WASHINGTON, DC – June 23, 2010: House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., standing, consults with Senate Banking Chairman Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., during the House-Senate conference on a comprehensive financial regulatory overhaul bill. At left is House Financial Services ranking member Spencer Bachus, R-Ala.; at right are Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski, D-Pa., and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif. (Photo by Scott J. Ferrell/Congressional Quarterly/Getty Images)
Congress is closer than it has been in 16 years to enacting major, bipartisan housing legislation. Both the House and Senate have passed strong housing bills with overwhelming bipartisan support. But we seem stuck. While Senators and Representatives agree with their colleagues across the party aisle, their leaders have been largely unwilling to talk to their colleagues across the Capitol.
Far too often, colleagues ask me, “is the bill dead” or “when will the bill be dead” rather than “what’s the path to enactment” or “what should we be doing now to make this happen.” As I wrote in April, some of us have caught a bad case of the yips. It’s completely understandable. Housers have an awfully big box full of participant ribbons and no medals. As Ted Lasso says, winning is a “lot like riding a horse. If you’re comfortable while you’re doing it, you’re probably doing it wrong.”
The Constitution requires that legislation sent to the President for his signature must pass both chambers in exact form, down to the last comma. It was intended to be hard. So far, House and Senate leaders have refused to meet to negotiate their differences, insisting on a “my way or the highway” approach. This may sound like the height of dysfunction, but disagreement between the House and Senate is a design feature, not a flaw.
To understand how to move this to completion, it’s essential that we all know how the system is designed to resolve these differences. There is widespread skepticism about some of these tools, such as forming a conference committee. That’s understandable. Most of the staffers hadn’t graduated high school when the Dodd-Frank Act was enacted in 2010, and few of the principal members of the House and Senate were in Congress.
So, let’s take a deep dive into the weeds and explore how a bill actually becomes law instead of how a bill does not become a law, which has become the case too often.
When talking about congressional rules and procedures, which are heavily dependent on tradition and precedent, there’s no better place to start than the beginning. The rules that govern this work were designed for just this situation and refined over 250 years. What a great way to celebrate their anniversary.
The Federalist Papers were written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay to help sell ratification of the Constitution to a skeptical and cautious public. In Federalist No. 62, James Madison argued that conflict between the two branches “doubles the security of the people” from “usurpation,” “perfidy,” “ambition,” and “corruption.” He went on to say “… the improbability of sinister combinations will be in proportion to the dissimilarity in the genius of the two bodies, it must be politic to distinguish them from each other by every circumstance which will consist with a due harmony in all proper measures, and with the genuine principles of republican government.”
The most straightforward way to make a bill a law is for one chamber to pass a bill, and the other to do the same, without change. This is easy for simple bills, like the naming of a post office, but it is much more challenging whenever complex issues are at stake, even when they are broadly supported, as is the case with this session’s housing bill. Both the House and Senate have insisted on this approach, to little effect. To avoid an endless game of chicken, both House and Senate rules forbid an amendment in the third-degree. We are quickly approaching that wall.
When the Senate took up H.R. 6644, the Housing for the 21st Century Act (passed by the House on February 9, 2026), it did so by amending the House bill with new Senate language, rather than its own bill. H.R. 6644 was passed by the Senate, but as an “amendment in the nature of a substitute.” The bill included many sections that were identical to the House bill, others that were changed or added, and some that were in the House version but completely left out of the Senate bill. (For a detailed comparison, see the Bipartisan Policy Center’s “What’s in the House Amendment to the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act?”)
Take it or leave it is not a winning strategy and neither body had any interest in just “taking it.” So, the House took the Senate bill and did the same thing. It stripped out everything after the enacting clause of the Senate’s version with “an amendment in the nature of a substitute.” Luckily, Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the rule, gave us a mulligan. The Senate’s amendment to the House bill is not considered an amendment in the first degree. The House’s amendment to the Senate’s amendment is the amendment in the first degree. Should the Senate amend the House’s amendment, that would be the amendment in the second degree. Sound confusing? That’s why the Parliamentarian has such an important role in both chambers.
A bill negotiated directly between the House and Senate leaders, passed by the Senate, would likely be accepted by the House. This approach has failed to date because the two sides have refused to meet face-to-face.
A third way is for the Senate and the House to appoint members to represent them in a conference committee. A conference committee is a temporary, ad hoc panel of House and Senate “conferees” appointed to reconcile differences between legislation that has passed both chambers. On the House side, conferees are appointed by the Speaker, Mike Johnson (R-La.). In the Senate, a conference is agreed to by unanimous consent. Refusing to grant unanimous consent for a conference is virtually unprecedented. Senate conferees are appointed by the Presiding Officer, Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.). Both have full discretion to appoint anyone they want. In practice, they choose members after consulting with the Minority Leaders and the relevant committee chairs and ranking members. These members are typically the chair and ranking member of each relevant committee, the corresponding subcommittee leaders, and others as appropriate at the discretion of leadership.
With complicated legislation, especially bills that were referred to multiple committees, this can be an arduous task. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act had 14 statutory titles and was referred to 8 standing committees of the House and one committee of the Senate. Ultimately, the House appointed 31 conferees from six committees, and the Senate appointed 12 from two committees. The conference took three weeks.
For a bill like this year’s housing bill, however, the process is relatively simple. Only one committee in each chamber acted on the bill, and both passed with overwhelming support (396-13 in the House and 89-10 in the Senate). That makes Speaker Johnson and Majority Leader Thune’s job much easier, especially given the overwhelming bipartisan support for the two versions.
Once conferees are appointed (or before), staff meet to work out all of the easier issues. Any provision that is already identical must be included in the final bill. Minor differences are easy to resolve and are often technical in nature. Some of the harder issues can be resolved by staff, and the remainder are left to the members. While Senators and Representatives may vote to “instruct” conferees on how to handle certain issues, these motions are non-binding and atypical in legislation with broad support.
House-Senate conference committee meetings are open to the public, unlike the secret negotiations which have been the rule in so much of this process. Under both House and Senate rules, a conference committee is not a general drafting body free to rewrite a measure without regard to the matters in disagreement; both chambers’ rules impose scope restrictions, though the Senate codifies them more explicitly.
The conference chairs work through the bill, title by title, and offer amendments to the language that can gain a majority of each chamber’s conference committee members. Once the final language is agreed to, the staff write a joint explanatory statement on behalf of the managers explaining the effect of the changes made.
In the House, conference reports are generally debated for one hour, equally divided between majority and minority managers, absent a special rule providing otherwise. A conference report is not amendable in the House. The House votes on passage of the reconciled bill, though in rare cases the bill can be sent back or “recommitted” to the conference committee. Members may raise a point of order against any provision that is outside the scope of conference.
Conference reports in the Senate are privileged in the sense that they are in order for consideration, but debate is not subject to the same fixed one-hour cap as in the House. Debate on a conference report may continue under the Senate’s usual debate rules. If Senators seek to limit debate, cloture under Rule XXII may be invoked. On a bill that passed the Senate with 89 votes and the House with 296 votes, it is highly unlikely that a cloture vote would be controversial. Like the House, Senate rules limit consideration to an up or down vote, or recommittal to the conference committee. Senate rules also similarly limit scope to the differences between the chambers.
The last conference I personally participated in was the Foreign Operations Appropriations bill in 1992. This conference lasted one day (and night), and the entire process went from the appointment of conferees to the President’s signature in five days. Then Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt., U.S.S. 1975-2023) convened the conference late in the afternoon. He knew that by 2 or 3 am, everyone in the room would be ready to make a deal, and they were.
One of the reasons there is so much confusion about the conference process is that it has become so rare. That’s unfortunate as it is a relatively graceful way of reconciling differences. “If we could get [Chairmen French Hill (R-Ark.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Ranking Members Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Maxine Waters (D-Calif.)] in the room, around a table, we could navigate these issues, and that’s what I’m an advocate for,” House Financial Services Housing and Insurance Subcommittee Chairman Mike Flood (R-Neb.) said at POLITICO’s Economy Summit in March. Chairman Flood added that Hill “needs to have that sit-down” with Scott—and “not as much of that has happened.” It’s not too late.
What if all of these paths fail to result in a bill? Well, there’s always the option of sticking a housing bill onto another piece of unrelated legislation, like the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The problem with this approach is it has a distinguished record of failure. Chairman Hill recounted this in a recent interview with POLITICO Pro, where he referred to the procedure as “very unusual and not typically done,” but he didn’t rule it out as a last chance opportunity this year. Chairman Hill acknowledged that he has spoken with Chairman Scott on how to move forward and said that leadership staff in the House and Senate have also discussed options.
NHC’s position is simple. Pass the bill. We don’t care how and are actively advocating for the principals to meet and work out their differences. They agree far more than they disagree. I am confident that if they meet together, they will quickly resolve their differences.
Should the bill proceed to conference, we will continue to advocate for these priorities. However, it is essential that we do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If the Senate and House negotiate an agreement without a conference committee, we will support that approach. NHC will not be a hypocrite, applying this rule only to others. This legislation represents the strongest bipartisan housing legislation considered in a generation. We will support whatever bill emerges as the result of a bicameral, bipartisan compromise.
Every community is affected by the housing affordability crisis, regardless of politics or geography. NHC’s report, “Priced Out: When a Good Job Isn’t Enough,” finds that middle-class Americans now face affordability challenges once associated primarily with low-income households. Today, the latest census median U.S. household income is sufficient to purchase a home in only 121 metropolitan areas, down from 287 in 2019—an alarming contraction that underscores how quickly the American Dream of homeownership is slipping out of reach.
Without significant policy action to expand supply and stabilize costs, affordability pressures will continue to intensify, displacing workers and constraining economic opportunity. It will also be a major factor in the midterm elections, as recent polling makes clear. If President Donald Trump and Members of Congress do not deliver something tangible, voters are likely to take action in November, and incumbents of both parties may pay the price.
The longest-serving Speaker of the House of Representatives in history, Sam Rayburn (D-Tex.), once mused to a member of his Democratic Caucus who referred to Republicans as their enemy: “The Republicans are the opposition. The enemy is the Senate.” It is not, and neither is the House. We have a long tradition of bridging the space between the House and the Senate. It is time to do it again.