282 CHAPTER 9|CONGRESS
Unless restricted by a unanimous consent agreement, senators can speak as
long as they want and offer any amendment to a bill, even if it isn’t germane
(that is, directly related to the underlying bill). Debate may be cut off only if a
supermajority of 60 senators agrees in a process known as invoking cloture.
Therefore, one senator can stop any bill by threatening to talk the bill to death if
40 of his or her colleagues agree. This practice, which is known as a filibuster,
strengthens the hand of the minority party in the Senate, giving it veto power
over legislation unless the majority party has 60 senators who unanimously
support a bill.
When debate is completed and all amendments have been considered, the
presiding officer calls for a voice vote, with those in favor saying “aye” and
those opposed “no.” If it is unclear which side has won, any member may call for
a “division vote,” which requires members on each side to stand and be counted.
At that point any member may call for a recorded vote (there is no way of record-
ing members’ positions on voice votes and division votes). If at least 25 members
agree that a recorded vote is desired, buzzers go off in the office buildings and
committee rooms, calling members to the f loor for the vote. Once they reach
the floor, members vote by an electronic system in which they insert ATM-
like cards into slots and each vote is recorded on a big board at the front of the
chamber.RESOLVING DISCREPANCIES
If the bill passes the House and the Senate in diff erent forms, the discrepancies
have to be resolved. On many minor bills, one chamber may simply accept the other
chamber’s version to solve the problem. On other minor bills and some major bills,
diff erences are resolved through a process known as amendments between the
chambers. In this case one chamber modifi es a bill passed by the other chamber
and sends it back. These modifi cations can go back and forth several times before
both chambers agree on an identical bill. A complicated version of this approach
was used to pass health care reform in 2010.
The most common way to resolve diff erences on major legislation is through a
conference committee comprising key players in the House and the Senate. About
three-fourths of major bills go to a conference committee, but only 12 percent of all
bills follow this route.^23 Sometimes the conferees split the diff erence between the
House and Senate versions, but at other times the House and Senate approaches are
so diff erent that one must be chosen—an especially tricky prospect when diff erent
parties control the two chambers. Sometimes the conference committee cannot
resolve diff erences, and the bill dies. If the committee can agree on changes, each
chamber must pass the fi nal version—the conference report—by a majority vote,
and neither chamber is allowed to amend it.
One fi nal point on how a bill becomes a law is important: any bill that appropri-
ates money must pass through the two-step process of authorization and appro-
priation. In the authorization process, members debate the merits of the bill,
determine its language, and limit the amount that can be spent on the bill. The
appropriations process involves both the Budget Committees in the House and the
Senate, which set the overall guidelines for the national budget, and the Appro-
priations Committees in the two chambers, which determine the actual amounts
of money that will be spent (see “How It Works” in Chapter 14). In recent years
Congress has been unable to pass appropriations bills in time for the start of the
new fi scal year, so it ends up passing “continuing resolutions” that spend money atIN 2010 SENATOR BERNARD SANDERS
of Vermont spoke on the Senate
fl oor for 8 hours and 37 minutes
to draw attention to his concerns
about a proposed tax plan.
However, Sanders’s long speech
wasn’t technically a fi libuster
because it didn’t prevent Senate
business from proceeding (none
was scheduled for that day).
cloture A procedure through which
the Senate can limit the amount of
time spent debating a bill (cutting
off a fi libuster), if a supermajority of
sixty senators agree.
fi libuster A tactic used by sena-
tors to block a bill by continuing to
hold the fl oor and speak—under
the Senate rule of unlimited
debate—until the bill’s supporters
back down.