Re: Update - Week of September 25th
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Conference committees are (in my experience) normally rarely official meetings where differences are ironed out, debated, etc.
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The answer on this is: it depends. On appropriations bills, there are often formal conference meetings where things are debated -- sometimes, there are even amendments offered and voted on. As Berge said, there is a lot of wheeling and dealing at the staff/lobbyist level in conferences, and many of the smaller decisions are worked out at that level.
On the DoD Authorization bill, I am not sure if there will be a formal conference meeting -- there may have been a few meetings in recent weeks, but given where things stand with only a few days left, I doubt there will be a meeting if they do get an agreement. What they'd probably do is send around the conference report to be signed and just end it at that.
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