[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 17275-17276]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




SENATE RESOLUTION 209--TO STRENGTHEN FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY BY IMPROVING 
               SENATE CONSIDERATION OF CONFERENCE REPORTS

  Mr. CONRAD (for himself and Mr. McCain) submitted the following 
resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Rules and 
Administration:
  Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I am pleased that Senator McCain is 
joining me today in submitting a bipartisan Senate resolution to 
strengthen fiscal responsibility and restore some common sense to the 
consideration of conference reports in the Senate.
  Last November the Senate received an omnibus appropriations 
conference report that totaled 3,646 pages. It included nine different 
appropriations bills, seven of which had never been debated, amended or 
voted on by the Senate. It spent more than $388 billion. And it also 
included a miscellaneous title with several extraneous provisions that 
had nothing to do with appropriations. Like the appropriations titles, 
many of these non-appropriations items had never been considered in the 
Senate.
  Even though the vast majority of the Senate had never had a chance to 
review these provisions, the conference report was rushed to the Senate 
floor just hours after a handful of members and their staff had 
finished their work putting it together behind closed doors.
  Throughout the day, I and several members of my staff read and 
analyzed the provisions of this bill. During the examination, we 
discovered a particularly egregious provision. It would have allowed an 
agent of the Chairman of the House or Senate Appropriations Committee 
to look at the tax return of anyone in America. And, further, it would 
have allowed them to release the private information contained in those 
returns without any civil or criminal penalty. That would have created 
the opportunity for an abuse of power almost unprecedented in our 
history.
  Thankfully, my staff and I were able to catch this, and after 
strenuous debate the provision was nullified. But this is an indication 
of how completely flawed this process has become. None of us could know 
when the time came to vote, just a few hours after the bill was 
released, what other inappropriate provisions it contained. There 
simply had not been enough time to thoroughly scour the more than 3,600 
pages in this bill.
  Unfortunately, this is not an isolated example. Over the past several 
years, we have seen increased abuses of the conference process. There 
has been a trend toward a handful of members writing legislation in 
secret, without full opportunity for minority participation or thorough 
debate in the Senate. In addition to the omnibus appropriations bills 
we have seen in the past several years, there are several other 
examples of this trend.
  Last year, for example, the majority leadership was unwilling or 
unable to move a bill through the Senate to extend expiring tax 
provisions. Apparently, the leadership did not want to vote on 
amendments to pay for these provisions, and it did not want to debate 
the fiscal irresponsibility of its tax policy.
  So what did the leadership do? It took a modest tax relief measure 
aimed at making the child tax credit more useful to low- and middle-
income families that had languished in conference for over a year, and 
turned it into a $146 billion revenue loser that extended the 2001 tax 
cuts relating to the child credit, marriage penalty, and the 10 percent 
marginal rate bracket through 2010. The conferees also tacked on 
traditional extenders, R&D, work opportunity tax credit, etc., added a 
year of AMT relief, and dropped the revenue offsets that had covered 
all but about $250 million of the original cost. No Democrats 
participated in the conference, and the Senate had no opportunity to 
debate the merits of these individual provisions or offer amendments to 
offset their costs.
  But it is not just tax and appropriations bills that have been 
hijacked in

[[Page 17276]]

conference. On issue after issue, we have had conferences where the 
minority was excluded so that the majority could ram through unpopular 
provisions as part of an un-amendable conference report.
  That is not right. We should not be writing brand new legislation in 
conference in order to bypass Senate consideration. We should not be 
bundling together 3,646 page conference reports in the middle of the 
night and asking Senators to vote on them without the opportunity for 
thorough review and debate. It is clear to me the conference process is 
broken. Former President Ronald Reagan in his 1988 State of the Union 
Address told us we should not do business this way, in omnibus 
conference reports that no Senator has an opportunity to fully 
understand before they are voted on. He was right.
  The Conrad-McCain resolution would address these problems. It would 
improve Senate consideration of conference reports in five simple, 
common-sense ways.
  First, our resolution would require conference reports to be filed 
and made available for at least 48 hours prior to Senate consideration. 
Under our resolution, all Senators would have the opportunity to know 
what is in each and every conference report that comes before this 
body.
  Second, our resolution would require a written cost estimate or table 
by the Congressional Budget Office prior to Senate consideration of any 
conference report. Senators desereve to know before they vote on a bill 
how much it will cost.
  Third, our resolution would require that a bill coming out of 
conference be primarily in the jurisdiction of the same committee, or 
appropriations subcommittee, as the Senate-passed bill that was 
submitted to conference. We should not be sending a $19 billion foreign 
operations appropriations bill to conference and having it come back as 
a close-to $400 billion bill that includes Labor-Health and Human 
Services and other domestic spending. This will help ensure that the 
Senate considers each bill before it comes back from conference.
  If any of those three conditions are not met, our resolution would 
allow any Senator to raise a point of order against the conference 
report. That point of order be waived only with a vote of 60 Senators.
  In addition, the Conrad-McCain resolution would strengthen current 
rules that are designed to prohibit extraneous provisions in conference 
reports. Extraneous provisions are those that are either outside the 
scope of the bills that the House and Senate sent to conference, or in 
the jurisdiction of some other committee.
  Provisions that are either outside the scope of conference or in 
another committee's jurisdiction could be stricken from the conference 
report on a point of order made by any Senator. That point of order 
could be waived only with a vote of 60 Senators. Importantly, the point 
of order would not bring down the entire conference report. Instead, it 
will only remove the extraneous matter, leaving the rest of the 
conference report intact. This change--similar to the application of 
the Byrd rule on reconciliation bills--will remove a significant 
impediment to challenging attempts to push unpopular riders through the 
Senate on unrelated but otherwise popular legislation.
  This common-sense legislation is long overdue. Our political process 
has become too bogged down with bloated spending bills and special-
interest tax break legislation. Too often, it is not until after a 
conference report has passed that its true cost comes to light. Massive 
and unwieldy bills have become almost routine in the Senate. This has 
to stop.
  Our resolution would improve the legislative process while 
strengthening fiscal responsibility in a way that is simple, 
straightforward, and reasonable. I urge my colleagues to support it.

                              S. Res. 209

     SECTION 1. CONFERENCE REPORTS OUT OF ORDER.

       (a) Availability.--It shall not be in order to consider a 
     report of a committee of conference under paragraph 1 of rule 
     XXVIII of the Standing Rules of the Senate unless such report 
     is filed and made available 48 hours prior to presentation.
       (b) Cost Estimate or Table.--It shall not be in order to 
     consider a report of a committee of conference under 
     paragraph 1 of rule XXVIII of the Standing Rules of the 
     Senate unless an official written cost estimate or table by 
     the Congressional Budget Office is available at the time of 
     consideration.
       (c) Jurisdiction.--It shall not be in order to consider a 
     report of a committee of conference under paragraph 1 of rule 
     XXVIII of the Standing Rules of the Senate if the 
     preponderance of matter in the conference report is not in 
     the jurisdiction of the committee (or Appropriations 
     subcommittee for one of the regular appropriation bills) that 
     had jurisdiction of the Senate passed bill submitted to 
     conference.
       (d) Supermajority Waiver and Appeal.--This section may be 
     waived or suspended in the Senate only by an affirmative vote 
     of \3/5\ of the Members, duly chosen and sworn. An 
     affirmative vote of \3/5\ of the Members of the Senate, duly 
     chosen and sworn, shall be required in the Senate to sustain 
     an appeal of the ruling of the Chair on a point of order 
     raised under this section.

     SEC. 2. EXTRANEOUS PROVISIONS OF CONFERENCE REPORTS OUT OF 
                   ORDER.

       (a) Provisions Outside Scope of Conference.--It shall not 
     be in order to consider a report of a committee of conference 
     under paragraph 1 of rule XXVIII of the Standing Rules of the 
     Senate if it contains extraneous material outside the scope 
     of conference under rule XXVIII of the Standing Rules of the 
     Senate.
       (b) Provisions Outside Jurisdiction.--It shall not be in 
     order to consider a report of a committee of conference under 
     paragraph 1 of rule XXVIII of the Standing Rules of the 
     Senate if it contains extraneous material in the jurisdiction 
     of a committee other than a committee from whom conferees 
     were appointed.
       (c) Form of Point of Order.--It shall be in order for a 
     Senator to raise a single point of order that several 
     provisions of a bill, resolution, amendment, motion, or 
     conference report violate this section. The Presiding Officer 
     may sustain the point of order as to some or all of the 
     provisions against which the Senator raised the point of 
     order. If the Presiding Officer so sustains the point of 
     order as to some of the provisions against which the Senator 
     raised the point of order, then only those provisions against 
     which the Presiding Officer sustains the point of order shall 
     be deemed stricken pursuant to this section. Before the 
     Presiding Officer rules on such a point of order, any Senator 
     may move to waive such a point of order as it applies to some 
     or all of the provisions against which the point of order was 
     raised. Such a motion to waive is amendable in accordance 
     with the rules and precedents of the Senate. After the 
     Presiding Officer rules on such a point of order, any Senator 
     may appeal the ruling of the Presiding Officer on such a 
     point of order as it applies to some or all of the provisions 
     on which the Presiding Officer ruled.
       (d) Point of Order Sustained.--When the Senate is 
     considering a conference report, upon a point of order being 
     made by any Senator against extraneous material described in 
     subsection (a) or (b), and such point of order being 
     sustained, such material shall be deemed stricken as provided 
     in subsection (c) and the Senate shall proceed, without 
     intervening action or motion, to consider the question of 
     whether the Senate shall recede from its amendment and concur 
     with a further amendment, or concur in the House amendment 
     with a further amendment, as the case may be, which further 
     amendment shall consist of only that portion of the 
     conference report or House amendment, as the case may be, not 
     so stricken.
       (e) No Further Amendment.--In any case in which such point 
     of order is sustained against a conference report (or Senate 
     amendment derived from such conference report by operation of 
     this subsection), no further amendment shall be in order.
       (f) Supermajority Waiver and Appeal.--This section may be 
     waived or suspended in the Senate only by an affirmative vote 
     of \3/5\ of the Members, duly chosen and sworn. An 
     affirmative vote of \3/5\ of the Members of the Senate, duly 
     chosen and sworn, shall be required in the Senate to sustain 
     an appeal of the ruling of the Chair on a point of order 
     raised under this section.

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