As predicted, the Senate wasted no time in dispensing with priority House bills. Bills may be killed by a number of methods. For example, bills can fail in committee in the following ways:
- The bill is never docketed (placed on the committee agenda) and therefore never receives a hearing.
- Lack of a motion.
- An up/down vote in which the “no” votes outnumber the “yes” votes.
- A motion to “pass by indefinitely” (PBI). In this case a “yes” vote on the motion is a vote to kill the bill at hand.
- A motion to “lay the bill on the table.” In this case a “yes” vote on the motion is a vote to kill the bill at hand.
- The bill is “carried over” to the year. In this case, no further action will be taken on the bill until the next year’s legislative session.
Bills can also die on the House and Senate floors in the following manners:
- An up/down vote in which the “no” votes outnumber the “yes” votes.
- The bill is “passed by for the day” until after a hard deadline to hear the bill has passed.
- The bill is re-referred to a committee after the date of the committee’s final meeting.
Bills can also meet their demise in a “conference committee.” A conference committee is called when the House and Senate pass conflicting versions of a bill and cannot agree on the final language. Conferees—usually three per chamber (two from the majority party and one from the minority party)—are named and tasked with resolving the differences. Because of the political composition of the House and Senate, this poses problems. One can imagine the difficulty of obtaining agreement between Republican House conferees and Senate Democrat conferees.
