Senate Rules Restricting the Content of Conference Reports (CRS Report for Congress)
| Release Date |
Revised Nov. 27, 2017 |
| Report Number |
RS22733 |
| Report Type |
Report |
| Authors |
Elizabeth Rybicki, Specialist on the Congress and Legislative Process |
| Source Agency |
Congressional Research Service |
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Summary:
Two Senate rules affect the authority of conferees to include in their report matter that was not
passed by the House or Senate before the conference committee was appointed. Colloquially,
such provisions are sometimes said to have been “airdropped” into the conference report. First,
Rule XXVIII precludes conference agreements from including policy provisions that were not
sufficiently related to either the House or the Senate version of the legislation sent to conference.
Such provisions are considered to be “out of scope” under long-standing Senate rules and
precedents. Second, Paragraph 8 of Rule XLIV establishes a point of order that can be raised
against “new directed spending provisions,” or provisions in a conference report that provide
specific items of appropriations or direct spending that were not committed to the conference
committee in either the House or Senate versions of the legislation. Both of these restrictions can
be enforced on the Senate floor if any Senator chooses to raise a point of order against one or
more provisions in a conference report.
The process for disposing of either a Rule XXVIII or a Rule XLIV point of order allows the
Senate to strike “out of scope matter” or “new directed spending provisions” from the conference
report but agree to the rest of the terms of the compromise. It is not in order, however, for either
chamber to alter the text of a conference report, and therefore the process converts the text of the
conference compromise minus the “new matter” or “new directed spending provisions” into an
amendment. If the Senate agrees to this amendment, it is then sent to the House for consideration
in that chamber. The points of order under Rule XXVIII and Paragraph 8 of Rule XLIV can be
waived with the support of three-fifths of all Senators duly chosen and sworn (60 Senators if there
is no more than one vacancy). A figure at the end of the report outlines the procedural steps for
disposing of these points of order when they are raised against conference reports.
