Motion to Invoke Cloture: House Amendment to the Senate Amendment to H.R. 195
This was the second procedural vote to pass H.R. 195, the vehicle for passage for short-term continuing appropriations through Feb. 16, 2018, in the Senate. This was a vote on cloture, to end debate, which required 60 votes. The vote failed hours before federal government funding expired at the end of Jan. 19, sending the federal government into a shutdown on Jan 20.
A "yea" vote was to proceed to a final vote on short-term government funding. The details of what the final Senate bill would have included were not known at the time of the vote but reportedly would have included an extension of the children's health insurance program CHIP, reinstatement of deferred action for childhood illegal immigrants DACA, as well as border security provisions such as a southern wall. A "nay" vote was to delay a final vote to continue negotiations.
(H.R. 195 has had its text replaced in whole twice before. The bill was previously Kevin and Avonte's Law of 2017 and before that a bill to save $1 million annually by ending the printed publication of the Federal Register. See the bill for details.)
This vote was related to a bill introduced by Rep. Steve Russell [R-OK5, 2015-2018] on January 3, 2017, H.R. 195: Extension of Continuing Appropriations Act, 2018; HEALTHY KIDS Act; Federal Register Printing Savings Act of 2017.
Totals
| All Votes | Republicans | Democrats | Independents | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yea | 50% |
50
|
45
|
5
|
0
|
| Nay | 49% |
49
|
5
|
42
|
2
|
| Not Voting | 1% |
1
|
1
|
0
|
0
|
Cloture Motion Rejected. 3/5 Required. Source: senate.gov.
The Yea votes represented 43% of the country’s population by apportioning each state’s population to its voting senators.
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Vote Details
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R), the Senate Majority Leader, voted Nay against his party.
Somtimes a party leader will vote on the winning side, even if it is against his or her position, to have the right to call for a new vote under a motion to reconsider. For more, see this explanation from The Washington Post.
We do not know the rationale behind any vote, however.
“Aye” and “Yea” mean the same thing, and so do “No” and “Nay”. Congress uses different words in different sorts of votes.
The U.S. Constitution says that bills should be decided on by the “yeas and nays” (Article I, Section 7). Congress takes this literally and uses “yea” and “nay” when voting on the final passage of bills.
All Senate votes use these words. But the House of Representatives uses “Aye” and “No” in other sorts of votes.
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Members of Congress side together for many reasons beside being in the same political party, especially so for less prominent legislation or legislation specific to a certain region. What might have determined how the roll call came out in this case? Does it look like Members of Congress voted based on party, geography, or some other reason?
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GovTrack displays the percentage of the United States population represented by the yeas on some Senate votes just under the vote totals. We do this to highlight how the people of the United States are represented in the Senate. Since each state has two senators, but state populations vary significantly, the individuals living in each state have different Senate representation. For example, California’s population of near 40 million is given the same number of senators as Wyoming’s population of about 600,000.
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