Disclosure: I'm advising Open Left in a paid capacity on procedure with regard to the Wall Street reform bill, and thought readers at Daily Kos and Congress Matters would be interested in the information as well.
The next meeting of the Wall Street reform bill conference committee isn't until 11 am tomorrow, but between now and then, I'll just throw out a few more "fun" facts about how conferences work that might help give context to the proceedings.
How about this? How do members actually vote in conference? That is, by what process do they decide what's going to make it into a conference report?
Here's an excerpt from a short but sweet reportfrom the Congressional Research Service (CRS) -- always a fantastic resource for this sort of thing:
Three features commonly influence conference bargaining. First, conferences typically operate in an agreement-oriented context. Conferees are accustomed to the give-and-take, bargains, and trade-offs that characterize inter-chamber negotiations. Second, the general objectives of the conferees are to uphold their chamber's position in conference to the extent practicable, to fashion a compromise agreement that attracts the support of at least a majority of each house's conferees, and, finally, to craft a conference report that will pass the House and Senate and be signed by the President. Third, the conferees from each chamber function under the "unit rule." This means that the two houses each have one vote, with a majority in each conference delegation deciding how it is to be cast on the various issues in bicameral disagreement. Often, there is no need for formal votes because conferences may opt to make decisions informally by consensus or through "straw votes" on issues that might be revisited again during the conference. To be sure, the conference decision that is determinative is when at least a majority of the conferees from each chamber agree to sign the conference report.
That tells you much, much more than I was going to say at first -- which was just going to be about the "unit rule" -- but it's so compact and full of good information, I decided to go with the whole paragraph. The first two points aren't really related to the question as I set it up, but they provide excellent context for understanding how things happen in conference. The conferees are there to make a deal. That's the atmosphere in which everything takes place. And dealmaking involves give-and-take, of course. But it's also about outcomes. That's foreshadowing, by the way. You'll see what I mean in a moment.
The point about the "unit rule," though, was that it explained why there could be 31 Representatives in the conference, but only 12 Senators. Conference committees are, of course, tasked with settling the differences between the House and Senate versions of a bill. But they can do so on equal terms even without appointing the same number of conferees, thanks to this "unit rule." It also explains why even an obstructionist minority is (sometimes, not always) granted considerable representation in conference. Each house votes as a unit, and each unit's position is determined by majority vote. So it's still pretty much guaranteed that the two houses' majorities will prevail.
And now, to tie up the loose end of that foreshadowing. The fact is, you do sometimes have to take the idea that the two houses can deal with one another "on equal terms" with a grain of salt. After all, the Senate's representatives in conference are rarely shy about reminding the House that they have to be able to clear the infamous (and increasingly tiresome) 60-vote barrier in order to get any conference report passed. And believe me, they do play that up from time to time in order to win additional concessions. Another good reason for filibuster reform, but that's a story for another day.
Other entries on this subject: