Unanimous Consent Agreement

A Unanimous Consent Agreement (UCA), sometimes called a "time agreement," is a device the U.S. Senate uses to manage its floor business. Because the Senate's standing rules give individual senators wide latitude to debate and offer amendments, the chamber routinely sets aside those rules by negotiating an agreement that every senator on the floor accepts. Once propounded by the Majority Leader (or a designee) and entered without objection, a UCA has the force of a Senate rule for the matter it governs and can only be altered by another unanimous consent.

UCAs typically specify some combination of:

• which measure or nomination will be called up and when,
• how much time will be allotted for debate and how it will be divided between the majority and minority,
• which amendments are in order, whether they must be germane, and the order in which votes will occur,
• the threshold required for adoption (e.g., a 60-vote affirmative threshold on amendments),
• the timing of the final vote.

The practice grew out of informal 19th-century arrangements and was formalized in the early 20th century; today it is the workhorse mechanism by which the Senate avoids the delay associated with cloture under Rule XXII. Because a single senator can block a UCA simply by objecting, the agreements reflect cross-aisle bargaining and often give the minority guaranteed amendment votes in exchange for yielding post-cloture time.

UCAs are distinct from simple unanimous consent requests (which dispose of a single, often routine matter such as waiving the reading of an amendment) and from cloture, which requires a recorded vote of three-fifths of senators duly chosen and sworn. The U.S. House of Representatives does not use comparable agreements; it structures floor consideration through special rules reported by the Rules Committee.