Amendments can be transformative but face an uphill battle
Speaking Security Newsletter | Congressional Candidate Advisory Note 23 | 7 July 2020
This note takes a look at how amendments can be useful but why we shouldn’t count on them to be enacted, using one of Ro Khanna’s amendments from a couple years ago as an example.
And best of luck to all those with elections today!
Situation
On July 1, the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) unanimously approved $740.5 billion in military spending. On July 6, I collated how much each Democratic member of the HASC took from the defense industry so far in this election cycle (in total: at least $1,460,559).
Theoretically, any one of them could turn around and introduce a meaningful amendment (like this one) during the next step of the legislative process. But meaningful amendments (meaningful = challenge the status quo in a serious way) face a ton of obstacles simply because they are amendments.
Khanna’s amendment to the 2018 NDAA, an autopsy
In the summer of 2017, Congressman Ro Khanna offered an amendment to the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that sought to condition the provision of certain munitions from the US to the Saudi-led coalition based on the latter’s fulfillment of several requirements that, taken together, would reduce human suffering in Yemen.

If accepted, the amendment would have required the Saudi-led coalition to significantly change its behavior to continue receiving big bombs (“Category IV munitions”) from the US. Conditionality would be enforced via the amendment’s “certification requirement.”
What happened
House leadership likely justified its rejection of the amendment based on a determination made by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The CBO basically said that Khanna’s amendment would break House rules: what the language of the amendment required would “affect direct spending” which would in turn create a jurisdictional issue (presumably between House authorizers and appropriators — the NDAA is, after all, a policy bill and not a spending bill).
The CBO did not go into detail, but it was probably the amendment’s “certification requirement” that led the CBO to conclude that it would raise costs and therefore “affect direct spending.” If the US Government does something — anything — it raises costs (even if it just involves putting a stamp on a piece of paper).
But other language that ultimately made it into the House-approved NDAA could have been flagged for the same thing (raising costs) or for violating some other procedural law. So the problem wasn’t necessarily the amendment’s language. Instead, I attribute the scrutiny the amendment received (and its subsequent death) to its form as an amendment.
Amendments face more scrutiny than other bill language
Theoretically, the bits of language comprising a policy bill are subject to the same rules — bill language is bill language, so it shouldn’t matter how or when a given clause ends up there. But it does matter. Amendments brought to the floor (like Khanna’s) are subject to a higher level of scrutiny than the language already in the bill when it’s opened up to the full House for amending.
So the form of the proposed language matters. But what we’re really talking about is timing because that’s what determines form.
Why timing matters
Again, plenty of language raises costs and plenty of language breaks rules. But a given clause is more likely to escape scrutiny if it’s included in the bill drafted by the chairperson him-/herself — before the bill is opened up for amendments.
This is where timing comes in. The language included in the chairman’s draft bill (usually finalized by late Spring/early Summer) tends to avoid the level of scrutiny directed at amendments (usually offered in Summer/late Summer) because it’s not politically prudent for a member to challenge what’s already in the committee chair’s bill. For amendments brought to the floor, however, it’s open season as far as scrutiny (however petty) is concerned.
Technocratic rejection, political purpose
Considering what Khanna’s amendment represented (a meaningful challenge to the status quo) and the history of unequal application of House rules, it’s hard to imagine the CBO’s ruling serving any other purpose than as a cop out — procedural/technocratic cover for members’ complicity in what was labeled as “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis” (and might still be).
I didn’t follow the discourse closely, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the HASC Chair at the time (or any other member of the House) said something along the lines of “While I agree with this amendment on moral grounds, it violates House rules by raising costs.” Had Khanna’s language been included in the initial bill drafted by the HASC Committee Chair, the same technocratic/procedural charge could have been brought against it, but probably not — it would risk incriminating all the other faulty language in the Chair’s bill.
Conclusion — is any of this worth knowing?
Maybe. At the end of the day, fighting against the status quo — in the form of an amendment or otherwise — requires applying political pressure on intransigent/obtuse members of Congress or removing them from office altogether. But perhaps what I said above reinforces those points in its own special (/roundabout) way.
Hope this helps,
Stephen (stephen@securityreform.org; @stephensemler)