Asking the experts: "Ordered to be reported with an amendment in the nature of a substitute favorably"

[Josh Tauberer]

A GovTrack user writes:

What Does "Ordered to be reported with an amendment in the nature of a
substitute favorably." mean?

That's a good question, I thought. I have an idea of the answer, but
probably someone else here can answer it much better.

--
- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us

http://razor.occams.info

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)

[Derek Willis]

It means that a bill has been approved by a committee, but that the
original legislation has largely been swapped out for a new text. "in
the nature of a substitute" means that the amendment is not just a
change or series of changes but essentially a replacement for the
whole bill.

Derek

[Chris Kinnan]

In other words, leadership re-wrote the bill behind closed doors. 

[John Wonderlich]

This explanation leaves me with two questions:

One, who "orders" whom to "report",

and two, What is the best accessible resource for such procedural questions?  The House rules committee has collections of procedural explanations, but I'm wondering where the beginner and intermediate level procedural explanations might be available.

[Michael Stern]

I would think the House Practice Manual is probably the best source for something like this.  http://www.gpoaccess.gov/hpractice/browse_108.html

 

Mike Stern

 

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[Jones, Tom (Commerce)]

No, that’s not at all what it means.

 

Usually what happens is a bill is introduced then

It gets scheduled for markup then

In advance of the mark-up there is a substitute drafted up – sometimes there are significant substantive changes, sometimes not.   Usually it’s something that is hacked out between the chairman, ranking member and their staffs – sometimes not.

This text is then distributed to the members of the committee and is treated as the base text for the purpose of amendment at the committee mark-up. 

Members offer amendments to the substitute the amendment win or lose and the substitute text as amended (or not) is reported out of the committee.

 

Substitutes are a procedural device to avoid having 50 amendments that say “at page 5 line 17 strike “shall” and insert “may””   Managers packages also sometimes serve a similar purpose. 

 

As per the question of who orders whom to report, it’s a procedural matter of the committee ordering the Chairman to report the bill.  It might be something that could be voted on, but I’ve never seen a vote happen.

 

As for where to learn more about it, I would suggest CRS’s classes.  I don’t know if they let folks off the hill buy in or not still.  I think they may have at one point. 

 

From: openhous...@googlegroups.com [mailto:openhous...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Chris Kinnan

Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2008 2:43 PM
To: openhous...@googlegroups.com

[Peggy Garvin]

The CRS classes are just for staff. There are some private sector alternatives, including http://www.thecapitol.net/ (see the courses section at http://www.thecapitol.net/PublicPrograms/ ). Full disclosure: I do work for them, teaching classes in the general “research skills” area.

 

Peggy

 

 

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[Peggy Garvin]

Josh – for your original questions, this may be helpful:

http://www.rules.house.gov/archives/98-267.pdf

 

The Rules Committee posts a number of these procedure-related reports at http://rules.house.gov/CRS_Rpt/index.html . Back when I looked at them more often and more carefully, I noticed that these were not always the most current version of the CRS reports. I don’t know if that is still the case and that is another issue…

 

Back to work,

Peggy

 

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[Josh Tauberer]

Thanks for everyone's responses! They were all very helpful.

I've summarized the answer on the GovTrack blog (wow long URL):
http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2008/09/18/what-does-ordered-to-be-reported-with-an-amendment-in-the-nature-of-a-substitute-favorably-mean/