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1 1 (April 23, 2008)

handle is hein.crs/crsaatf0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Order Code 98-382 GOV Updated April 23, 2008 Conference Reports and Joint Explanatory Statements Christopher M. Davis Analyst on the Congress and Legislative Process Government and Finance Division When a conference committee completes its work successfully, the committee presents and explains its agreements in two documents: first, a conference report; and second, a joint explanatory statement, often called a statement of managers.1 The conference report presents the formal legislative language on which the conference committee has agreed. The joint explanatory statement explains the various elements of the conferees' agreement in relation to the positions that the House and Senate had committed to the conference committee. Two copies of each document must be signed by a majority of the House conferees and by a majority of the Senate conferees. One pair of the signed documents is retained by each house's conferees. Thus, a conferee who supports the conference agreement signs four signature sheets, two for the conference report and two for the joint explanatory statement. Of course, conferees who do not support the agreement are not expected to sign any of the signature sheets. The House and Senate create a conference committee to resolve the disagreements that result when one house passes a bill and the other house then passes the same bill with one or more amendments. It is those amendments that are in disagreement between the houses and that are the subjects of conference negotiations. In their conference report, the conferees propose a way to resolve the disagreement created by each of the amendments. Assume that the House passed a bill and that the Senate later passed the same bill with, for example, three discrete amendments. These Senate amendments are numbered in the order in which they would affect the House bill, and the conference report addresses each of them in turn. There are essentially three ways in which conferees can propose to dispose of each amendment: both houses can accept the Senate amendment, both houses can reject it, or both houses can agree to a compromise between the Senate amendment and the corresponding provision of the House-passed bill. In this example: 1 This report was written by Stanley Bach, formerly a Senior Specialist in the Legislative Process at CRS. The listed author updated the report and is available to answer questions concerning its contents.

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