Table (parliamentary Procedure) - Use in The United States

Use in The United States

In United States parliamentary practice, two phrases—"lay on table" (or "lie on table" depending grammatically on whether the verb needed is transitive or intransitive) and "To put on the table"—have opposite meanings. Approval of the subsidiary motion to "lay on the table" immediately sets aside the pending main motion and all pending subsidiary motions. The motion is not debatable. Beyond these characteristics, the purpose and effect of the motion to table vary according to which parliamentary authority is being used. The motion requires a majority vote except as indicated below. To "put on the table" means to make the issue available for debate as in "The chair is prepared to put on the table".

The use of terms such as "tabling a motion" in connection with setting aside or killing a main motion sometimes causes confusion with the usage of this term in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries, where it has an opposite meaning—that is, to propose a motion for consideration. To make the intent clear internationally, Congressional Quarterly and its associated CQ publications, in reporting congressional votes, usually follow the word "table" (as used in Congress) with the word "kill" in parentheses.

Under Robert's Rules of Order, the subsidiary motion to table is, properly, used only when it is necessary to suspend consideration of a main motion in order to deal with another matter that has come up unexpectedly and which must be dealt with before the pending motion can be properly addressed. It has, however, become common to misuse the motion to end consideration of the pending main motion without debate, or to mistakenly assume that its adoption prevents further consideration of the main motion at all, or until a specified time.

A main motion that has been laid on the table (that has lain on the table) may be taken up again by adoption of a motion to take from the table. This motion is not debatable and requires a majority for adoption. A motion may be taken from the table only until the end of the next session (commonly, the next meeting) after the one in which it was laid on the table if that session occurs within a quarterly time interval (three months and until the end of the calendar month in which the three-month period ends) after the session in which it was laid on the table; if there is no session within that time, the motion may only be taken from the table during the current session. If these time limits are not met, the motion dies.

Robert's states that the use of the motion to "table" to kill a motion is improper because a majority vote should not be sufficient to permanently cut off debate on a main motion. Robert's recommends that a member seeking to avoid a direct vote on a main motion while immediately cutting off debate instead make a motion that requires a two-third vote: Either an objection to consideration of the question, which is in order only before debate has begun and requires a two-thirds vote to block further consideration of the main motion, or a motion to postpone indefinitely (in order at any time, majority vote required) followed by an immediate motion for the previous question (two-thirds vote required.) One of the disadvantages of trying to kill a measure by laying it on the table is that, if some opponents of the measure subsequently leave the meeting, a temporary majority favoring the measure can then take it from the table and act on it; or they may do so at a future session held within the next quarterly time interval.