Talk:Wrecking amendment

This article should definitely discuss the US Civil Rights Act. A Congressman threw in a clause applying all the Act's protections to women thinking it would kill the bill, but it passed anyway. A good example of a wrecking amendment that backfired for the guy who proposed it. --Done Wcoole (talk) 00:10, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Perspective?
It would be nice to say, maybe closer to the top of the article, that it isn't always clear if a legislator is genuinely trying to improve legislation versus offering a wrecking amendment. Also an amendment doesn't have to severely change the legislation to wreck it. If you know a vote is very tight a small change may be enough to get key votes to drop off.

Gender Recognition Act
I don't understand why the amendment to the GRA described in the article (forbidding transsexual marriages) would qualify as a wrecking amendment. To me it seems it's just making the bill weaker, not wrecking it for everyone. OTOH there might be something about the act that I don't understand and that is not explained in the article, since this is the first time I heard about the act. --SLi 09:05, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I think the line of reasoning is that adding an explicit prohibition of transsexual marriages would make the bill intolerable for some of the supporters of the original bill. Removing their support could peel off enough votes that it wouldn't pass. My recollection is that it's a common strategy to "disguise" wrecking amendments as "helpful" amendments, since a too-obvious wrecking amendment is immediately opposed by all those who support the original bill. --Wcoole (talk) 00:33, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

The very title is bad
I have noticed that the term "wrecking amendment" is used only in the UK despite the concept existing in the US. The very title implies a British audience. --Mr. Guye (talk) 21:51, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Confusion
This article neglects to distinguish between amendments that are meant to undermine the bill's intended function when it is passed, vs. amendments that are intended to undermine the bill's ability to be passed at all by adding unpopular provisions. It mostly seems to be describing the former, but then the only concrete example given by the article, the women's provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, is contrarily described as being alleged to be an unsuccessful attempt at the latter. 2600:1015:B108:801E:14B7:5552:B600:EB76 (talk) 21:19, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Confusingly, that example seems to be contradicted by the article on Howard Smith that states he was a long time campaigner for women to be a protected class long before the CRA bill was introduced. From the article, " For 20 years, Smith had sponsored the Equal Rights Amendment, with no linkage to racial issues, in the House. He for decades had been close to the NWP and its leader, Alice Paul, one of the leaders in winning the vote for women in 1920 and the chief supporter of equal rights proposals since then. She and other feminists had worked with Smith since 1945 to try to find a way to include sex as a protected civil rights category. " If anything, he found the Act as an opportunity to get something he wanted passed finally passed. That is hardly a wrecking amendment/poison pill. If that's the case, then mentioning it in this article as if it was an example of a wrecking amendment is entirely inappropriate. — al-Shimoni  (talk) 11:09, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

"Poison pill amendment" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Poison pill amendment. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 November 2 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Mdewman6 (talk) 19:12, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Poor example
The example of "this House declines to give the Bill a Second Reading" is not an amendment to the Bill but an amendment to the standard procedural motion that "the Bill be now read a second time". As such it is not a wrecking amendment to the Bill but an opposing amendment to the procedure thus allowing such opposition to registered in advance. The reference makes this clear. A wrecking amendment might be something actually inserted into the Bill such as "none of the provisions of this Bill will be enforceable until pigs can fly" 2A00:23C6:148A:9B01:10FB:DD31:2FF6:EEE4 (talk) 10:49, 14 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Refactored into Reasoned amendment jnestorius(talk) 01:21, 20 May 2024 (UTC)