The Senate is likely to take a break from committee hearings during the third week of February.
Senate President Tim Bee suggested at a Feb. 13 caucus that senators skip committee work so they could focus on floor sessions, third readings and committee of the whole (COW) proceedings.
The aim is to move as many bills as quickly as possible to the House, which Bee said has four weeks to hear Senate bills.
A record number of bills had been proposed in the Senate as early as the last week of January, a harbinger of the heavy work ahead. As of Feb. 14, 640 Senate bills had been filed.
“So it is my recommendation that next week — which is the crossover week — we do not schedule committee hearings in the Senate,” Bee told his caucus.
The prospect of skipping committee work prompted one veteran senator to later say, “I’m thrilled we’re not having committee hearings.”
Bee said senators could use the weeklong window for extra caucuses, COWs and floor sessions “to move our bills to the House as quickly as possible to allow the maximum amount of time for House committees to consider Senate bills.”
The Senate could go back to its schedule the week afterward so it too could begin scheduling committee hearings for House bills, according to Bee.
Senate Majority Leader Thayer Verschoor said he may also use COW or caucus time to discuss budget priorities with individual legislators.
COWs provide another avenue for lawmakers, beside committee hearings, to debate pending legislation before it is sent the full Senate for a formal vote.
Republicans also discussed strategies to ensure they have the votes on the floor, such as letting the leadership know where a member would be if he or she is away during a scheduled floor session.
That way, the legislator could be easily tracked down and called back to the floor, one senator said.
The Republicans were still smarting from the successful Democratic push to amend a colleague’s bill a few weeks ago. The push succeeded because some Republicans were either absent or had left the floor when the Senate rose to adopt that day’s COW report.