It then went to a House floor vote under a closed rule.

In the House, tax bills are always considered under what are called closed rules.

Closed rules prohibit amendments other than those recommended by the committee that sent the bill to the floor.

But the more basic reason is that closed rules protect lawmakers from having to decide between good politics and good tax policy.

In the first three months of the new Congress, the House frequently circumvented committees and adopted closed rules preventing floor amendments.

A structured rule allows three or more amendments to be considered; a modified closed rule allows only one or two.

Ostensibly, the reason for the closed rules is that the tax code is so complicated that representatives cannot possibly understand the consequences of amendments they might offer.

Measures dealing with Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the Government's costliest programs, are always handled under what are known as closed rules.

For as long as anyone can remember, tax legislation has been considered in the House under what is called a closed rule, meaning that few if any amendments are permitted.

CLOSED RULE bans amendments to a bill on the House floor, with the exception of Committee amendments.

House Ways and Means Committee chairman, Wilbur Mills of Arkansas, insisted that tax bills be debated under closed rules to keep them from being amended on the floor.

"Cooperative Game Models of the Influence of the Closed Rule in Three Person, Majority-Rule Committees: Theory and Experiment,"

The ending of the closed rule created an infusion of federal lobbyists at the Capitol building; the lobbyists targeted members of Congress to add funding for lobbyists' favorite projects into bills.

The book reveals a world in which obscure elements of the process - Congressional budget reconciliation or closed rules in the House of Representatives - can have enormous consequences for society, by changing the relationship between politics and policy.

People who have been listening to conservative talk radio recently or watching the House of Representatives on C-Span have heard an earful of exercised talk about expedited recissions and the A to Z budget plan and discharge petitions and lock boxes and closed rules.

Polarization has negatively influenced the proceedings of Congress by giving rise to an increase in the use of closed rules on the floor, such as limiting amendments, excluding minority party members from committee deliberations and increased use of the hold on executive and judicial appointments and the filibuster on non-contentious policy issues.