Okay, if a conference bill in the senate requires cloture...

The Senate usually considers a conference report by unanimous consent although, if necessary, a
Senator can make a non-debatable motion to consider it. The report may be called up at any time
after it is filed, but it is not in order to vote on the adoption of a conference report unless it has
been available to Members and the general public for at least 48 hours before the vote. (This
requirement can be waived by three-fifths of Senators duly chosen and sworn, or by joint
agreement of the Majority and Minority Leader in the case of a significant disruption to Senate
facilities or to the availability of the internet.) Under Senate rules, a report is considered to be
available to the general public if it is posted on a congressional website or on a website controlled
by the Library of Congress or the Government Printing Office.

When considered on the Senate floor, a conference report is debatable under normal Senate
procedures; it is subject to extended debate unless the time for debate is limited by unanimous consent or cloture, or if the Senate is considering the report under an expedited procedures established by law (such as the procedures for considering budget resolutions and budget reconciliation measures under the Budget Act). Paragraph 7 of Senate Rule XXVIII states that, if time for debating a conference report is limited (presumably by unanimous consent), that time shall be equally divided between the majority and minority parties, not necessarily between proponents and opponents of the report.

A point of order may be made against a conference report at any time that it is pending on the
Senate floor (or after all time for debate has expired or has been yielded back, if the report is
considered under a time agreement). If a point of order is sustained against a conference report on
the grounds that conferees exceeded their authority, either by violating the “scope” rule (Rule
XXVIII) or the prohibition against “new directed spending provisions”(paragraph 8 of Rule
XLIV), then there is a special procedure to strike out the offending portion(s) of the conference
recommendation and continue consideration of the rest of the proposed compromise.9

Under the procedure, a Senator can make a point of order against one or more provisions of a
conference report. If the point of order is not waived (see below), the presiding officer rules
whether or not the provision is in violation of the rule. If a point of order is raised against more
than one provision, the presiding officer may make separate decisions regarding each provision.
After all points of order raised under this procedure are disposed of, the Senate proceeds to
consider a motion to send to the House, in place of the original conference agreement, a proposal
consisting of the text of the conference agreement minus the provisions that were ruled out of
order and stricken.10 Amendments to this motion are not in order. The motion is debatable “under
the same debate limitation as the conference report.”11 In short, the terms for consideration of the
motion to send to the House the proposal without the offending provisions are the same as those
that would have applied to the conference report itself.

If the Senate agrees to the motion, the altered conference recommendation is returned to the
House in the form of an amendment between the houses. The House then has an opportunity to
act on the amendment under the regular House procedures for considering Senate amendments
discussed in earlier sections of this report.

Senate rules also create a mechanism for waiving these restrictions on conference reports.
Senators can move to waive points of order against one or several provisions, or they can make
one motion to waive all possible points of order under either Rule XXVIII or Rule XLIV,
paragraph 8. A motion to waive all points of order is not amendable, but a motion to waive points
of order against specific provisions is. Time for debate on a motion to waive is limited to one
hour and is divided equally between the majority leader and the minority leader, or their
designees. If the motion to waive garners the necessary support, the Senate is effectively agreeing
to keep the matter that is potentially in violation of either rule in the conference report. The rules further require a three-fifths vote to sustain an appeal of the ruling of the Chair and limit debate on an appeal to one hour, equally divided between the party leaders or their designees. The purpose of these requirements is to ensure that either method by which the Senate could choose to apply or interpret these rules, through a motion to waive or through an appeal of the ruling of the Chair, requires a three-fifths vote of the Senate (usually 60 Senators). A simple majority cannot achieve the same outcome.

In the House, the conference report cannot be considered until three days after being filed, and
then only if the report and the joint explanatory statement have been printed in the Congressional
Record for the day it was filed. Copies of the report and the statement also must be available to
Representatives for at least two hours before they consider it. These availability requirements are
sometimes waived by a rule reported by the Rules Committee, and they do not apply during the
last six days of a session. Typically, the House calls up a conference report under the terms of a
special rule that protects the report against one or more points of order if the Rules Committee
reports and the House adopts a resolution waiving the applicable rules.

The House debates a conference report under the one-hour rule, with control of the hour equally
divided between the two parties. However, if both floor managers support the report, a
Representative opposed to it may claim one-third of the time for debate. At the end of the first
hour, the House normally votes to order the previous question, which precludes additional debate.
If Representatives could make points of order against a report, sometimes the House first
considers and agrees to a resolution, recommended by its Rules Committee, that protects the
report by waiving the points of order.

Conference reports are not amendable. Each report is a compromise proposal for resolving a
series of disagreements; the House prevails on some questions, the Senate on others. If the House
and Senate were free to amend the report, they might never reach agreement. At the end of
debate, therefore, each house votes on whether to agree to the report as a whole. However, the
house that considers the report first also has the option of recommitting it to conference. But
when one chamber agrees to the report, it automatically discharges its conferees. As a result, the
other house cannot vote to recommit because the conference committee has been disbanded.
If the House and Senate agree to the conference report, the bill is enrolled (printed on parchment
in its final form) and presented to the President for his approval or disapproval.