“Riders” are those sneaky little provisions added on to the coattails of a larger bill. They are often unrelated to the larger bill and included because they might not pass on their own without the pressure for Congress and the President to approve the more important part of the bill. Although they may seem inconsequential, they have the potential to do a lot of damage, and they have. For example, in 1995, President Clinton received a [budget bill](https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/pensaenlar5&div=18&g_sent=1&casa_token=&collection=journals) that included a rider which essentially stated that timber companies could ignore any environmental laws and future court rulings and cut down any trees on federal property that it had ever been offered (before environmental regulations were put in place). He vetoed it the first time, but when it came back with an added section providing relief for those affected by the Oklahoma City Bombing, he had little choice but to sign it. This had detrimental effects on the environment. This scenario is not the exception. There are countless examples of this feature being abused. By their very nature, they are designed to get controversial (in other words, deserving of attention and debate) provisions passed under the radar. They are also sometimes used for the opposite purpose: to kill a bill by association. The only possible benefit I see of using riders is that it speeds up the legislative process, and allows important, *good* (although this depends on personal opinion), and time-sensitive policies to be put into action without having to garner lots of public support, but there are other ways to accomplish this if it is truly necessary (such as executive orders) and the practice has done much more harm than good.

**It may be worth investigating the root causes of why riders actually pass in the first place.** It's actually a source of some confusion as to why riders actually ever pass through, attached to a bill. If, just like any other amendments, riders must be voted on to pass, then why would something pass as an amendment when it couldn't pass on its own? And why couldn't another member introduce another amendment to strike the rider? It's unclear why riders ever work, unless (and this very well could be the case) each rider is a sneaky amendment that doesn't receive much if even any notice at all from voting members busy with other matters. For this reason, it seems like it's worth further investigation into the actual process of riders and how they get attached to bills without being voted against when and if they are actually noticed. (If they're not noticed, then that's another problem---people aren't reading everything, perhaps because they are too busy; but then, is there a way to remedy that busyness by spreading out the work or changing the process?). Some also say that if you disagree with the amendment, you call it a rider; if you agree with it, you call it an amendment. I'm not sure how I feel about this, considering in both cases there's still the argument that it should have been debated more extensively.