A House/Senate conference committee meeting. Click on picture for larger image

Conference committees are temporary panels whose purpose is to reconcile the differences between the final House and Senate versions of a bill. Conference committees are comprised of House and Senate Members known informally as "conferees." The final compromise text they produce, the conference report, must be adopted by a majority vote in both chambers before it can proceed to the President and then, perhaps, become law.

In the House, the Speaker appoints the conferees based on a list of names proposed by the chairman and ranking minority Member of the committee which reported the bill under consideration. Conferees are usually the bipartisanship leadership of the committee and subcommittees involved and other members of the committee of jurisdiction. However, House rules give the Speaker broad discretion in conference appointments, and Speakers have appointed Members not on the leadership lists -- primarily those who offered successful floor amendments to the bill which may have been opposed by the committee's members. These limited appointments are sometimes made in order to ensure defense of the bill in the version adopted by the entire House.

The rules of the House advise the Speaker to appoint conferees based on the overall party ratios in the chamber and to choose Members who support the prevailing position of the entire House. However, this practice is not always followed. Both the Speaker of the House and the leaders of House committees have used the competitive appointment of conferees to reward or to punish Members. The conference stage is often the most significant phase of the legislative process. To be a conferee is gain influence over the most important version of legislation: the final text.

The Senate's conferees are appointed by the presiding officer based on the list of names recommended by the bipartisanship leadership of the committee involved. The Senate tradition differs from the House: the committee's decision is rarely challenged, and the Majority Leader of the Senate, unlike the Speaker of the House, does not intervene in conference appointments.

There is no set number of conferees. The size of each conference delegation varies depending on how many committees were involved in reporting the measure in question. Conference committees have grown steadily in size over the last decade as legislation has become more complex and committee jurisdictions have overlapped. Given the obvious size difference between the chambers, the House always has more conferees than the Senate. However, because each chamber's delegation may vote only as a unit, the two delegations have equal weight at the table, regardless of size.

Conference committees must, by rule, be open to the public and press. However, conferees may decide by an open vote to close a session [House conferees must get permission from the full House first.] Conferences are most often closed when issues of national security are involved. While total openness has great political appeal, it has presented challenges to the process of negotiating a compromise. With lobbyists and interest groups watching intently, it is difficult for Members to trade off provisions in order to gain a consensus on the overall bill. As a result, conferees do much of their work "off-stage", consulting each other in private. Also "staff conferences" are sometimes held in advance of the public sessions with agreements worked out among the staff for the Members to ratify in the open session. When a conference committee is especially large, splitting up into smaller working groups is common practice, with each "sub-conference" taking a portion of the bill for negotiation. Because working groups are unofficial panels, they are not required to meet in public session, although many still do.

There are no formal rules governing conference committee procedures. Because they are intended to be flexible negotiating sessions, conferences may adopt any rules they wish or none at all. Each conference has a different "climate" depending on the politics and the personalities involved in the particular issue on the table. Some conferences formally trade proposals in structured debate with votes on each, while others engage in free-form discussions culminating in someone stating a consensus proposition.

Regardless of operating styles, the ultimate challenge for each conference is the same: to produce a bill that satisfies a majority of the House, a majority of the Senate, and the President of the United States.