Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) is drawing rare Democratic praise — and some GOP grumbling, too — over a new rule that has senators sprinting to the Senate floor to cast their votes.
Senators now have 30 minutes to make their way to the chamber, or else GOP leaders will close the vote and record them as “not present.” The rule is designed to keep stragglers from holding up the entire body when multiple votes are scheduled in a row, though it does not apply to any that might be close.
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The change, adopted by Senate Republicans in May, is forcing a level of discipline on senators accustomed to votes that in recent years had no time limit, often dragging on for 60 or even 90 minutes. Virtually all members interviewed by the Washington Examiner said they had missed a vote in the last month or so, blaming TV interviews or meetings that ran long.
Sen. Angus King (I-ME) said time simply got away from him while responding to emails.
“It jerked my chain — I’m usually on time now,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) said of her missed vote.
Those growing pains have caused some consternation given the competing responsibilities of senators, especially those who run committees. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), the Commerce chairman, is asking for “a little bit of flexibility” to be given to members wearing multiple Senate hats.
“It can be frustrating. They closed a vote on me because I was chairing a hearing, and, you know, this is a job where sometimes you’re required to be in multiple places at once,” he said.
Still, the response to the shorter votes has been overwhelmingly positive, with senators viewing the cutoff as a way to keep the floor moving and provide some certainty to the schedulers who administer their packed calendars.
“I like it. Let’s get this show on the road,” said Lummis.
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The rule, put forward by Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), was adopted unanimously at a GOP policy retreat on May 7, though leadership had been moving in the direction of 30-minute votes since the start of the new Congress.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), the majority whip, had been batting around the idea since January, while Thune, the newly elected GOP leader, views the shorter window as part of his pledge to make the chamber run more efficiently.
On April 9, Thune cut himself off from a vote while he was at the White House for a meeting.
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) offered guarded praise for the change, emphasizing that he does not agree with the underlying votes Republicans are scheduling, even if he supports the timeliness.
“I mean, I think Sen. Thune has done a really good job managing the schedule and compressing the amount of time we have to vote on these things,” he said.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) said he thanked Thune in a floor conversation about two weeks ago.
“I said, just keep it up,” Kaine said. “I mean, it creates challenges — I was in the middle of a meeting and had to race over, but if you force people to maybe miss a vote or two if they’re tardy, then everybody corrects their behavior and it just makes the schedule work a lot better.”
Kaine is not the only senator to race over to the Senate. In fact, it has become something of a spectacle to watch members barrel through corridors, up steps, and into the well of the chamber, only to find out the vote closed on them moments earlier.
“I literally ran to that door, burst into the chamber, and they had just closed it,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), a former Stanford football player, said in a brief interview near the Senate floor. “And I was like, I accept that. I accept that.”
Sen. Jim Justice (R-WV), who travels to the chamber in a motorized scooter, described a vote closing on him despite calling staffers to let them know he was on his way.
“I was flying like crazy and everything — I got there a minute late, they had closed the vote,” Justice said.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) chuckled when asked if he’s missed a vote recently, turning to his aide and lamenting that he fell victim to the cutoff on Tuesday. He signed a 2022 pledge meant to urge leadership, then run by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), to shorten the length of votes and said he was happy to abide by the new rule, even if it ensnares him.
“It is taking some getting used to — you know, wrapping up meetings and getting to the floor promptly,” Coons said. “But I, frankly, appreciate that votes are being closed.”
Around 80 other senators signed that 2022 pledge, orchestrated by Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), and even new arrivals like Justice support the change.
“I am not only supportive, I’m really grumpy when they go longer than 30 minutes,” said Sen. John Curtis (R-UT), who served in the House until January.
Some are even pressing for the stop clock to be enforced at 15 minutes, the never-followed amount of time leadership allots on paper.
“We can make it. If we know what the rules are, people will show up,” said Kelly.
In the House, the first vote in a series is usually set at 15 minutes, though it takes longer for all members to arrive. Subsequent votes are quickly worked through in five-minute increments.
That sort of tempo is rarely seen in the Senate and usually only when members are working through marathon voting sessions known as “vote-a-ramas.”
But drawn-out votes are actually something of an anomaly for the Senate and only began with the social distancing practices of the pandemic.
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In 2019, it took an average of 29 minutes and 31 seconds for votes to be cast, according to Robert Brown, the archives director for C-SPAN. That figure climbed to 35 minutes in 2020 and eventually to 53 minutes in 2024.
So far this year, the Senate is averaging 36 minutes, according to data Brown shared with the Washington Examiner, and historically, voting has been even faster, hovering somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes from 1989 to 2019.