I learned something new today. Apparently conference committees are largely a thing of the past. Jeff Davis explains:
Section 511 of Public Law 110-81 (the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007) amended Senate Rule 28 (conference reports) to put in a strengthened point of order against conference reports that exceed the scope of the difference between the House and Senate bills….As amended by the ethics law, Rule 28 now works similar to the “Byrd Rule” on reconciliation bills — any provisions ruled out-of-scope by the Parliamentarian are stricken from the conference report unless at least 60 Senators vote to waive the provision….The changes to rule 28 make it much more difficult for Democratic leaders to add “sweeteners” to a conference report to buy votes, since 41 Senators could knock out any individual sweetener out of the conference report without defeating the entire conference report.
….As a result, since the rule changes took in effect, Democratic leaders have basically stopped sending large controversial bills to conference committees, preferring to ping-pong them instead to avoid problems in the Senate with the newly strengthened rule 28….In 2009, after the Hundred Days in which Stimulus and S-CHIP were sent through conference, only appropriations bills and the bipartisan defense authorization bill(s) were sent to conference. Everything else was ping-ponged, most notably the Defense appropriations bill right before Christmas, which had been selected by the leadership to carry many other unrelated provisions and which therefore was not sent to conference committee due to rule 28 concerns.
Do they still make Schoolhouse Rock? If so, I guess it needs some updating.
