Authority
Conference committees can be extremely contentious, particularly if the Houses are controlled by different parties. House rules require that one conference meeting be open to the public, unless the House, in open session, votes that a meeting will be closed to the public. But apart from this one open meeting, conference committees usually meet in private, and are dominated by the Chairs of the House and Senate Committees.
House and Senate rules forbid Conferees from inserting in their report matter not committed to them by either House. (See House Rule XXII, Senate Rule XXVIII.) But conference committees sometimes do introduce new matter. In such a case, the rules of each House provide that a Member may object through a point of order, although each House has procedures under which it can vote to waive the point of order. The House provides a procedure by which the offending provision may be stricken from the bill. Formerly, the Senate required a Senator to object to the whole bill as reported by the conference committee. If the objection was well founded, the Presiding Officer ruled, and a Senator could appeal the ruling of the Chair. If the appeal was sustained by a majority of the Senate, it had precedential effect, eroding the rule on the scope of conference committees. Thus from fall 1996 through 2000, the Senate had no limit on the scope of conference reports, and some argued that the majority abused the power of conference committees. (See, e.g., Dauster, “Five-Man Senate?”) In December 2000, the Senate reinstated the prohibition of inserting matters outside the scope of conference. (See Consolidated Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2001, Pub.L. 106-554, § 903 (2000), 114 Stat. 2763, 2763A-198.) The rule changed again with the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (S. 1 of the 110th Congress), enacted in September 2007. Now any single Senator may raise a procedural objection — a point of order — against subject matter newly inserted by the conference committee without objecting to the rest of the bill. Proponents of the measure may move to waive the rule. The affirmative vote of 60 Senators is required to waive the rule. If the point of order is not waived and the Chair rules that the objection is well-founded, only the offending provision is stricken from the measure, and the Senate votes on sending the balance of the measure back to the House. (See Senate Rule XXVIII.)
Read more about this topic: United States Congressional Conference Committee
Famous quotes containing the word authority:
“The idea of feminine authority is so deeply embedded in the human subconscious that even after all these centuries of father-right the young child instinctively regards the mother as the supreme authority. He looks upon the father as equal with himself, equally subject to the woman’s rule. Children have to be taught to love, honor, and respect the father.”
—Elizabeth Gould Davis (b. 1910)
“The members of a body-politic call it “the state” when it is passive, “the sovereign” when it is active, and a “power” when they compare it with others of its kind. Collectively they use the title “people,” and they refer to one another individually as “citizens” when speaking of their participation in the authority of the sovereign, and as “subjects” when speaking of their subordination to the laws of the state.”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)
“The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.”
—Lionel Trilling (1905–1975)