Congressional Glossary
What is a motion to table?
A motion to table sets aside a bill, amendment, or other question permanently. In Congress, a successful motion to table kills the measure without a direct vote on its merits.
In one sentence
A motion to table sets aside a bill, amendment, or other question permanently. In Congress, a successful motion to table kills the measure without a direct vote on its merits.
Votes needed: A simple majority of members voting
What it means to table a motion
To table a motion in Congress is to kill it without ever voting on it directly. The formal name is the motion to lay on the table. When a majority votes to table a bill, an amendment, or another pending question, the matter is set aside with no realistic path back to the floor. The Senate's glossary treats agreeing to a tabling motion as the equivalent of defeating the question outright (senate.gov), and in daily practice tabled means dead.
Why tabling kills without a direct vote
A tabling vote is technically a vote about handling, not about the measure itself, and that gap is the whole point. A member who votes to table a popular amendment never casts a recorded vote against the amendment. The official record shows a procedural vote, which reads softer in a campaign ad. Everyone inside the chamber counts it the same way, though: a successful motion to table defeats the underlying question, so vote watchers, including this site, read a vote to table as a vote against the measure tabled.
How tabling works in the Senate
The motion to table is one of the few things a bare Senate majority can do quickly. It needs only a simple majority, and it cannot be debated, which makes it immune to the filibuster that slows nearly everything else in the chamber. Majority leaders lean on it to clear away unwanted amendments during long floor fights. Not every amendment dies that way. When the Senate worked through amendments to the S. 2 budget bill on June 5, 2026, it used direct up or down votes instead; the Padilla amendment on appropriations transparency failed 46 to 53. Tabling votes enter the official record under titles like "Motion to Table," and each one is a final answer.
How tabling works in the House
The House motion to lay on the table does the same work with even less ceremony. It is decided without debate, and the House uses it most visibly against privileged resolutions, measures like censure or impeachment resolutions that a single member can force onto the floor. Voting to table such a resolution disposes of it in one step, which is why House tabling votes often draw more attention than the resolutions behind them (house.gov).
"Table" means something different outside Congress
The same word points in three directions, which explains most of the confusion around it. In Congress, tabling kills. In everyday meetings run under Robert's Rules of Order, people say "table it" to mean set it aside until later, a postponement rather than an execution. And in the British Parliament and other Commonwealth legislatures, to table a measure means to bring it forward for consideration, close to the opposite of the American congressional sense. At a school board meeting, it is worth asking which meaning the speaker intends. In the Capitol, nobody has to ask.
Motions that do the opposite job
Tabling avoids a decision on the merits. Its procedural neighbors force one. The previous question cuts off House debate and requires an immediate vote. A motion to proceed asks the Senate to start considering a measure rather than stop. And a motion to recommit sends a bill back to committee, a gentler exile that at least implies the bill might return.
Common questions
In Congress it means to kill the motion, bill, or amendment without a direct vote on its merits. A successful motion to lay on the table disposes of the question permanently. In everyday meetings run under Robert's Rules, tabling usually means postponing instead, which is why the term confuses people.
A simple majority of members voting. In the Senate the motion to table is also not debatable, so it cannot be filibustered, which makes it one of the fastest tools a majority has for disposing of an amendment or resolution it opposes.
For practical purposes in Congress, yes. A tabled measure returns only if the chamber votes to take it from the table, which almost never happens. Vote trackers read a vote to table as a vote against the underlying measure, since agreeing to the motion defeats it.