Senate Rules for Committee Markups

Publication Date: February 2001

Publisher: Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service

Author(s):

Research Area: Government

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Abstract:

“All committees are different” is an oft-made comment. It underscores that each panel has its own history, customs, decisionmaking styles, procedures, jurisdiction, and so on. What this means for Senate markups — sessions where committee members consider changes in the text of the measure or matter before them — is that these drafting meetings also reflect the “personality” of each committee. To a large extent, each committee has considerable flexibility in how it goes about “marking up” a measure or matter before it. For instance, during the 105th Congress, committee rules for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee stipulate that, insofar as practicable, “proceedings of the Committee will be conducted without resort to the formalities of parliamentary procedure.” By comparison, other committees identify detailed procedures for their markup meetings.

Senate Rule XXVI, clause 2 states that “each committee shall adopt rules (not inconsistent with the Rules of the Senate) governing the procedure of such committee.” This requirement, however, does not mandate strict parallelism between committee rules and Senate rules. Committees need not embrace procedures identical to those applied on the floor of the Senate. For example, a supermajority vote is required to invoke cloture in the Senate; the Judiciary Committee allows a majority of its members to invoke cloture provided that at least one minority lawmaker votes to support this non-debatable motion.

Senate rules, however, do impose certain limited requirements and prohibitions on committees during the markup stage. They specify, for instance, meeting, quorum, openness, proxy voting, and reporting requirements. These and other related topics are outlined in Senate Rule XXVI, which is titled “Committee Procedure.”