Why can’t he just put in a permanent order to vote yes on all amendments that are 49 to 50 that’s forcing the VP to cast a dividing the deciding vote
Because the U.S. assumes that members of each house make up their own minds on each vote—which is somewhat more the case and used to be much more the case than in the strongly whipped English tradition.
I know that in Canada the assumption is that one always votes with the leader except in rare occasions, and defecting on anything that is whipped risks getting tossed from Caucus. The U.S. is still very different in that way—and Canada is basically an elected monarchy.
My own MP, Gallant, is what passes for a radical conservative here in terms of willingness to buck party lines (arguably she isn’t really bucking “her” party—she is one of the last MPs elected as Reform, and has been passed along to the Alliance and then the Conservatives)
Long live Preston Manning
Senate rules don’t permit that. Normally, when a Senator has to be absent from a close vote for a reason like this, he will get a Senator from the other side to agree to vote “present.” This happened during the Kavanaugh vote, as I recall.