CONFERENCE IMPASSE MAY BE CLOSE TO AGREEMENT

April 26, 2001

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Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) this week announced that they are close to an agreement on dividing the power for conference committees. This could soon lead to the resolution of the impasse which is holding up the so called bankruptcy ‘reform’ bill. “We’ve made a lot of progress in the last 48 hours,” Daschle said. “I think we’re getting closer.” Lott said that he and Daschle were working with some “different approaches” that would include a mechanism to allow legislation to get out of a House-Senate conference if it were deadlocked.

The latest proposal calls for an equal number of Democratic and Republican senators on most conferences committees. On Tuesday, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) announced that he and the Senate leadership continue to discuss how to move the pending bankruptcy
reform legislation (S.420) forward, despite the Senate’s inability to agree on the format for conference committees. Grassley said that the Senate leadership had already approached him with the equal split compromise – but only if it was assured that ties could be broken and “the bill could get out of there.”

While the outlines of a proposal weren’t made clear, there were indications that Lott and Daschle would be able to serve “ex-officio” on
conference committees, allowing Lott to break ties. Democrats are wary of the plan, however. They are concerned that Republicans will refuse to compromise during conferences, allowing Lott to impose the Republican agenda
on the Senate.