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1 Elizabeth Rybicki & Stanley Bach, Going to Conference in the Senate 1 (April 21, 2003)

handle is hein.crs/crsuntaaaxb0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Order Code RS20454 Updated April 21, 2003 CRS Report for Congress Received through the CRS Web Going to Conference in the Senate Elizabeth Rybicki Analyst in American National Government Government and Finance Division Stanley Bach Senior Specialist in the Legislative Process Government and Finance Division Summary There are three steps that the Senate must take, and one more step that it may take, in arranging to send a bill to conference. These steps rarely are contentious but they have the potential to become time-consuming. This report discusses these steps and how they are taken on the Senate floor. There are as many as four actions that the Senate may take on the floor in the process of sending a bill to a conference committee.! Three of these actions are required; the fourth is not. The Senate typically completes these stages of the legislative process quickly and routinely, most often by unanimous consent. Singly or collectively, however, the four actions can require considerable time to complete if Senators choose to exercise their rights to debate one or more of them at length. At the extreme, Senators can engage in one or several filibusters that can delay or even stall further action on a bill that a majority of the Senate wishes to send to conference.2 1 Like the Senate, the House typically arranges by unanimous consent to go to conference. Alternatively, the House can arrange for a conference by agreeing by simple majority vote to a motion for that purpose that is offered by direction of the House committee with jurisdiction over the bill in question. Procedures relating to conference committees are discussed at greater length in CRS Report 96-708, Conference Committees and Related Procedures: An Introduction and CRS Report 98-696, Resolving Legislative Differences in Congress: Conference Committees and Amendments Between the Houses. 2 This report was written by Stanley Bach, formerly a Senior Specialist in the Legislative Process at CRS. Dr. Bach has retired, but the other listed author updated the report and can respond to inquiries on the subject. Congressional Research Service **o The Library of Congress

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