Executive Business in the Senate

In addition to full legislative authority, the U.S. Constitution provides the Senate with two unique responsibilities: first, the power to confirm certain presidential nominees to the federal judiciary and certain executive branch positions; and second, the power to approve treaties. In the legislative process, treaties are treated very much like bills: they are referred to the Foreign Relations Committee, where they may be considered and reported. The Senate can consider a treaty on the floor under similar procedures used for legislation. However, the Constitution requires that two-thirds of voting Senators agree for a treaty to be ratified.

Most presidential nominations are referred to the relevant Senate committee of jurisdiction. Prior to potential committee action to report a nomination, a committee may hold a hearing at which a nominee answers questions from the committee’s members. If a nominee is considered on the Senate floor, his or her confirmation requires only a simple majority vote, but nominations are debatable. Therefore, supporters of a nominee may have to use the cloture process to reach a vote on the nominee. For nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court, invoking cloture requires the support of three-fifths of the Senate; for other nominees, the cloture vote is subject to a simple majority threshold. Regardless of the relevant vote threshold, using cloture to reach a vote on a pending nomination may take significant floor time.

Resolving Differences

A bill must be agreed to by both chambers in the same form before it can be presented to the President. (Notably, the U.S. Constitution requires that any bill with revenue provisions must be a House bill. With this exception, it does not matter if a bill is passed first by the Senate or if it is passed first by the House.) Once one chamber passes a bill, it is engrossed – that is, prepared in official form – and then sent (or messaged) to the other chamber. In a majority of cases, the second chamber simply agrees to the exact text passed by the first chamber, in which case Congress has then completed its action on the bill.

In some cases, the second chamber instead decides to amend the first chamber’s bill. The second chamber is often proposing, in effect, an alternative version of the bill, which may differ from the bill in minor or substantial ways. In some circumstances, the alternative may even embody a proposal on a different topic. Once the second chamber agrees to this proposed alternative to the bill, it may send the proposal back to the first chamber for possible consideration and a vote. The receiving chamber may also respond with a counterproposal, and so on. This back-and-forth trading of proposals by the House and Senate is called amendment exchange, or sometimes simply ping-pong. For the bill to have a chance of becoming law, one chamber must eventually agree to the proposal that the other chamber sent it.

Sometimes, the resolution of differences between the House and Senate proposals may instead be accomplished through a conference committee. A conference committee is a temporary committee formed in relation to a specific bill; its task is to negotiate a proposal that can be agreed to by both chambers. Each conference committee is made up of members of the House and members of the Senate – called conferees – who are drawn primarily from the committees with jurisdiction over the bill. Through a combination of informal negotiations and formal meetings, the conferees try to hammer out a compromise, drawing on elements of the competing proposals that were adopted by each chamber. If a proposal can garner the support of a majority of the House conferees, and also separately, a majority of the Senate conferees, then the negotiated proposal is embodied in a conference report. This conference report can then be considered in one chamber, and, if agreed to, then considered in the other chamber. Regardless of which chamber goes first, the conference report is considered under sets of procedures used for other business. For example, note that reaching a vote on a conference report in the Senate may require a cloture process. For the bill to move to the next step in becoming law requires both chambers to agree to the conference report without changes.

Presidential Actions

Once both chambers of Congress have each agreed to the bill, it is enrolled – that is, prepared in its final official form and then presented to the President. Beginning at midnight on the closing of the day of presentment, the President has ten days, excluding Sundays, to sign or veto the bill. If the bill is signed in that ten-day period, it becomes law. If the president declines to either sign or veto it – that is, he does not act on it in any way – then it becomes law without his signature (except when Congress has adjourned under certain circumstances).

If the President vetoes the bill, it is returned to the congressional chamber in which it originated; that chamber may attempt to override the president’s veto, though a successful override vote requires the support of two-thirds of those voting. If the vote is successful, the other chamber then decides whether or not to attempt its own override vote; here, as well, a successful override vote requires two-thirds of voting members to agree. Only if both chambers vote to override does the bill becomes law notwithstanding the President’s veto. A successful override of a presidential veto is rare.

Bills that are ultimately enacted are delivered to the Office of the Federal Register at the National Archives, assigned a public law number, and included in the next edition of the United State Statutes at Large.

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