In grade school, we are taught that a bill becomes a law after passage by both houses of Congress and once signed by the president. Straightforward, right? Not quite. If the House and Senate pass different versions of the same bill, the differences must be reconciled into one that the president then either signs or vetoes. This process plays itself out in conference committees appointed by the leadership of both houses to iron out differences between their respective pieces of legislation. When bills share policy goals, use the same actors, or envision similar budgets, coming to a consensus can sometimes be quite easy. However, when two pieces of legislation do not share these characteristics, this process becomes more complicated and, almost always, contentious.

The leadership on both parties in both houses of Congress appoint members to conference committees on a case-by-case basis. They're often chaired and dominated by members from the committee that originally considered the bill, and the final legislative product reflects their priorities. But this isn't a requirement — party leadership can help to tank a bill it disagrees with by specifically appointing members that do not reflect the will of the committee majority if it disagrees with their position.

This "smoky backroom" appointment process lends itself to a personality-driven style of legislating in which a variety of competing interests jockey for a place in the final legislative product. Behind the doors of a conference committee dramatic changes in proposed legislation can take place — provisions can be amended, added, or stripped altogether. All of these things have the capacity to alter the legislative intent and budgetary impact of the final bill.

Yet, the work of the conference committee, on even the most contentious matters, is rarely second-guessed by other members of Congress. When faced with the possibility of having to start over — with a new bill, hearing, mark-up, floor debate, AND conference committee — members oftentimes vote to accept the revisions and compromises from the conference committee. This process can hardly be reduced to a grade school flow chart, but in a system in which two bills must become one to become law, the conference committee has come to play an integral governmental role.

A good example of conference committee work was last year's brouhaha over the inclusion of hate crimes legislation in the defense authorization bill. It was added by the Senate. It wasn't in the House bill. When they conferenced it, certain Republican members threatened to blow the whole thing up if wasn't taken out of the conference report. So guess what happened? See ya, hate crimes legislation!

(By the way, if you're interested to see where your Congress members stood on hate crimes, see our Congressional scorecards for the House and Senate.)

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post suggested that the ACLU scored the conference report. That was incorrect. The ACLU scorecards report on how members voted on hate crimes in the Senate on the Kennedy-Smith Amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill, and in the House on the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

The first thing you think of when you hear filibuster is probably Jimmy Stewart railing away in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Sadly, filibusters are generally much less dramatic and definitely lacking in Capra-esque value. Many of you may have come to this disappointing revelation during the FISA debate when Senator Dodd bravely tried to delay a vote because he, like us, knew that telecom immunity was insane.

Here's the gist: A filibuster is a parliamentary strategy used to obstruct floor action and is used as a tactic used to prolong debate and delay votes on pretty much anything. It can also be used to change or defeat a bill. Since a vote can only happen once debate ends, filibusters are a pretty successful way of sticking it to the man.

Thank you Thomas and West Wing!

Cloture and filibusters go together like peanut butter and jelly. Kind of. Cloture, cloture, cloture. It's a weird word. I've never liked it. And I've never liked the terminology that surrounds it: "Cloture is filed, then it needs to ripen." That sounds gross to me.

So, a cloture motion is filed when the Senate wants to end a filibuster or wrap up debate. Someone must file the cloture motion then it comes to a vote. If it passes by a three-fifths majority (that's 60 votes), the vote on final passage of the bill will occur 30 hours later. ("Ripening" is the two-day waiting period required between filing for cloture and the cloture vote.)

Sometimes a vote for cloture is a good thing, sometimes it's a bad thing. For instance, not to harp, but during the FISA debate we were hoping cloture would fail whenever it was filed because why limit debate on something as incredibly important as the Fourth Amendment? BUT. If it's a bill we'd love to see passed (say the State Secrets Protection Act?), we'd hope that Senators would vote FOR cloture thereby speeding up the process and putting a lid on hijinks.

Fun Fact! Many people don't know that only Senators can perform filibusters or invoke cloture. It's a few more bonuses that come on a long list with being a Senator (including not having to beg for your job every two years like those suckers in the House).

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post defined "ripening" as the elapsing of 30 post-cloture hours. That was incorrect. "Ripening" is the two-day waiting period required between filing for cloture and the cloture vote. Thanks to Kagro X for setting us straight!

The suspension calendar is used in the House of Representatives to quickly pass (usually) non-controversial bills (for example, bills authorizing the use of the Capitol Grounds for the Greater Washington Soap Box Derby, designating July as National Watermelon Month, or designating July 26, 2008 as National Day of the American Cowboy). Suspension, in this case, refers to suspending normal congressional procedure rules (not suspending children from school). In this streamlined process, a bill that comes up may be debated by Congress for up to 40 minutes, but may not be amended (changed) and requires two-thirds of the representatives to vote in favor of it for passage. A bill on the suspension calendar will usually pass by “voice vote” — in which all in favor say “aye” and all opposed say “no”. When a bill passes (or fails) by voice vote, there is no recorded roll call, so constituents have no way of finding out how their Representative voted.

So we'll never know how all the House members feel about watermelons, evidently.

O.K. class, we’re back with another round of Congress-ese, your ever-informative glossary of the arcane and questionable vocabulary of our federal government.

Today’s word is Substitute.

A substitute is a motion, amendment or entire bill introduced in place of pending legislation. Passage of a substitute replaces the original bill. However, the substitute may also be amended.

Substitutes are normally used by committee chairs to make changes throughout a bill by striking all the text in the underlying bill and replacing it with new language. They can also be employed to resolve differences between two competing committee bills, mainly to incorporate changes — which can be very minor and/or technical — so that members don’t have to explicitly vote on each one individually.

Substitutes can be both good and bad. For example, the Senate Judiciary Committee attempted to substitute a better alternative to the disastrous FISA Amendments Act earlier this year (which would have been good). The Senate being the Senate, unfortunately, decided to vote against the Judiciary Committee’s substitute. So now we’re stuck with government agents reading our overseas emails and listening to our overseas phone calls without warrants (which is bad).

So that’s it for this week’s Congress-ese. But don’t worry — we’ll be back after Labor Day when Bryan Fisher, one of the newest additions to the ACLU family, tells us all about the exciting world of Rules Committees.