Hi everyone,

Regardless of whether climate legislation is ultimately included in the reconciliation bill the Senate is considering, the environmental community must be prepared to respond to amendments in our space on the night of the vote-a-rama. With that in mind, Bart and I are reviving the environmental community’s joint vote-a-rama coordination that we’ve used several times in the past year and a half, most recently around the budget resolution last August.

Tl;dr: If you are a policy wonk or spend a majority of your time working with or talking to Congress and you’re interested in being involved in the community response to the hyper-inside game-focused, all-night extravaganza known as vote-a-rama, get in touch with Bart and me and join our kickoff meeting Monday, July 25th, from 3-4pm ET where we’ll walk through the specifics of how we coordinate this massive undertaking. Click here to register for the orientation.

Below we’ve included a lot more information about what we’re doing, who we’re looking for, and how you can help, as well as an explainer of what vote-a-rama is for anyone who is interested. Apologies for the very long email; hopefully it answers a lot of questions about our coordination effort. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if we can answer any more.

Bart Johnsen-Harris, Defenders of Wildlife

David Shadburn, League of Conservation Voters

What We’re Doing and Who We’re Looking For:

What We’re Doing: Our job is to work together as a community to provide real-time feedback on amendments to Senate leadership and individual Senate offices to advise them on how to vote. We are pulling together a massive effort of lobbyists and policy wonks who are prepared to stay up all night to defend against an onslaught of anti-environmental amendments through this very inside-game coordination effort.

Who We’re Looking For:

• Government Affairs Staff - are you someone who spends most of your days talking to Congress? We need your help reading every. single. amendment. as they are filed in real-time, tracking which ones sound concerning, and flagging them for policy leaders.

• Policy Wonks for Every Environmental Issue Area - are you a go-to expert on an environmental issue? Anything and everything can be attacked through vote-a-rama, and we need to know who to call at 3am to write a vote recommendation on your specific area of expertise in less than 15 minutes. Many of you have been through this process with us before - we will be reaching out again to confirm your availability.

What This Is Not: The goal of vote-a-rama is to limit Republican attacks and end it as quickly as possible. It is critical that the broader community, including all of our incredible outside and grassroots organizing, remain focused on the big picture of continuing to press for strong climate action wherever possible and not get bogged down in the details of individual amendment votes on a night that will primarily be focused on rapid-fire defense.

How Else Your Group Can Be Involved: Throughout the vote-a-rama, the working group will be circulating joint vote recommendation letters to blast up to Congress telling Senators how to vote on specific amendments in our space. All organizations are invited to sign on, and they will be shared with a wide variety of community listservs, including the CDP list. Please be aware that, given the fast-paced nature of the vote-a-rama, vote rec letters may be circulated with as little as 15 minutes notice for organizations to sign on to ensure that we can send them to the Hill before the votes occur.

What is vote-a-rama?

The “vote-a-rama” is the final step in the convoluted Senate budget reconciliation process before the bill can be voted on in the Senate with 50 votes (and avoid the 60-vote filibuster requirement), allowing the bill to be passed without Republican votes. Unlike standard Senate floor procedures, during a vote-a-rama, any Senator can force the entire Senate to vote on nearly any amendment (within certain germaneness requirements), and there is no limit on the number of amendments that can be filed or voted on. Hundreds if not thousands of amendments are filed, and Senators vote on them in rapid succession. The vote-a-rama does not end until all 100 Senators agree to end it, meaning any Senator can force a vote on nearly anything. Vote-a-rama regularly lasts well into the night (the Build Back Better budget resolution vote-a-rama last August went until 4 am), and given the heightened scrutiny on this bill, we should expect this one to be even more contentious.

As soon as the vote-a-rama ends, the Senate votes on the final passage of the reconciliation bill. As a reminder, because the Senate is amending the House-passed Build Back Better Act, the House will need to pass the bill one more time before it is sent to President Biden’s desk for his signature.

The main threats from vote-a-rama are:

• For the minority party, this is an opportunity to force the majority on the record on any politically toxic issue under the sun. In our case, that means:
• Even though the climate provisions are not in the reconciliation bill, Republicans can force politically painful votes in our space to put electorally vulnerable Democrats on the record.
• Democrats can file proactive amendments on climate provisions - we would just expect to see Manchin vote against them and therefore ultimately fail in the 50-50 Senate.
• Because the Senate is evenly divided, all 50 Republicans plus one Democrat can amend the final reconciliation bill, even if none of those Republicans support the final product. This means that even the fragile detente between Schumer and Manchin on these health care provisions can be easily upended by a controversial amendment vote, or the bill can be amended to include harmful provisions that are then very difficult to remove.

Our mission is to defend against anti-environment amendments being added to the bill and to speak with one voice as much as possible during the chaos of vote-a-rama night with vote recommendations on rapid-fire amendments with very short notice.

Are You a Government Affairs Staffer or a Policy Wonk and Interested in Getting Involved? Join our vote-a-rama orientation session on Monday, July 25th, from 3-4pm ET, where we’ll walk through the specifics of how we coordinate this massive undertaking. Click here to register for the orientation.

Thanks for reading through this long email - please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions. It’s an incredible honor to be in this fight with you all.

Contact:

Bart Johnsen-Harris BJohnsen-Harris@defenders.org

David Shadburn, dshadburn@lcv.org