U.S. Congress using 'conference' more?

Factual Questions
1

Yet another three-parter. Firstly, is it my imagination, or does Congress end up sending way more bills to be co-authored in conference than they used to?

Secondly, do I understand the workings of conference correctly?

I was under the impression that when the House and the Senate each write a similar bill (and it passes that house) then rather than have the House and Senate argue over who will sign the other’s bill, they each send small-“r”-representatives to conference to hash out the final wording. Then in conference, if the members of the Senate and House who are present come to a consensus or plurality about the wording of the bill, it is considered to have passed both houses and is sent directly to the President.

Thirdly, who decides which legislators will go to conference?

If I understand correctly, then it seems to me that the person(s) who choose which legislators go into the back room to re-write the bill has/have an inordinately large amount of power, insofar as his/her state is likely to receive pork amendments in exchange for the “favor” of granting seats, and that having a seat allows one to tack on a pork amendment for one’s own state as well.

2

A conference never “authors” a bill. A conference committee is a joint meeting of two legislative committees, one from each house of a bicameral legislature, usually charged with adjusting differences in a bill passed by both houses in different versions:

National Conference of State Legislatures, Mason’s Manual of Legislative Procedure § 770 at 558–59 (2000). Thus, a conference never occurs until after both houses have passed a bill, and the conference committee simply reconciles the two versions.

I have not seen any staistics about whether Congress is resorting to conference committees more often lately, but it has used conference committees with great frequency since its earliest days. I would assume that conference committees are more common when the two houses are dominated by different political parties, but I don’t know.

Both houses’ committees must concur, by majority vote of each committee – not by “a consensus or plurality” – in the conference report, which must then pass each house. So four bodies – the House conferees, the Senate conferees, the full House, and the full Senate – must adopt the conference report before it can be presented to the President for signature.

Technically, each house elects its conferees. In practice, the majority that passed the bill that is being conferred about chooses the conferees, who usually include the bill’s principal author in that house.

3

First, I don’t think that the conference process has radically changed in recent years. As I understand it, all bills which have significant differences in House and Senate must be conferenced.

Second, your understanding of the process seems to work out well. There is, however, a rare and highly annoying thing which can happen, cynically known as “virgin birth,” in which new and undebated language is inserted into the bill during the closed conference meeting. The most recent example I can recall is from a fairly recent (but no longer online) Washington Post article which explains how Boeing is going to make a mint from the DoD by “leasing” a flotilla of aircraft to the Air Force. Right now I’m watching the appropriations process closely for this tactic, as I think we’re going to see a number of new examples.

Third, regarding who decides. This year, the Republicans decide, and you Democrats can go to hell. If you think that’s a harsh statement, you’re not reading the papers. Both House and Senate leaders (Speaker Hastert and Majority Leader Frist, respectively) must appoint conferees which are approved by majority vote. Because they have a majority in both houses, the Republican leadership stacked the deck by nominating far more Republicans than Democrats to the Energy and Medicare conferences, and then excluding Democrats from the meetings.

For example, according to the October 9 Congressional Quarterly, an e-mail was sent out to all of the Energy conferees inviting them to a conference meeting. Ten minutes later, another e-mail was sent out, saying, “Please disregard earlier e-mail unless you are a Republican Energy bill conferee — thank you.” Seventeen members were appointed to the conference committee, but only ten Republicans and two centrist Democrats were actually invited to the meetings.

The Democrats have responded in the only way they have remaining to them–filibuster and other procedural delays. It’s making the Democrats look bad in the press right now, but the majority party is more likely to take the brunt of the blame for whatever goes wrong before the next election.

4

There are not more conferences, but the controversy in the conferences is greater than has been in past years. The budget resolution, the energy bill, the Medicare bill, and the defense authorization bill – each considered this year – have had protracted, contentious conferences. More on that in a minute.

I’ll answer number three next for clarity’s sake:

The appointment of conferees is pretty much a routine, housekeeping measure taken up independently in both the House and the Senate. It is extremely rare that there is any debate or actual votes on appointing conferees.

In the Senate, generally the membership of the committee of jurisdiction is automatically appointed as conferees. In the House, the top “x” members of the primary committee of jurisdiction is generally appointed (because committees in the House are so large), and “outside conferees” may be appointed from among the other House committees that share jurisdiction. In either case, the ratio of Republicans to Democrats is generally the ratio represented on the committees of jursidiction, so that there will always be more of the majority party represented in the conference deliberations.

As Sofa King points out, the Chair of a conference committee can sometimes act like a jerk and be a terrible partisan weenie.

brianmelendez had it right. The actual functioning of the conferences vary - ie, some conferences hold votes of each Body to resolve an issue (ie, the Senate conferees will vote on whether to recede – or agree to – to a House provision). Others leave it up to the Chairmen and Ranking Members of each Body in the conference (a group sometimes called “The Big Four”) to work out an agreement and then seek the approval of the other members of the conference.

And reference Sofa’s comment about legislative provisions inserted during conference, Senate Rule 28 establishes a point of order against a conference report (that is, the compromise bill approved by a conference committee) that contains matter that was not addressed in either a House or Senate bill. It is a powerful tool frequently used to keep extraneous matter from being added in conference.

(And in regards to the Boeing tanker lease issue, it is not actually a good example of a so-called “virgin birth,” because the House bill contained provisions on the lease which were modified in the conference. I must disagree with Sofa’s otherwise astute commentary.)