During each two-year session of Congress, the Senate will refer approximately 3,000 bills and resolutions to its committees. Committees act on a small fraction of these, as some are intended only to draw attention to issues or test future support. Approximately 500 bills and resolutions are presented to the full Senate.
The committee process
After a bill is introduced, a Senate member assigns it to one of the Senate’s standing committees. The Senate committee studies the bill and calls numerous witnesses to testify on the bill, including members of Congress, administrative officials, representatives of the business sector, and the general public. After the hearing, the committee “marks up” the bill, meaning that members debate, amend, and ultimately vote for or against the bill (similar to House committees). Once the bill is out of committee, it is passed to the Senate for consideration.
The floor of debate
Unlike the House of Representatives, bills in the Senate are not subject to the same parameters set by the House Rules Committee. The Senate does not have a rules committee similar to the House Rules Committee, which exists to manage procedures, as the Senate was intended to have a more open, deliberative method of examining policy, allowing senators to propose amendments that are unrelated to the main bill. This makes the Senate an almost leaderless body in the sense that any senator can control the agenda by proposing an amendment and then forcing that amendment to be debated. As a result, it can be very difficult to get a bill passed in the Senate. For example, if a majority of Republicans and Democrats want to pass a transportation bill, but one senator opposes the bill, that senator can raise an amendment on a controversial issue (e.g., gun control) that ultimately kills the main bill.
In a typical debate on a piece of legislation, each senator is given the opportunity to speak in favor of or against the bill, and each has the right to unlimited debate. To ensure that legislation is passed in a timely manner, the Senate develops unanimous agreements that set the parameters for debate. Bills that are not controversial can also be combined on a “hotline,” meaning that the majority and minority leaders – in consultation with their Senate colleagues – agree to pass the law unanimously and without a roll call vote to save time by moving laws through more quickly.
The Senate must first agree to consider part of the law by voting on a motion to proceed, which requires 60 votes. The Senate Majority Leader tries to get all senators to unanimously agree to pass the bill he wants to debate. If the senators do not agree, they indirectly threaten an extended debate on the issue of the bill. Senators may do this because they oppose the bill or because they want to postpone consideration of one measure in the bill in the hope of influencing the fate of some other, possibly unrelated measure. Senators may also suspend consideration of a bill by which they ask their party leader to object on their behalf to any unanimous motion to consider the bill, at least until they have been consulted.
Filibuster
The filibuster is a method of extending debate by introducing extraneous or unrelated questions to the legislation, appointment, or other matter being discussed by the Senate.
The idea behind the filibuster was that “unlimited debate was allowed to continue on the grounds that any senator should have the right to speak as much as he or she wanted on any subject.” As long as a senator continued to speak on the floor, the bill could not move forward. Throughout the 19th century, the Senate left the cessation of filibustering to the filibustering senators. When they felt that they had been properly heard, they could withdraw from the floor and allow the debate to proceed to a vote.