Order Code RS21629
September 30, 2003
CRS Report for Congress
Received through the CRS Web
Sufficiency of Signatures
on Conference Reports
Richard S. Beth
Specialist in the Legislative Process
Government and Finance Division
Elizabeth Rybicki
Analyst in American National Government
Government and Finance Division
Summary
The House and Senate both require that a conference report be signed by a majority
of House conferees and a majority of Senate conferees. When some conferees are
appointed only for limited purposes, the two chambers have different ways of counting
to determine whether the conferees’ report carries sufficient signatures. The Senate asks
whether the report is signed by a majority of all the conferees from each house, without
regard to whether those conferees were appointed for all or for limited purposes. The
House asks whether the report is signed by a majority of all the conferees from each
house who were appointed to consider each of the matters that were submitted to the
conference committee. This report will be updated if procedural changes warrant.
General and Limited Purpose Conferees
A valid conference report must carry the signatures of a majority of the conferees
appointed by each chamber.1 House precedents state that “to be valid in the House, a
conference report must be signed by a majority of the managers of the House and by a
majority of the managers of the Senate.”2 Similarly, Senate precedents provide that “[a]
1 This report supersedes archived CRS Report RS20304, by Stanley Bach, a former Senior
Specialist in the Legislative Process. Significant portions of the text presented here were written
by Dr. Bach for this predecessor report.
2 Wm. Holmes Brown and Charles W. Johnson, House Practice: A Guide to the Rules,
Precedents and Procedures of the House, 108th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington: GPO, 2003), ch. 13,
sec. 18.
Congressional Research Service ˜ The Library of Congress

---

CRS-2
conference report to be valid must be signed by a majority of the conferees of each
House....”3
In most cases, no problems arise in determining whether this requirement has been
met.
Under certain circumstances, however, questions may arise about whether a
conference report carries sufficient signatures. These questions may arise especially in
the House, and when one or both chambers appoint some of their conferees only for
limited purposes. Usually, each house authorizes at least some of its conferees to
negotiate on all the matters in disagreement between the two houses. Conferees with this
blanket authority may be called “general conferees.” Either house or both, however, also
may authorize some of its conferees to negotiate only on certain of the matters committed
to conference. For example, one chamber might appoint certain of its conferees only to
consider title II of the Senate substitute and the corresponding provisions of the House
bill. Conferees with this form of authority may be called “limited purpose conferees.”
Many limited purpose conferees are named as “additional” conferees, to negotiate
along with the general conferees on the specified matters. Some, however, may be named
as the “sole” conferees on the matters specified (in which case the authority of all other
conferees also must be limited, so that they are not to negotiate on these matters). When
limited purpose conferees are present, the matters before the conference may be thought
of as divided into several portions, on each of which a different group of conferees is
authorized to negotiate. The memberships of these different panels of conferees, of
course, may overlap.
Validity of Conference Reports in House and Senate
When limited conferees are present, the House and Senate determine whether a
conference report carries a sufficient number of signatures in different ways.
Senate Standard. The Senate does not often appoint conferees for limited
purposes. One reason may lie in how the Senate counts to determine the sufficiency of
signatures on conference reports. In the Senate, a valid conference report must carry the
signatures of a majority of the Members from each chamber who were appointed as
conferees, without regard to whether or not any of those Members were appointed as
conferees only for limited purposes. The House Parliamentarian’s handbook of current
precedent, House Practice, states that “[U]nder Senate practice, signatures are counted
strictly per capita.”4
House Standard. The House is more likely than the Senate to appoint conferees
for limited purposes, and the House has a different standard for determining whether there
is a sufficient number of signatures on a conference report. In the House, a valid
conference report must carry the signatures of a majority of the Members from each
chamber who were appointed to consider each provision or amendment in conference.
“In the House,” according to House Practice: A Guide to the Rules, Precedents and
3 Floyd M. Riddick and Alan S. Frumin, Riddick’s Senate Procedure: Precedents and Practices,
S.Doc. 101-28, 101st Cong., 2nd sess. (Washington: GPO, 1992), p. 490.
4 House Practice, ch. 13, sec. 18.

---

CRS-3
Procedures of the House, “each provision must receive signatures of a majority of the
Members appointed for that provision only (including general and additional conferees).”5
Application. Each chamber uses its standard not only to determine whether a
majority of its own Members have signed a conference report, but also to determine
whether the report carries the requisite number of signatures from Members of the other
chamber. For example, consider a typical case, in which the House appoints limited
purpose conferees and the Senate does not.
In the House, whether a sufficient number of Representatives have signed the
conference report depends on a separate determination for each portion of the bill and
amendment (or amendments) committed to conference. For each portion of the matters
in disagreement, it will be necessary to count how many Representatives were appointed
to consider that portion, and then to determine whether a majority of that number signed
the report. If a majority of those appointed to consider any one portion of the matters in
disagreement fail to sign the report, the report is not valid even if it carries the signatures
of all the other House conferees.
In the Senate, however, it is sufficient to count the number of Representatives who
were appointed as conferees for any purpose — that is, the total number of both general
and limited purpose conferees — and ascertain whether a majority of that number signed
the conference report.
Illustrations
Recent Instance. To illustrate the application of the House and Senate standards,
consider the rosters of Representatives and Senators appointed as conferees on H.R. 1000
of the 106th Congress, the Wendell H. Ford Aviation Investment and Reform Act for the
21st Century. In this example, both the House and the Senate appointed both general and
limited purpose conferees.6
The Senate appointed 14 Senators from two committees. Nine Senators from the
Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation were appointed for the
consideration of the entire bill. The Senate also appointed five Senators from the
Committee on the Budget to consider only title IX of the bill.
The House appointed 29 Representatives, 20 of them for all purposes and nine for
only limited purposes. In addition to the 20 managers appointed to consider the entire
bill, the Speaker appointed three conferees from the Committee on the Budget for the
consideration of titles IX and X of the House bill, three conferees from the Committee on
Ways and Means for the consideration of title XI of the House bill, and three conferees
from the Committee on Science for the consideration of title XIII of the Senate
amendment and modifications committed to conference.
5 Ibid.
6 Calendar of the United States House of Representatives and History of Legislation, Final
Edition, 106th Cong., p. 18-8.

---

CRS-4
In the Senate, the conference report would not be valid unless a majority of all the
conferees from each chamber signed it. In other words, if any eight Senators and any 15
Representatives signed the report, then the report would have a sufficient number of
signatures for the Senate to consider it.
The House, however, would determine whether a sufficient number of
Representatives signed the conference report according to its own standard. In our
example, the signatures of a majority of the nine Senators appointed to consider the whole
bill would be required for all titles except title IX. In other words, five Senators would
need to sign the report for those titles. For the report to be valid in the House with respect
to title IX, however, a majority of the full 14 Senators appointed would need to sign for
the report, or eight Senators.
Similarly, for the report to be valid in the House, 11 Representatives, or a majority
of the 20 general conferees appointed, would need to sign the report for all the titles
except IX, X, XI and XIII. For titles IX and X, signatures would have to be gathered from
any 12 of the 23 Representatives appointed for the consideration of those titles. In other
words, a majority of the 23 conferees (20 general conferees plus the three limited purpose
conferees from the Committee on the Budget) appointed to consider titles IX and X would
need to sign the report. In the same way, a majority of the 23 House conferees appointed
to consider title XI, and a majority of the 23 House conferees appointed to consider title
XIII, would also need to sign the report. Table 1 graphically displays the information in
the above paragraphs.
Table 1: Illustration of House and Senate Standards,
Conference Report on H.R. 1000, 106th Congress
House Conferees
Senate Conferees
General
20
9
Limited purposea
3 to consider titles IX
5 to consider title IX
and X
3 to consider title XI
3 to consider title XIII
Total
29
14
Majority under House standard
12 for titles IX and X
8 for title IX
12 for title XI
5 for all titles except title IX
12 for title XIII
11 for all titles except
IX, X, XI and XIII
Majority under Senate standard
15
8
a. For details concerning the authority of the limited purpose conferees, see Calendar of the United States
House of Representatives and History of Legislation, Final Edition, 106th Congress, p. 18-8.

---

CRS-5
Recent Complex Instance. The difference between House and Senate standards
for the sufficiency of signatures became an issue in the 106th Congress when S. 900, the
Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, went to conference. The Senate appointed
20 conferees, 11 Republicans and nine Democrats, all with no restrictions on their
authority. The House initially appointed 42 conferees, drawn from four different House
committees, each of which had jurisdiction over some provision or provisions of the
Senate bill or the House amendment in the nature of a substitute. Of these 42, 23 were
appointed as general conferees to consider the entire Senate bill and the entire House
substitute. All the other House conferees were appointed for limited purposes, some
much more limited than others.7
The most complex appointments were for members of the House Committee on
Banking and Financial Services. Eight Republicans and two Democrats from that
committee were appointed to the conference committee for all purposes. Eleven other
Democrats from the committee were appointed in five overlapping groups, each
consisting of four limited purpose conferees authorized to consider one or more titles of
the House and Senate versions of the bill. As a result, each group of conferees from the
Committee on Banking and Financial Services consisted of eight Republicans and six
Democrats.
Republicans constituted a majority of each panel of House conferees. The way in
which the separate panels of limited purpose Democratic conferees from the Committee
on Banking and Financial Services were made up, however, meant that the total number
of House Members appointed as conferees included 20 Republicans and 22 Democrats.
Some Senate conferees objected that this configuration opened up the possibility of a
conference report that could be held valid for consideration in the Senate, under the
Senate standard, even though no House Republicans had signed it.8
Subsequently, the Speaker appointed four additional Republican members as limited
purpose conferees, and correspondingly restricted the role of four Republicans initially
appointed as general conferees. The four new conferees were authorized to negotiate
only on certain narrowly specified provisions of the bill. The authority of the four initial
appointees was restricted to the remaining portions of the bill, so that they became limited
purpose conferees as well. This change reduced the total number of House general
conferees from 23 to 19. More significantly, however, the four new appointments brought
the total number of House conferees to 46, made up of 24 Republicans and 22
Democrats.9
Additional Information
For related information from CRS on conference procedures in Congress, see the
following products. The first four are fact sheets also available on the CRS website, under
“Congressional Processes,” at [http://www.crs.gov/products/guides/guidehome.shtml].
7 Congressional Record, daily edition (July 30, 1999), p. H6738.
8 “Roster Dispute Marks Beginning of Conference,” Congressional Quarterly, 1999 Almanac
(Washington: CQ Press, 2000), pp. 5-19.
9 Congressional Record, daily edition (Sept. 14, 1999), p. H8286.

---

CRS-6
CRS Report RS20454, Going to Conference in the Senate, by Elizabeth Rybicki and
Stanley Bach.
CRS Report 98-380, Senate Conferees: Their Selection and Authority, by Elizabeth
Rybicki and Stanley Bach.
CRS Report RS20227, House Conferees: Selection, by Richard S. Beth.
CRS Report 98-382, Conference Reports and Joint Explanatory Statements, by Stanley
Bach and Christopher M. Davis.
CRS Report 96-708, Conference Committees and Related Procedures: An Introduction,
by Elizabeth Rybicki and Stanley Bach.
CRS Report 98-696, Resolving Legislative Differences in Congress: Conference
Committees and Amendments Between the Houses, by Elizabeth Rybicki and Stanley
Bach.

---