Conference committee
A temporary joint panel that reconciles differing House and Senate versions of the same bill into one text.
When both chambers pass versions of a bill that differ, a single text has to be agreed before it can go to the president. A conference committee is the traditional mechanism: members appointed from both chambers negotiate a conference report, which each chamber must then approve or reject in whole, without amendment.
That all-or-nothing quality is the source of its power. Because the report cannot be amended on the floor, the negotiation inside conference effectively determines the final law, and provisions that could not survive an open floor vote in either chamber can survive a conference report. Historically this is where a great deal of consequential legislative detail has been written.
Formal conferences have become less common, with chambers increasingly exchanging amendments or negotiating informally before a vote. The function persists regardless: somewhere, one text is being agreed. When an article says a bill is in conference, it means the version that will actually bind is still being written, and the enrolled bill does not yet exist.
What the federal government did, once a day.
One email each weekday: the rules, filings, votes and Fed decisions that actually changed something, each one linked to the document it came from.