been approved by
the required two- thirds vote in the past 24
years…(But we Senators) have all come to
reflexively calculate on every vote, significant or
insignificant, (1) what 30-second television spot
our next opponent can make of it, (2) the impact
it could have on contributions, and (3) what
interest group it might inflame or please.
Senator Dale Bumpers 1999

How Sunshine Harmed Congress
1
The motion to recommit with instructions
creates significant challenges for House
majorities. As a result of a past reform effort, in
the early 1970s procedures were implemented
for conducting recorded votes in the Committee
of the Whole – the parliamentary device through
which amendments are considered on the
House floor. One unintended consequence was
a dramatic increase in the number of
amendments, which in turn made deliberations
within the chamber less predictable and more
politically risky for lawmakers. Increasingly,
members were forced to take positions on
controversial floor amendments that could
damage them at home with constituents.
The consequence was considerable pressure

within the majority caucus of the day to clamp
down on amending opportunities, and the
percentage of legislation considered under open
procedures began to fall. Indeed, the proportion
of open rules has plummeted from nearly 85
percent during the 1970s to 44 percent in the
early 1990s to less than 10 percent in recent
years. During 2017- 18 (under Republican
management) and so far in 2019 (with
Democrats in the majority), roughly half of the
special rules reported by the House Rules
Committee were closed – effectively precluding
amendments not proposed by the reporting
committee – and about half were “structured” –
limiting amendments to only those referenced
in the rule or accompanying report.
As the ability to offer amendments during the

Committee of the Whole has been sharply
restricted, the importance of the motion to
recommit to House minorities has grown. Often,
it is the minority party’s only guaranteed point
of access into the floor decision making process.
C. Lawrence Evans 2019

House Procedure Reform
1
In the privacy of closed-door sessions,
lawmakers are better able to reason on the
merits of public policy without fear that their
enemies will turn their words against them.
Joseph Bessette & John Pitney 2011

American Government and Politics
1
Members still have incentives to
strategically manipulate the recorded voting
record to gain a variety of political advantages.
They do this by strategically adding “frivolous”
votes to the record – votes that provide a
political message to constituents but are not
representative of the lawmaking process. They
also do this by strategically omitting votes from
the roll call record that may send a political
message to constituents that members would
rather not have them receive.
Michael Lynch, Anthony Madonna & Alice

Kisaalita 2018
Broken Record - Transparency, Position
Taking and Recorded Voting in the US
Congress (from upcoming 2019 book)
Anthony Madonna 2018 – Position-taking 1
Amendments
James D’Angelo 2018 – Position-taking 1
Response
1
Men would prepare resolutions on
subjects of no practical standing In the House,
sometimes so artfully worded as to be political
traps, condemning many members to political
danger In their districts, whether they voted for
or against them. Members, therefore, did not
naturally like to run risk of such pitfalls, or to be
on record upon questions not of a practical
moment to the United States, or which might
involve local prejudices In their homes and thus
destroy their usefulness, without any
compensating good.
Hinds 1908
Is the Code of the House Limber Enough
*NOTE: This is the first known case of

weaponization, though we exepect it to have
occurred right from the beginning of Congress.
Stanley Bach (2001) finds numerous examples
in the early 1900s of this problem, which were
called buncombe legislation. And they were
based on the roll calls around suspension of the
rules.
1
According to James Madison’s notes, Rufus
King argued that a record of votes would be
“improper as changes of opinion would be
frequent in the course of the business and
would fill the minutes with contradictions.”
George Mason seconded King's objection,
stating that a record of the opinion of members
“would be an obstacle to a change of them on
conviction,” and, when promulgated in the
future, “must furnish handles to the adversaries
of the Result of the Meeting.” The rule was
subsequently dropped by unanimous consent.
James Madison 1787

Madison Debates
1
Majority Leader McConnel clearly tried to
hold an amendment vote on a Sanctuary Cities
amendment to put the Democrats on the spot
and force them to vote on it, clearly with the
idea of using that amendment as a way to put
people on record, and then to show it off this
summer and fall in preparation for the elections.
Matt Glassman 2018

Budget Deal, DACA and Blood Orange
1
Parties in Congress routinely try to force
recorded votes on issues that will cast their
opposition in an unattractive light. When these
votes work as intended, they elicit party conflict
and foreground party differences. The quest for
party differences cuts against bipartisan
collaboration on legislative issues. An out party
does not win a competitive edge by
participating in, voting for, and thereby
legitimating the in party's initiatives. Instead, an
out party angling for partisan advantage will
look for reasons to withhold support and
oppose.
Frances Lee 2016

Insecure Majorities
1
By incorporating the role of an audience
and of Presidential approval ratings, [Groseclose
and McCarty (2001)] showed that it is possible
for vetoes to occur even with perfect
information exchange between the President
and Congress. Effectively, the game adds a new
dimension: now, even if Congress would benefit
from striking a compromise from a policy
standpoint, they benefit even more by causing
the President to look extreme or look weak by
having to veto a bill.
Wesley Sheker 2019

The Observer Effect: the Impact of an
Audience on Political Negotiations
1
The subtext of most leadership
negotiations is protecting members from tough
(weaponized) votes. Majority leaders do it by
using Senate rules to block the minority from
offering amendments; minority leaders do it by
refusing to support procedural votes unless they
can offer those amendments. “What happens
when you’re in the majority is that your
members don’t want to take any tough votes, so
they’re always beating on the majority leader to
file cloture or fill up an [amendment] tree. Harry
has filled up the tree 35 times, which is as many
as the last five leaders combined,” McConnell
said. “I’ve got members that won’t vote cloture
unless they get amendments…”
Gail Russell Chaddock 2010

Mitch McConnell Predicts more
Bipartisanship
1
Party leaders fueled polarization by
seeking roll call votes on the very issues that are
likely to divide the parties....(and) the roll call
agenda now focuses on the sorts of economic
issues that will likely produce cleavage between
the two parties... In this way, party polarization
is a vicious cycle. Party leaders have more power
in a polarized Congress and have incentive to
pursue roll call votes on issues that strengthen
party polarization. Consequently, it is hardly
surprising that the national agenda gravitates
toward economic matters that divide the
parties.
Neal Devins 2011

Party Polarization and Congressional
Committee Consideration of Constitutional
Questions
1
The national policy agenda may well be
tied to the incentives of party leaders to take roll
call votes on the very issues that divide the
parties. (For example) In 2007, Democrats
sought to embarrass the Bush Administration
through oversight hearings that did not seek to
shift power away from the President to the
Congress.
Neal Devins 2011

Questions
1
In the 1970s, Senator Jesse Helms (R-
North Carolina) pioneered the tactic of
repeatedly proposing controversial
amendments and demanding roll-call votes,
even though his side would likely lose. The
conservative Helms aimed to put liberal
lawmakers on record on such social issues as
AIDS funding, abortion, court ordered school
busing, and federal financing of the sometimes
tasteless arts. “I wanted senators to take stands
and do it publicly. I was willing to leave it to their
constituents to decide what would happen
next,” Helms said, defending his actions. “When
senators had to run on their record instead of
their rhetoric, things really began to change.”
To counteract such tactics, majority leaders

have resorted to “filling the amendment tree.”
Normally, senators lose the floor as soon as they
file an amendment, but under the “right of first
recognition” the majority leader is always called
on before anyone else. Therefore the majority
leader can file an amendment and immediately
seek recognition to add an amendment to the
amendment (known as a “second-degree
amendment”), and keep on filing amendments.
Until the Senate votes on these amendments,
no other amendments will be in order. A
diagram of how such amendments branch out
resembles a tree, so they are called
“amendment trees.” The objective is to prevent
opponents of the bill from securing the first vote
on an amendment of their choosing, perhaps
something that would create political problems
for the majority or would significantly alter the
bill.
Donald Ritchie 2010

Congress: A Very Short Introduction
1
Anxious to know the probable outcome of
a vote, party leaders deploy their whips to serve
as “head counters.” In the House, deputy and
regional whips will determine how members are
leaning and then stand in the doorways to the
chamber to encourage members to vote with
the party. “If you really are a good vote-counter,
you don’t let something come up that you can’t
win,” said a former House majority whip, Tony
Coehlo (D-California). Good vote-counters save
information about the members and use it to
trade, cajole, lean on, and threaten them.
Donald Ritchie 2010

Congress: A Very Short Introduction
1
Party leaders in both the House and
Senate also sought to centralize leadership by
using party caucuses, task forces, and other
techniques to shape the party’s agenda. These
efforts are often tied to “message politics”—
party efforts to use the (transparency of the)
legislative process to make symbolic statements
to voters and other constituents. Rather than
allow decentralized committees to define
Congress’s agenda, Democrats and Republicans
alike see the lawmaking process as a way to
distinguish each party from the other.
Neal Devins 2011

Questions
1
Lindsey Graham was pissed. The whole
thing was “crap,” “a charade” and “despicable,”
the South Carolina Republican said. By the fifth
day of Senate hearings for Supreme Court
nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Graham was done
with Democrats harping on what he considered
to be a slanderous sexual assault allegation.
“This is the most unethical sham since I’ve been
in politics,” Graham said, pointing a finger
across the dais of the Judiciary Committee. The
clip went viral. Fox News ate it up. And for
Graham, the soundbites paid off handsomely.
During the next month, his campaign received
$319,000 in large donations (more than $200) –
or five times what he raised the previous month.
More than 80 percent of the money came from
people outside Graham’s home state. For the
senator, who’s seeking a fourth term next year,
the takeaway is clear: Full-throated histrionics,
when broadcast live for millions and replayed
for days on cable news, can turn into easy
money. But for those focused on how Congress
is stymied by partisanship and consumed by
fundraising, the moment delivered this
counterintuitive message: While putting
Congress on TV has brought transparency to
the legislative process, it has also created a
prime venue for the sort of grandstanding
that galvanizes a political base, divides a
country and raises a whole lot of money.
Geoff West 2019

1
When leaders choose to make themselves
bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents,
in the construction of the state, will be of no
service. They will become flatterers instead of
legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of
the people. If any of them should happen to
propose a scheme of liberty, soberly limited,
and defined with proper qualifications, he will
be immediately outbid by his competitors, who
will produce something more splendidly
popular. Suspicions will be raised of his fidelity
to his cause. Moderation will be stigmatized as
the virtue of cowards; and compromise as the
prudence of traitors; until, in hopes of
preserving the credit which may enable him to
temper, and moderate, on some occasions, the
popular leader is obliged to become active in
propagating doctrines, and establishing powers,
that will afterwards defeat any sober purpose at
which he ultimately might have aimed.
Edmund Burke 1790

Reflections on the Revolution in France
Frances Lee 2016 – Insecure Majorities 1

1
Minority party Republicans, increasingly
frustrated by decreasing opportunities to
participate, responded with an increased
appetite for dramatic ways to disrupt the House
majority, to dramatize procedural abuses by the
majority, and to offer embarrassing
amendments. In turn, the majority party’s
response to such dramatic acts was to limit
further still their prospects for participation by
using the Rules Committee, which after reform
was dominated by the party leadership, to
further restrict debate and amendments on the
House floor. In addition to increasingly frequent
use of restrictive rules, the leaders would also
engage in more aggressive efforts to structure
special rules or self-executing rules designed to
further advantage the majority party at the
expense of the minority, as well as to limit the
minority party’s right to offer a motion to
recommit with instructions - a long-standing
procedural safeguard for the House minority.
Increasingly aggressive both procedurally and
politically, the majority party was looking to
govern with minimal minority consultation and,
as a result, increased restrictions on minority
participatory rights.
Douglas B. Harris 2019

Robert H. Michel: Leading the Minority
1
After 1971 it became relatively easy to
demand a recorded vote on amendments...
Such rules changes have complicated the lives
of members and reinforced some of the more
troubling aspects of the permanent campaign...
Opposition researchers pore over members’
voting records in an attempt to find a vote
contrary to – or a vote that can be
(mis)construed as contrary to – the preferences
of their constituents. Every vote a member casts
must be considered a potential campaign issue.
Indeed, some bills and amendments are offered
only as a vehicle for forcing a vote that will
provide a campaign issue.

Permanent Campaign
1
[To Representative Dan Lungren] the
tactics of pushing for embarrassing roll call
votes on the House floor, using the votes to
attack targeted Democratic incumbents, and
employing harsh and personal rhetoric to
provoke Democratic responses and engage C-
SPAN viewers were legitimate hardball tactics. . .
. But the Democratic tactics, including, he
believed, regular short counts of Republican
votes, abuse of proxy voting, the indignity of the
McIntyre affair, and unfair committee and
subcommittee assignments, were out of
bounds…It was clear that Lungren’s feelings
were in substantial part rooted in minority
status; in the House he was a second-class
citizen, and he couldn’t stand it. He wouldn’t
abide Democrats who rubbed that in through
petty abuses of parliamentary procedure.

The Broken Branch
1
We decried a series of internal weaknesses
in Congress…including institutions for debate
that put a premium on cheap shots and devalue
discussions…and the use of procedure and
symbolism to embarrass the opposition in a
quest for partisan advantage.

The Broken Branch
1
In 1971, recorded votes in the Committee
of the Whole were instituted, which allowed
Republicans to offer their proposals during the
amendment stage and obtain recorded voles,
making the motion to recommit less significant
and often duplicative. Still, Republicans insist
that the motion, as one of their few
prerogatives, should be left to them to
determine appropriate use.
The majority has increasingly taken the view

that the motion has been used as a vehicle to
harass the majority and obtain floor voles on
potentially embarrassing subjects, rather than
as a legitimate tool for presentation of serious
legislative alternatives. And because
Republicans can usually offer major
amendments during debate in Committee of the
Whole, this “two bites of the apple” argument
has been a standard response to Republican
complaints about restrictions placed on the
motion to recommit.
This resulted in institutions for debate that put a

premium on cheap shots and devalue
discussions that could either develop
agreements or help the public choose among
competing positions. It also resulted in the use
of procedure and symbolism to embarrass the
opposition in a quest for partisan advantage.

Renewing Congress
1
transparency that one person considers
indispensable is often deemed to be
unnecessary, inappropriate or even threatening
by someone else. Current congressional
demands for testimony and documents amount
to “constant harassment,” said Attorney General
William Barr.
Steven Aftergood 2019

Transparency vs. Good Government
1
As soon as an important bill comes up, if
the vote count indicates an embarrassing
setback on a Republican amendment or the
chance of an even more embarrassing setback
on the vote on the bill itself, will Democratic
leaders submit to the embarrassment or find
tools, such as closed rules or extended votes,
to help them prevail? If Democrats do succumb
to those temptations when they recapture the
majority – if they do not follow through on their
pledges to run Congress more fairly and openly
and to assert Congress’s prerogatives – we will
be all over their case.

The Broken Branch
1
'Postcard votes'– Lawmakers on the
receiving end of negative attacks say it's difficult
to explain to some voters why the attacks are
false or misleading. Conrad Sen. Llew Jones,
one of the leading Republican opponents of this
kind of electioneering, dubbed the term
"postcard vote" during the last legislative
session. Jones said some lawmakers, at the
behest of special interest groups, introduce bills
during the Legislature that have little to no
chance of passing and becoming law. Jones said
the sole purpose of some of those bills is to set
up situations in which lawmakers are forced to
cast votes on ideological issues. Those votes are
later used against legislators come primary
election season. Jones said bills often have
multiple votes during the tedious legislative
process, and any one of those votes — whether
it be on an amendment, a procedural motion,
etc. — can and will be used against some
lawmakers come primary election time...
Republican lawmakers who cast votes based on
their conscience and constituents, and do not
always go along with certain special interest
groups or other members are their party, are
most at risk of attack come primary season.
John S. Adams 2019

Negative mailers crowding mailboxes
1
Republicans accused Democrats of
abusing the open rules by seeking to score
political points rather than legislating: “I know
some of my colleagues are going to express
concerns about procedure and the fact that this
is a structured rule,” observed Rules Committee
member Bradley Byrne (AL-1). “Well, regular
order means that the House works. Regular
order doesn’t mean chaos. Regular order
doesn't mean that Members get to offer poison
pill amendments just to kill a bill.” Democrats
countered by accusing Republicans of unfairly
shutting down debate in order to avoid painful
votes. Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (MD-5)
responded: “ As soon as it became clear… that
House Republicans might have to take an up-or-
down vote again on whether to ban
discrimination against LGBT Americans, they
shut the open process down.”
Lee Drutman & Peter Hanson 2019

Can America Govern Itself?
Frederick Gagnon 2006 – Le Congrès Des 1
États-Unis
1
If transparency is not reduced to what it is,
a means, it is a threat, so that democracy has
realized the dream of totalitarianism. The
demand for excess transparency is no longer the
quintessence of democracy, but rather its direct
opposite.
G. Carcassone 2001
Le Trouble De La Transparence
1
Among Senate procedures, the “vote-a-
rama’ is second perhaps only to the filibuster as
a campaign tool. The stretch of roll call votes on
amendments offers members a chance to bring
pet issues to the floor and show up members of
the opposite party, virtually risk-free. Consider
them press release votes. Take an amendment
from Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) to extend
federal funding for Medicaid expansion. His
office styled it as a move to “protect more than
600,000 Ohioans who gained coverage through
the state’s Medicaid expansion from Republican
attacks on Medicaid." It’s certain to pop up in a
campaign advertisement against Ohio
Republican Sen. Rob Portman, who is facing a
tough reelection fight this cycle — even though
it stands no chance of being attached to the
legislation.
Katy O’Donnell 2015

Senate Votes Designed to Exact Political Pain
1
Roll-call votes…actually provide a
distorted view of legislative voting behavior in
general. First, for many legislatures, only a
subset of legislative votes is executed by roll call.
Several studies indicate that this subset is not a
random sample of all votes and so may suffer
from significant selection bias. Roll-call votes
are typically not requested randomly by a
disinterested party; they are selected by a
purposive actor (such as a party leader) with a
vested interest in what the vote will reveal about
legislative behavior to a particular audience.
Thus, we cannot be confident that we can infer
behavior on the unobserved (non-roll-call) votes
from the roll-call votes. This disjunct has
negative implications for the use of roll-call
votes to estimate legislators’ ideal points, the
dimensionality of the policy space, and party
influence on legislative voting. Second,
legislative parties may use roll-call votes
specifically to discipline their members. Roll-call
votes allow legislative party leaders to monitor
their members’ behavior, which is essential for
accurately doling out reward or punishment.
Clifford Corrubba, Matthew Gabel & Simon Hug

2008
Legislative Voting Behavior, Seen and
Unseen: A Theory of Roll-Call Vote Selection
1
A Republican lawmaker accused House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and congressional
Democrats of "shutting down the process" in the
House of Representatives. Democrats say the
restrictions are needed to ensure Congress has
the time to pass a dozen individual spending
bills in the next few months to fund the
government, while lawmakers also deal with
health care and energy reform. Mr. King and
other Republicans charge the rules violate the
House's traditions for debate and are meant to
protect Democrats from politically embarrassing
votes.
David Sands 2009

Dems Shut Down Debate in House
1
Putting individual spending bills on the
floor also forces senators to take politically
difficult votes that potential opponents could
highlight and challenge come the next election
season. To help their own members avoid such
scrutiny and to reduce the number of times they
need to attract minority votes , majority party
leaders take the omnibus route instead.
Monkey Cage 2017

This is Why the Budget Process is Broken
1
And perhaps most important, the partisan
character of amending activity changed
suddenly with the advent of recorded electronic
voting. With new voting procedures in the 1970s,
[the minority party] could force [the majority
party] to go on the record, often repeatedly, on
divisive amendments. [The minority] actively
sought ways to challenge committee products,
raise ideologically charged issues, and force
recorded votes...in order to compel [the
majority] to take politically dangerous public
positions. The effect, quite naturally, was to
heighten the personal and partisan conflict on
the floor.
Steven Smith 1989

Call to Order
1
Electronic voting made possible the full
exploitation of floor amendments as political
tools by the rank-and-file membership.
Steven Smith 1989

Call to Order
1
The agitation about the volume of
amending activity in the 1970s suggests that
committees and the majority party did not see
the counter-amendments as sufficient
protection from unfriendly amendments.
Secondary amendments are not always
successful, they usually do not protect
members from politically embarrassing votes,
they seldom reduce uncertainty about floor
outcomes, they probably compound scheduling
problems and increase the frequency of
obstructionism in the Senate, and they do little
to preserve a special status for committee
recommendations. Efforts to expand the use of
suspension motions and restrictive special rules
in the House and the continuing interest in some
germaneness and debate restrictions in the
Senate reflect the limits of secondary
amendments as a means for preserving
committee power. Thus, for a variety of reasons,
no conclusive interpretation of the observed
pattern of secondary amending activity is
possible.
Steven Smith 1989

Call to Order
1
Beyond their immediate effects on policy
outcomes, restrictive special rules have
advantages for committee and party leaders
that other sources of negative power cannot
replicate… much of the time and effort required
to be on the lookout for unfriendly amendments
can be saved when amendments must be
printed in the Congressional Record or
presented to the Rules Committee in advance.
Moreover, these are times when a committee's
reputation within the chamber hinges on its
ability to protect agreements with colleagues
from floor amendments and embarrassing
public exposure on the floor.
Steven Smith 1989

Call to Order
1
The parliamentary arms race of amending
activity, filibusters, cloture, and scheduling
tactics feeds upon itself. Senators seeing
colleagues reap political payoffs for employing
last-resort tactics tend to follow suit. If that is
not impetus enough, outsiders, the
administration, interest groups, constituents,
expect their legislative champions to exploit the
full complement of parliamentary tools on their
behalf. Innovation begets imitation; move
begets countermove. By the 1980s, Senator
Thomas Eagleton could report, without too
much exaggeration, that his colleagues “are
prepared to practice the art of gridlock at the
drop of a speech or the drop of an amendment.
The birds do it, the bees do it, all Senators in a
breeze do it.”
Steven Smith 1989

Call to Order
*NOTE: This isn’t a quote that talks directly

about transparency, but note that Smith
mentions that “outside groups, the
administration, interest groups and constituents
expect” action. Well these groups can‘t expect or
demand this action if they can’t see it.
Lynch, Madonna & Kisaalita 2019 1
1
On many vital issues, such as civil rights,
policy outcomes were controlled by a
conservative majority or at least a sizable
obstructionist conservative minority. The
conservative coalition also controlled decisions
on several key committees and so was in a
position to block committee action on
legislation important to many Democratic
liberals. Norms of committee deference and
apprenticeship served to reinforce the power of
the conservative oligarchy. For his part, [Lyndon
B.] Johnson attempted to avoid open intraparty
splits by refusing to bring up highly divisive
legislation to the floor until he had the votes,
and even then he worked to avoid
amendments and recorded votes on which
party factionalism would surface. Thus, much to
the dismay of some liberal Democrats,
Johnson's deliberate strategy reduced the
number of controversial bills brought to the
floor, the number of filibusters, and the volume
of amending activity.
Steven Smith 1989

Call to Order
*NOTE: What Smith is saying here, is that even

before the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970
there was a conscious effort by some to avoid
divisive roll call votes. And so, to pass the civil
rights bills and avoid partisan pressures,
Johnson increased the level of secrecy.
1
Limitation riders were used
disproportionately by Republicans and
Democratic conservatives who lacked votes in
the committees. Riders on such highly
controversial issues as abortion, school busing,
schools, and job safety regulations forced
members to cast recorded votes, often
repeatedly, on politically sensitive matters.
Steven Smith 1989

Call to Order
1
But “both sides have abused” the
amendment process he said. “They'll take the
opportunity to file amendments... that are not
serious legislative attempts,” but are instead just
trying to send a political message. It takes hours
of floor time to dispose of the amendments,
which never had a chance of passage anyway.
“Some people blame C-SPAN,” LaTourette joked,
because the lawmakers are simply
grandstanding for the TV camera.
Rep. Steve LaTourette 2005

Amendments are Nearly Extinct in the House
1
The most notable use of the floor
(recorded votes), and House television, was the
1984 effort by a group of conservative
Republicans, who had dubbed themselves the
Conservative Opportunity Society (COS) the
previous year. In the face of restrictive special
rules and a truncated congressional agenda,
conservative Republicans sought ways to raise
their own issues and exact a price from
Democrats for placing obstacles in their path.
Their effort had two components. The first was
to pursue obstructionist parliamentary tactics at
every turn, including repeated unanimous
consent requests to take up controversial
legislation and demands for recorded votes on
normally routine procedural motions. They
hoped to build a record of opposition to their
causes among marginal House Democrats who
might be vulnerable to charges of support for
liberal leadership positions.
Steven Smith 1989

Call to Order
1
Members in both houses seem to offer a
lot of floor amendments with nothing
accompanying them except speeches. An
interview (May, 1971) with Senator James L.
Buckley (R., N.Y.) shortly after he took office (he
was still a political innocent and for that reason
a good observer) contained this comment: “He
has been surprised, he said, to discover that so
many things happen in the Senate ‘for symbolic
reasons’ rather than practical reasons, such as
the practice of Senators offering amendments
that they know have absolutely no chance of
passing.”
David Mayhew 1974

The Electoral Connection
1
House Republicans forced a vote
Wednesday on a resolution to express support
for ICE – Immigration and Customs Enforcement
– enraging Democrats who complained the
measure was a political stunt intended to
embarrass Democrats who have called to
abolish the embattled agency.
John Parkinson 2018

GOP forces House Democrats into ‘Gotcha
Vote’
Gueron 1994 – Civil Rights Procedures 1
1
The minority party often proposes
amendments that, although virtually certain to
be defeated, raise issues that the minority
wishes to highlight or on which they want to
force senators in the majority to go on record
with a roll-call vote. Such votes can play very
prominently on 30-second TV commercials
during political campaigns.
Arenberg & Dove 2012

Defending the Filibuster
1
All of this was troubling enough when the
modern wave of transparency laws were
enacted in the 1970s, but these problems have
worsened over time. Today’s more contentious
political environment has fundamentally altered
the way American government now operates.
Partisan polarization has risen to levels
reminiscent of the late 19th century. When
obstruction is the goal, every step in the
legislative process is a potential opportunity for
delay and obstruction. Hearings become
showcases for partisan viewpoints, not
opportunities for fair-minded investigation.
Amendments are opportunities to weaken bills
or embarrass the opposition, not to improve the
legislation. And votes on complicated bills
become fodder for thirty-second campaign ads.
Bruce Cain (Stanford) 2016

Is our Government too Open?
1
Many GOP senators and aides concede
that Lott is taking extraordinary procedural
steps to keep vulnerable Republicans from
having to vote on difficult issues such as gun
control or the minimum wage. “He is trying to
protect his members,” Daschle said. When
Daschle offered the gun control amendment
May 16, Lott tried unsuccessfully to have the
Senate declare it non-germane. But Daschle
threatened Lott with a filibuster of the
underlying spending bill, so Lott reluctantly
agreed to a vote the next day. The next day Lott
stoked the battle with a procedural move that
will prevent Democrats from offering other
sense-of-the-Senate amendments to spending
bills, the existing rule that bans legislative
amendments on such bills.
CQ Almanac 2000
Juvenile Justice Bill Gets Hung Up
1
McCarthy blasted that move Tuesday,
telling reporters it amounted to an
unprecedented delegation of legislative powers
to a small panel of party leaders. "It's something
Congress has never done before," he said. "What
the Democrat majority is doing is, they're trying
to get to impeachment without having their
members actually vote upon it. They're trying to
protect members from not taking a difficult
vote."
Staff Reporters 2019

House panel OK'd to raise heat
Evans, Oleszek 1999 – Procedural Features 1
1
The recorded teller vote, he recognized, is
in principle good for democracy, but even this
has another side. ‘The amending process
became a ‘gotcha’ process rather than a
legislative process. It enabled all of these single-
issue groups to get a roll call on everything and
run a TV ad against you financed by special
interests’

Schudson (Rise of Right to Know)
Robert A. Caro 2004 – Master of the Senate 1
LBJ fights for voice vote to avoid
embarrassment
1
I got to the Senate in January 1977 and we
had our party caucuses then, and they were
reasonable affairs. But beginning in my last
couple of years in the Senate, they changed, and
they became basically schemes to embarrass
the Democrats. And I take it that it was pretty
much the same on the other side, and it’s easy
to do it. The way you try to embarrass the other
side is you concoct amendments for members of
the Senate to vote on that will put them in a bad
light. This is not a new strategy. When Ronald
Reagan was first elected president, he put in
place with the help of Congress what was
popularly called Reaganomics, which was
essentially, “Let’s cut taxes and trim back some
of the spending programs.” The Democrats
offered a series of floor amendments that we
Republicans had to vote on, and basically they
were to the effect of, “Let’s restore money for the
disabled and the veterans and so forth,” and not
give tax breaks to the rich, and that was the kind
of thing we had to vote on. The other side has
done it to Republicans. And so these Tuesday
meetings became increasingly “gotcha”
meetings, where members of my party would
stand up with real glee on their face – “Make em
vote on it” – something that would make the
Democrats look bad. Now, my understanding is
that instead of the parties meeting once a week
on Tuesdays for lunch, they now meet Tuesday
and Wednesday and Thursday for lunch, just as
parties. And all of these meetings are in the
same vein, namely, let’s do the other guys in and
set ourselves up for the next election. So
everything has to do with, how am I going to
gain advantage for my party in the next election?
Sen. John Danforth 2015

America’s Broken Politics
1
I don’t directly cover the Ways and Means
Committee but people whose opinion I trust
make a good case for the process and the
product being better when the doors are closed.
Jaqueline Calmes CQ Press 1987

C-SPAN: Open or Closed Committees
1
Rep. David Obey (D -WI) offered a colorful
description of the growth in message votes: “I
always tell people this [place] used to be 50
percent legislative and 50 percent political. Now
it’s 95 percent political because you didn’t have
these ‘gotcha’ amendments… When you turn
every damn bill into a gotcha vote, and when
the parties are feeding every roll call to the
campaign committees within the hour so they
can blast facts to people in the marginal districts
and distort what the hell the votes were, it just
makes members far more ditzy and makes it
harder for them to cast rational votes.”

Rogers - Obey Surveys House Then and Now
Ranalli, King & D’Angelo 2016 – Weaponized 1
Transparency (at Harvard)
1
Bauman even entertained requests for
recorded-vote amendments from Republican
challengers to Democratic incumbents in order
to compel Democrats to take politically
dangerous public positions.
Steven Smith 1989

Call to Order
1
The Speaker of the House, Carl Albert of
Oklahoma, was furious over the action and got
the bill resurrected and passed a few days later,
but only after Mr. Bauman forced a final roll‑call
vote. Last year he also raised enough
parliamentary objections to force a rollcall vote
on a bill giving members of Congress a 5 percent
pay rise. “They desperately didn’t want a
roll‑call,” Mr. Bauman said. “As a result,” he
added, “a lot of members will be embarrassed
when they go hack and run for re‑election.” Mr.
Bauman’s tactics have led to complaints from
other representatives that he is being an
obstructionist or is showboating. Representative
Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. of Massachusetts, the
Democratic majority leader, once denounced Mr.
Bauman’s tactics as a “cheap, sneaky, sly way to
operate.
Richard Madden 1976

A New Gadfly Keeps and Eye on the House
1
On any given day he can be seen jumping
up, demanding an explanation of some bill that
is being rushed through without debate, raising
parliamentary obstacles to other legislation he
deems to be a boondoggle, or forcing roll‑call
votes on measures that many Representatives
would just as soon not be recorded as voting for.
It is Representative Robert E. Bauman, a
conservative Republican from Maryland’s
Eastern Shore, engaging in what he calls “a sort
of guerrilla warfare.”
Richard Madden 1976

A New Gadfly Keeps and Eye on the House
2
Leaders, and members too, often had to
face unanticipated amendments on
controversial issues, sometimes deliberately
offered to force them into politically dangerous
votes.
Walter Kravitz 1990

The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970
2
With each party coveting the allegiance of
the country's 22 million veterans and their
families, Republicans and Democrats blamed
each other for turning the effort into a chess
match aimed at forcing politically embarrassing
votes.
Associated Press 2014

Senate Blocks Dems' Bill Boosting Vets’
Benefits
2
But there were other reasons for the
change in strategy, according to members of the
committee and the Democratic leadership. One
was that the Democrats were having trouble
agreeing on a budget. Another was that they
wanted to draw the Republicans into the
process so they could get some support or at
least force Republicans into some politically
embarrassing votes. But when the Republicans
countered this move with the tactic of voting
present instead of yes or no to various proposals
on Thursday, the Democrats saw a need to
reassess their strategy. For one thing, in an open
session with just Democrats voting, the division
within their own ranks would become clear,
possibly making it more difficult to get support
in the full House for the ultimate committee
plan. For another, public votes could give
campaign ammunition to future Republican
opponents.
Jonathan Fuerbringer 1987

Budgetary Rhythms
2
When the law was approved, he notes,
much of its support, especially among
Democrats, was almost entirely political - a
reluctance of members to be recorded voting 2

against a budget mechanism that promised to
balance the budget in five years
... Few senators enjoy going alone against their

colleagues, especially when the tactics disrupt
the work of the Senate or force
politically embarrassing votes 2
Jonathan Fuerbringer 1987

Guerilla Warfare and the Budget
2
Last year, hyper-partisanship, especially in
the House of Representatives, helped push the
federal government to the brink of a shutdown
four times. And since Democrats took control of
the Senate in 2007, Republicans have employed
the filibuster 360 times to tie up legislation–an
astonishing rate by any historic measure.
Meanwhile, to avoid politically embarrassing
votes, Senate Democrats have refused to author
a budget resolution for the last three years,
contravening the intent of the 1974 Budget Act.
Michael Lubell 2012

Inside the Beltway
2
Finally, when the Appropriations bills do
reach the floor, they are inundated with
hundreds of amendments, many intended to
tank the bill by forcing the majority to cast
politically embarrassing votes. Multiply by
twelve separate measures in the House and the
Senate and it’s clear that the regular order
vehicle has careened into the ditch.
Gary Andres 2017

Fixing the Congressional Appropriations
Process
2
Reid postponed the vote to buy time for
building support. In the meantime, he was
forced to allow Republicans to offer a series of
amendments requiring Democrats to cast
politically painful votes. Sen. David Vitter, R-La.,
for example, successfully demanded a vote on
an amendment to eliminate automatic cost-of-
living increases in congressional salaries.
Senators of both parties knew these votes would
figure in future ads against Democratic
candidates. “This is all about developing
campaign commercials,” said Sen. Mark Begich,
D-Alaska. “Democrats effectively used the pay
raise issue against several Republican
candidates in past cycles,” noted a National
Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman,
“so I don’t think they should be at all surprised if
this emerges as an issue in some of their own
campaigns.”
Davidson, Oleszek & Lee 2013

Congress & Its Members
2
Amendments are not always intended to
enact policy changes. They can instead be used
as a tool of obstruction or to derail legislation.
They also can serve political purposes by
putting members on the record on specific
issues. For example, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-
Mo., who won reelection in a tight 2012 contest,
exclaimed that in the lead-up to the election,
Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, R -Ky., had
been “trying to figure out what amendments he
could put on the floor to make my life
miserable.” McConnell’s goal, she said, was “to
figure out some way to put something on the
floor that would get me to vote against my own
mother.” House majority leaders, who control
the floor agenda, regularly employ special rules
to limit the amendments that members can
offer to particular bills. By so doing, the leaders
often can engineer favored policy outcomes,
expedite floor action, and prevent politically
difficult issues from being raised on the floor.

2
Senate amendments are often designed to
force members to declare themselves on issues
that command public attention. Sen. David
Vitter’s, R-La., amendment to an omnibus
appropriations bill to end automatic cost-of-
living increases in congressional salaries is an
example. Lawmakers who vote for salary
increases, especially during hard economic
times, risk having the voters tum them out of
office.

2
Amendments can be taken up and voted
on after the fifty hours but without debate. This
circumstance often leads to “vote-a-ramas” over
several days, when senators may “cast back-to-
back votes on a dizzying array of dozens of
amendments,” often with the two Congresses in
mind. As national policy makers, members of
Congress may have to cast tough but
responsible votes, which will “serve as valuable
campaign fodder” for opponents in the next
election.

Congress and Its Members
2
Rather than pass any of the other bills that
would likely receive bipartisan support on the
floor, the House leadership scheduled the one
bill that divided the parties completely. The
moral of the story is scheduling votes is often a
partisan act. As Frances Lee illustrates, party
leaders have several incentives to wage partisan
war.
Huder 2013
How Congress Polarizes America
2
The problem with the Freedom of
Information Act is different. It was meant to
serve investigative journalists looking into
abuses of power. But today a large number of
FOIA requests are filed by corporate sleuths
trying to ferret out secrets for competitive
advantage, or simply by individuals curious to
find out what the government knows about
them. The FOIA can be “weaponised”, as when
the activist group Judicial Watch used it to
obtain email documents on the Obama
administration’s response to the 2012 attack on
the US compound in Benghazi.
Fukuyama 2015
Why Transparency Can Be a Dirty Word
2
Castaldo also refers to a demand [in 1790]
by two right-wing deputies for “a roll-call with
inscription and a list of the names, so that we
can distribute them in the provinces.” We
cannot assess the importance of these tactics,
bur it seems safe to say that the demand for roll-
call voting was mainly the weapon of the left.
Jon Elster & Arnaud Le Pillouer

Semi-Public Voting in the Constituante
2
The one predictable result of televising the
House and Senate floor is that it has produced
an increase in non-legislative speeches (one-
minute and special order speeches) by members
wishing to speak on subjects of their own
choosing for home or national consumption.
Not only have these speaking venues resulted in
longer sessions each day, but they have been
the source of coordinated political attacks on
the other party’s policies as well as on
individuals of the other party – especially those
accused of ethical problems in the Congress and
the administration. The partisan
wars...deteriorated into bitter personal attacks.

Congress and the People
2
While the suspension procedure is most
often used for minor and relatively
noncontroversial bills, there is a parallel trend in
the House towards a greater reliance on
restrictive, special rules from the Rules
Committee which limit what amendments can
be offered on major legislation. Increasingly,
modified closed rules that allow just one
amendment—a minority party substitute—have
become the favored procedure of the
Republican majority (though not officially
condoned by the minority leadership). There
are a number of explanations for these two
developments toward more restrictive
legislating ranging from the personal
convenience of shorter work weeks to the
political convenience of having to vote on
fewer controversial matters. Both processes
also provide near maximum protection for the
legislative product of committee majorities.

217
‘Gotcha’ Amendments, Electronic Voting
and Television in the House --> I always tell
people this used to be 50 percent legislative and
50 percent political. Now it’s 95 percent political
because you didn’t use to have these “gotcha”
amendments on the floor. Why? The rules didn’t
allow for roll calls. The Republicans will squawk
about not having open rules now — “In the good
old days, they had open rules.” They had open
rules because there were no votes. You could
not get a roll call vote in the committee of the
whole (during House floor debate). It didn’t
exist. If you wanted to vote on something, you
either counted votes with people standing: “the
yeas, please stand; the nos, please stand.” You
counted them — but not by name. Or you had
teller votes. You’d have two tellers in the center
aisle. ... The speeches on the floor were actually
aimed at trying to sway a few people who might
be on the margins.
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300+ Citations On How Weaponized Transparency in Congress Drives Chaos and Corruption

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300+ Citations On How Weaponized Transparency in Congress Drives Chaos and Corruption

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300+ Academic Citations

Weaponized transparency is a form of

Rep Eric Fingerhut

Steven Smith 1987

Weaponized Transparency - Part…

What is Weaponized Transparency? 3

Editorial Board N.Y.Times 2012

Steven Aftergood 2019

Rep. David Obey 2010

Senator Frank Murkowski 1996 - On the 7

Jon Elster 2013

Robert Luce 1926

Alexander Hamilton 1792

Stephen Ansolabehere & Shanto Iyengar 1995

Wall Street Journal 2021 - McConnell 1

Rob Garver 2014

Congressional Quarterly 2006

Donald Wolfensberger 2015

Carl Hulse 2019 - Weaponizing Hot Button 1

Mitch McConnell 2010 (in Chaddock)

Carl Hulse 2019

Sissela Bok 1982

Carrubba, Gabel & Hug 2008

Peter Hanson 2017

Matthew Green 2015

Ronald Garay 1984

Our takeaway point then is that when you open

[Looking at the] ideologically extreme members

Peter Hanson & Lee Drutman 2017

Stan Collender 2018

Molly Reynolds et al 2019 2

For an explainer on weaponized transparency click 2

Geoff West 2019

Stephen Frantzich & John Sullivan 1996

Stephen Frantzich & John Sullivan 1996

John Jacobs 1997

Katy O’Donnell 2015

Christine Brownell 2002

J.R. Pole 1983

J.R. Pole 1983

It is apparent that something went wrong. The

Anton Scalia 1982

C. Lawrence Evans 1999

Dr. Frances Lee & Rep Newhouse Discuss 4

Tim Groseclose & Nolan McCarty 2001

Tim Groseclose & Nolan McCarty 2001

John Jacobs 1997

Geoff West 2019

Alan Fram (AP) 2014

Sarah Ferris 2019 - House Dems React to GOP 4

Jon Elster & Arnaud Le Pillouer 2015

John Stang 2018

The early tipoff to this new direction came in the

Bolling, who some said had put LaFalce and

Donald Wolfensberger 2017

Norm Ornstein and David Rohde 1974

Matthew Green 2015

Matthew Green 2015

Partisan Football - President Harrison 1889 5