Congressional Joint Committee

[Leinad]

Congressional Joint Committee

to Clear Up Confusion And Avoid Conflicts Under Bicameralism

Members

Sen. Leinad (Fed-GA)

Rep. Peebs (Lab-NC)

Sen. Siren (Ind-NV)

Rep. Ted Bessell (Fed-CA)

[Leinad]

Speaker NeverAgain brought this idea up a week or two ago, the idea of one or more committees made from both the Senate and the People's House, to clear up confusing situations. Sadly, the good Speaker has (presumably) been busy over the last week, and has not gotten back to me on that. So I've decided to make this committee myself--I'm not sure exactly how we'll do this, but it will include involvement from Representatives, Senators, and the VP. Any suggestions/thoughts are welcome.

[Anna Komnene]

Ugh Atlas just ate my post.    Annnyway, I was just taking a look through on the house and senate rules and damn they are complicated.    Appaaaarently there's a rule about any bill that passes in one needing a new sponsor to come to the floor in the other.  I guess you can always get around it by a PPT or Speaker just sponsoring everything.  But if we want to follow that, we'd probably need a thread like the noticeboard where we keep track of everything that passed where and what needs sponsors, with people posting there to sponsor things or sign up for committees.

For the bills that passed in one house and got amended and passed in the other, it's kinda unclear but it seems to want committees to resolve the issues between the bills and then send the committee bill to both chambers for a final up or down vote (I guess if it failed that, it would just have to be reintroduced or be a failed bill).  So basically bill passes house, goes to thread of passed bills, gets senate sponsor, goes to senate, gets amended, goes back to thread of passed bills, gets a committee, and then has a final up or down vote in both.  Whew.  I feel like I just watched the how a bill becomes a law song again.

Anyway, if we like those rules (it's kinda complicated for my taste but okay), I think the first thing to solve both problems is have a more interactive noticeboard.  We already kinda have a record of what's going on with the bills, but we need people posting to sponsor bills from the other house or signing up for committees on bills that need things resolved between the two.

[Leinad]

Does anyone else think a collaborative spreadsheet would be a good idea? People (presumably on an approved list) could edit it whenever the status of a bill is changed, keeping track of everything that happened and when.

Something like this except with better formating and, uh, real bills.

[Anna Komnene]

Whoops I forgot about this.  @.@  Anyway, yeah I think the spreadsheet could be a good idea as long as everyone keeps at it and doesn't let it sit.

But after Truman posted that one section of the constitution, I think some of the rules are actually unconstitutional...  I think we should either amend them to fix that (or amend the constitution).

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

For reference, here are the draft Rules of Order for the House and Senate prepared by Chief Justice Windjammer shortly after the ratification of the Constitution. It's been a while since I read these all the way through, so I can't say that they're perfect, but I remember thinking at the time that they complemented the spirit of Article III rather well.

Link

[Anna Komnene]

Okay I'll post Windjammer's proposed Senate and House rules here:

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[Anna Komnene]

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[Anna Komnene]

Personally I think they need to be more specific about what happens when a bill passes with amendments and goes back to the original chamber.  And impeaching needs to be harder imo.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Personally I think they need to be more specific about what happens when a bill passes with amendments and goes back to the original chamber.  And impeaching needs to be harder imo.

In what regards?

The standard is set by the constitution, voting wise.

[Anna Komnene]

Personally I think they need to be more specific about what happens when a bill passes with amendments and goes back to the original chamber.  And impeaching needs to be harder imo.

In what regards?

The standard is set by the constitution, voting wise.

Where are you seeing the voting threshold for impeachment in the constitution?  Unless I'm missing something, the only part I see is the Senate needing 2/3 to convict.  Granted I don't really have any authority to do anything about the House standard but this is a joint committee after all lol.  I just think that it would be too easy to get a majority vote in the House in a hyper partisan situation.  Would prefer that be 2/3 as well or something similar.

For the bills that have been through both chambers, I guess these rules cover it better than I thought when I first read them through (not sure what I was thinking at the time...)  But it might be a good idea to somehow give priority to bills that have already passed both chambers but with amendments.  Because there's no good reason to wait when all that's needed is a simple vote (for example Senate passes a bill, House amends and passes it.  The Senate should then vote on the amended version immediately IMO because it can't be amended further).  In fact, the constitution does say "immediately."

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I see your point.

[NeverAgain]

FYI, this has not been forgotten. I am including 2 scheduled Joint Committees per month, along with Conference Committees in our new House and Senate rules.

[Anna Komnene]

Isn't that what we're supposed to be doing here?  I'm confused.

Anyway, I'm having trouble figuring out how to combine the slots idea with the constitutional mandate that amended bills be voted on immediately in the original chamber.  It seems like we'd just have to have a clause that says the VP opens a thread for those bills regardless of what slots are open?