1. Legislative Process II
GOVT 2305, Module 12

2. Floor Action

3. UCA’s in the Senate
In the Senate, a measure typically reaches the floor through the mechanism of a unanimous consent agreement (UCA), which is a formal understanding on procedures for conducting business in the Senate that requires the acceptance of every member of the chamber. UCAs limit debate and determine the amendments that can be offered, similar to the rules granted by the Rules Committee in the House.

4. Senate Holds
Except for measures that are non-controversial, UCAs reflect negotiation between the Senate leadership and the membership that considers the needs of every member because a single senator can prevent the adoption of an agreement. A member who objects to a UCA is said to have placed a hold.
A hold is a threat to filibuster. Members use them as bargaining chips.

5. Filibusters and Cloture Votes
(Senate only)
Filibusters and Cloture Votes

6. Filibuster
A filibuster is an attempt to defeat the measure through prolonged debate. In the 1950s and 1960s, Senators conducting a filibuster engaged in longwinded debate while Senate leaders kept the chamber in overnight marathon session in order to break the filibuster and move on with a vote.

7. Modern Filibuster
Senators simply announce their intention to filibuster and the Senate goes on with other business while the leadership works to gather sufficient support to invoke cloture. Sometimes, Senate leaders file a cloture petition to end debate even before a filibuster materializes.

8. Cloture
The procedure for ending a filibuster is known as cloture. Senators wanting to halt a filibuster must announce their intentions and gather the signatures of a sixth of the Senate, 16 senators, to force a vote on cloture, which, in turn, requires a three-fifths vote of the Senate membership (60 votes) to succeed.

9. The House strictly operates on a majoritarian basis.
Congressional Math
House
Senate
218 > 217
60 > 40 but 41 > 59
The House strictly operates on a majoritarian basis.
Because of the filibuster, the majority party in the Senate often needs 60 votes to consider bills.

10. Filibusters More Frequent
The filibuster has become so common that virtually every action in the Senate now requires 60 votes.

11. Filibuster as Partisan Weapon
The Senate averaged one filibuster per Congress in the 1950s, five per Congress in the 1960s, 11 in the 1970s, and, most recently, 52 per Congress. In 2009, Republicans filibustered 80 percent of major legislation, including some measures most of them supported.

12. Filibuster Reform
In 2013, Majority Leader Harry Reid forced through filibuster reform to prohibit the filibuster for all nominations except Supreme Court nominations. As a result, the Senate was able to confirm more than 60 judicial nominees that had been blocked.

13. Remember: Modern filibusters are not really debates.
Floor Debate
Congress has a reputation as one of the great debating bodies of the world, but it is unusual for debates to sway many votes. Floor debates are often poorly attended and many of the members who are present may be inattentive. The real work of Congress takes place elsewhere.

14. Final Passage in the Senate
Once cloture is invoked and debate ends, the Senate votes. Majority rules.

15. (if necessary)
Conference Committee

16. Conference Committees
A measure does not pass Congress until it clears both the House and Senate in identical form. If the House and Senate pass similar but not identical bills, the chamber that initially passed the measure can agree to the changes made by the other chamber or the two houses can resolve their differences by adopting a series of reconciling amendments. When the differences between the two houses are too great for easy resolution, the two chambers appoint a conference committee, which is a special congressional committee created to negotiate differences on similar pieces of legislation passed by the House and Senate.
Conference committees are growing increasingly rare because all of the steps needed to create the committee and appoint members are subject to filibuster in the Senate.

17. Conferees
The Speaker and the Senate Majority Leader appoint the members of a conference committee (called conferees) from lists given to them by committee leaders. Although the Speaker and Majority Leader can appoint any member of Congress to serve on a conference committee, they almost always select members of the standing committee or committees that considered the bill, including the committee chair(s) and ranking member(s).
Conference committees include members of both parties although the majority party has the majority of conferees.

18. Third House of Congress
A conference committee is sometimes called the third house of Congress because it writes the final version of legislation. The conferees are not bound to stick with the version of the measures passed by either the House or the Senate. The conference committee can delete provisions passed by both houses and include provisions passed by neither.

19. Conference Report = Compromise
The final version of major legislation produced by a conference committee, the conference report, reflects not just a compromise between the House and Senate, but a compromise among the party leadership in each chamber, the president, and key interest groups with a stake in the legislation.

20. Conference Report
The conference report must be approved by a majority of each chamber’s conferees voting separately. The measure is then returned to the House and Senate floor for a final vote.
In today’s Congress, conference voting is usually along party lines. In fact, if one party controls both chambers of Congress, the majority members of the conference committee often meet separately without the minority members present.

21. Vote for Final Passage

22. Final Floor Vote
The first chamber to vote on the conference report has three options: to accept, reject, or return to conference for more negotiations. If the first chamber accepts the measure, the second chamber has two options, to adopt or reject. If both chambers accept the conference report, the measure has passed Congress and goes to the president.

23. What Usually Happens
The House passes bills that reflect Republican priorities, such as repeal of healthcare reform or defunding Planned Parenthood. Typically, these bills pass with little or no Democratic support.
Most House bills fail in the Senate because of a Democratic fillibuster.
The Senate passes a small number of bills. Because of the filibuster, Senate bills don’t pass without some Democratic support.
The House typically refuses to vote on the Senate bills because many House Republicans don’t want to go on record agreeing on a compromise with the Democrats.

24. Presidential Action

25. Presidential Options President can sign the bill
Bill becomes law in 10 days if president does not act and Congress is in session.
Bill dies after 10 days if Congress has adjourned—a pocket veto.
President issues a veto.

26. (if necessary)
Veto Override

27. Override
Congress can override the veto by a two-thirds vote of each house voting separately. Since the administration of Franklin Roosevelt, presidents have vetoed 1,349 measures, with Congress overriding 60 vetoes for an override rate of 4.4 percent.
Vetoes and veto overrides are more common when the other party controls Congress.

28. Congressional Gridlock

29. Congressional Gridlock
More often than not, the regular order no longer works.

30. Congress Unproductive
Left undone:
Annual budget
Immigration reform
Postal Service reform
Climate change legislation
Farm bill
No Child Left Behind reauthorization
Tax reform

31. U.S. House
The House can act on issues on which Republicans are united or nearly united. (Remember: The House operates by strict majority rule.) Since 2011, the U.S. House has voted 56 times to repeal Healthcare Reform.
But the votes were only symbolic. The effort to repeal Healthcare Reform got nowhere in the Senate.

32. U.S. Senate
Because of the filibuster, nothing passes the Senate without Democratic support. In 2015, some Senate bills enjoyed enough support among Republicans in the House to eventually pass that chamber and become law.
Trade negotiation authority, the Children’s Health Insurance Program authorization, and the Patriot Act reauthorization have all passed Congress this year.

33. Workaround?
An alternative is for the president, the speaker, and the majority leader to negotiate agreements on legislation.

34. But . . .
They don’t like each other and don’t trust each other.

35. To make matters worse
Boehner could not be sure that House Republicans would go along with any agreement he reached with the president.

37. What You Have Learned What are Unanimous Consent Agreements (UCAs)?
What is a filibuster? What is cloture?
How is it that the Senate often requires a super majority to conduct business?
What is the role of conference committees?
What options does the president have when Congress passes a bill?
Why and how has the legislative process broken down?