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Proposed Senate Rules Reveal Chamber's Committee Deadlines

Senators will have up to six weeks to have their bills heard in committee under proposed rules to be considered during the chamber's Jan. 6 organizational day. 

Most bills and joint resolutions likely will be heard in committee by Feb. 26, the proposed deadline for Senate measures to be heard in a Senate committee. A new rule to be put before senators for their consideration on organizational day would allow member to file a bill at any time during the legislative session. The proposed rule includes language exempting those bills from the deadlines set in the rules.

In order to be exempt from the proposed committee hearing deadline, according to the rule to be considered, the committee would have to agree to hear the bill and would become its author by doing so. That would give members who file bills and joint resolutions after the bill filling deadline up to two additional weeks to have their proposals heard both in committee and on the floor before the March 12 deadline for Senate floor consideration of measures originating in that chamber. 

After the March 12 deadline for bills and joint resolutions to be heard on the floor of their originating chamber, Senators would have until April 9 to consider House bills and joint resolutions in committee, under the proposed rules to be considered on organizational day. Two weeks later, April 23, bill would have to be considered on the floor of the opposite chamber to continue their way through the legislative process, House Concurrent Resolution 1032 provides.

The House, too, could consider its own rules Jan. 6, although it has waited until the first week of the legislative session in some previous years. Those rules will set that chamber's committee deadlines.

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