In an attempt to chase down the straight dope on a claim I heard in a political ad, I tried to follow the Inflation Reduction Act through the senate. It did eventually pass and is now law. At one point, Sen. Rubio moves to have the bill committed to the Judiciary Committee “with instructions.” I took this to be a delaying tactic (it was rejected) and the bill moved on. What does that mean, “with instructions”?
A motion to commit with instructions is in order when a bill is being considered on the floor of the Senate. The motion will be to refer to the bill to a committee to consider and make some specific change to the bill which the motion will specify (i.e. the “instructions”). The goal isn’t so much to delay (since the motion is almost always going to be rejected) as to serve as a messaging motion that the Senator can then run an ad saying, “I tried to do X but was stopped by the radical socialist majority in the Senate. Vote for me so I can keep fighting for the American way.”
For those interested, below is the text of Rubio’s motion:
Mr. RUBIO moves to commit the bill H.R. 5376 to the Committee on the Judiciary of the Senate with instructions to report the same back to the Senate in 3 days, not counting any day in which the Senate is not
in session, with changes that—
(1) are within the jurisdiction of such committee; and
(2) would increase funding to ensure that—
(A) prosecutors are addressing violent crime by ensuring the appropriate pretrial detention of dangerous criminals; and
(B) law enforcement is addressing crime.
So it’s the usual political-theater bullshit where Rubio can crow that the Dems rejected his brilliant idea to reduce violent crime without specifying that his brilliant idea was to give some money to someone somewhere to do something.
Thank you. The ad that I referenced did, indeed, claim that the Democrats, every single one of them (!), voted against deporting illegal immigrant criminals. This clarifies how the vote went and why, and how Fox News, the referenced source of the claim, came up with that interpretation. Pretty much as I thought.