Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
Available On Air Stations

House Delays Naming Conferees on Iraq Funds Bill

The House and Senate have each approved measures to fund the war in Iraq for the rest of the fiscal year and set timelines for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. But those bills differ in some key aspects, and it will be up to a House-Senate conference to work out the differences.

That conference has yet to meet, even though the House and Senate approved their bills last month. In fact, House Democratic leaders haven't even named members to the conference. President Bush has cited the seeming delay as pressures lawmakers to quickly approve the spending bill and send it up Pennsylvania Avenue for his promised veto.

So why hasn't the House named conferees, and why doesn't the panel just get on with approving a bill that Congress and the White House all acknowledge faces certain death?

According to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), the answer is tactics. Hoyer wouldn't elaborate at a briefing for reporters Tuesday, for fear of tipping off Republicans to his strategy.

But it is politically advantageous for Democrats to put off naming conferees until the last possible moment. One reason is that 20 days after a House-Senate conference has been appointed, members can bring motions to the House floor to "instruct" those conferees. It's a process that allows lawmakers to urge conference members to consider certain language in the final bill. It's a nonbinding and largely symbolic process, but it could possibly lead to some mischief-making by minority Republicans — something Hoyer would like to avoid.

Even though conferees have not formally been named, everyone on Capitol Hill already knows who they will be. As this is a spending bill, the conference will largely be made up of members of the appropriations committees, and aides say some have already informally begun work on the details of the measure. Such off-the-record meetings would be more difficult if the conferees had formally been named.

It is possible that formal naming of the conferees won't happen until those informal negotiations are complete — a common practice under Republican rule, but one Democrats pledged to avoid when they came to power four months ago.

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Brian Naylor
NPR News' Brian Naylor is a correspondent on the Washington Desk. In this role, he covers politics and federal agencies.