Q:”What happens to an approved Senate bill with respect to an identical House bill? If the House version is defeated, does the bill end?”
This is a great legislative process question. Let me rephrase it: What are companion bills and how do they work?
The usual legislative process is that either the House or Senate introduces a bill, they pass it, it goes to the other chamber, etc. etc. In this process, we’re talking about a single bill that goes back and forth between the chambers one chamber at a time.
Another common route is that two identical companion bills are introduced simultaneously. A representative introduces a House bill in the House (e.g. “H.R. 1234″) and around the same time a senators introduces a Senate bill in the Senate (e.g. “S. 5678″). This is useful because both chambers can consider the bill simultaneously, though they may end up proposing different sets of amendments and working up different consensuses.
The bottom line here to remember is that these two bills are, procedurally speaking, entirely separate. That means both have a life of their own, both could bounce back and forth between the chambers until one (or both!) are passed. (Of course, never would Congress actually pass two identical bills.) Both have a life of their own, and a death of their own. If one comes to a vote and is defeated, the other bill lives on. But, say it was the Senate version that was defeated, the House bill is probably not going to come up for a vote because our lawmakers know what will happen in the Senate: it will probably be defeated too.
Typically, the House and Senate will each vote on their own bills with a roll call vote. Then only one of the two bills is pushed forward. That bill goes to the other chamber. Say it was the Senate bill that goes forward: it then goes to the House. If the Senate bill remained identical with the House bill after any amendments both chambers may have made to their own bills, the House will then typically approve the vote via voice vote (or unanimous consent in the Senate), where the position of each Member is not kept: they are already on record on their own bill where they took a full vote. If substantial changes were made, they may or may not conduct a roll call vote.
Usually companion bills are identified as “identical” bills on GovTrack. In fact, the Congressional Research Service, an arm of Congress, does the research to keep track of companion bills and GovTrack just makes use of their work to do this.
7 comments so far...
Our Constitution states that revenue bills must originate in the House of Representatives. The Bail-Out Bill did start out in the House, but it failed to pass there. Is the bill that passed constitutional since it actually originated in the Senate?
I’m in no position to talk about constitutionality, but the relevant questions are what it means for something to start somewhere, and whether the bill was a revenue bill. There might be legal precedent, though if I had to guess there probably isn’t much.
The bill that passed was, indeed, a House bill. That is, it was a bill that originated in the House, had an “H.R.” designation, etc. That bill might have had something to do with appropriations. It just so happens that when that bill got to the Senate, the Senate tacked on a bunch of other provisions (some of the original provisions might have remained in one of the side provisions added to gather support). Or to ask another question, what kind of changes can the Senate make to a revenue bill before it hasn’t really “originated” in the House anymore? Small amendments surely would be ok. It’s probably a slippery slope.
On the other hand, the bill had more to do with spending than revenue. But I am not up to snuff on constitutional law so I don’t know what the relevance is.
Don’t worry about it — the House protects its prerogatives. If they believe that the bill originated in the Senate, then they won’t even bring it up for consideration. So it has no chance of passing, or becoming law.
Webster, what basis do you have for that?
Wahat he means is that Who works out the differances beetweenthe house and the senate when two “idenical” bills pass?
Congress realizes that there are bills that are not very “popular”, so they start one in the House and one in the Senate and run them both. If one fails, the other might go through.
But if either of them violate the Constitution in any way, they won’t even be valid if the Prez signs them.
Anonymous: I don’t know. I expect that staffers from the two sponsoring offices get together for a chat, but I don’t really know.
John: I don’t think your point about constitutionality is really right. I’m certainly no lawyer or constitutional expert, but it seems to me that a law is valid just until it is thrown out by a court. That is to say, a law isn’t/can’t be “unconstitutional” until a judge says so, and that doesn’t happen over night, so even if a law turns out eventually to get thrown out, there still may be a long time in which it’s essentially “valid”.
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