MEETINGS AND ACTION OF CONFEREES
The rules of the House require that one conference meeting be open, unless the House, in open session, determines by a vote of the yeas and nays that a meeting will be closed to the public. When the report of the conference committee is read in the House, a point of order may be made that the conferees failed to comply with the House rule requiring an open conference meeting. If the point of order is sustained, the conference report is considered rejected by the House and a new conference is deemed to have been requested.
There are generally four forms of recommendations available to the conferees when reporting back to their bodies:
(1) The Senate recede from all (or certain of) its amendments.
(2) The House recede from its disagreement to all (or certain of) the Senate amendments and agree thereto.
(3) The House recede from its disagreement to all (or certain of) the Senate amendments and agree thereto with amendments.
(4) The House recede from all (or certain of) its amendments to the Senate amendments or its amendments to Senate bill.
In most instances, the result of the conference is a compromise growing out of the third type of recommendation available to the conferees because one House has originally substituted its own bill to be considered as a single amendment. The complete report may be composed of any one or more of these recommendations with respect to the various amendments where there are numbered amendments.
In earlier practice, on general appropriation bills with numbered Senate amendments, because of the special rules preventing House conferees from agreeing to Senate amendments changing existing law or appropriations not authorized by law, the conferees often found themselves, under the rules or in fact, unable to reach an agreement with respect to one or more amendments and reported back a statement of their inability to agree on those particular amendments. These amendments were acted upon separately.
This partial disagreement is not practicable where, as in current practice, the Senate strikes out all after the enacting clause and substitutes its own bill that must be considered as a single amendment. If they are unable to reach any agreement whatsoever, the conferees report that fact to their respective bodies and the amendments may be disposed of by motion. Usually, new conferees may be appointed in either or both Houses.
In addition, the Houses may provide a new
nonbinding instruction to the conferees as to the position they are to take.
After House conferees on any bill or resolution in conference between the two
bodies have been appointed for 20 calendar days and 10 legislative days and have
failed to make a report, a motion to instruct the House conferees, or discharge
them and appoint new conferees is privileged. The motion can be made only after
the Member announces his intention to offer the motion and only at a time
designated by the Speaker in the legislative schedule of the following day. Like
the initial motion to instruct, the 20-day motion may not contain argument and
must remain within the scope of conference. In addition, during the last six
days of a session, it is a privileged motion to move to discharge, appoint, or
instruct House conferees after House conferees have been appointed 36 hours
without having made a report.