TexasCHLforum.com

TexasCajun wrote:

Bladed wrote:

TexasCajun wrote:So how does it work when each chamber is working on companion bills? The Homeland Security Committee already heard testimony on the companion bills of those that just passed from the Senate to the House?

If a bill is on the House or Senate calendar when its companion bill gets passed out of the opposite chamber; that companion bill can--after being voted out of committee--be called up in place of the bill on the calendar. Basically, the companion bill takes the place of the bill already scheduled for a vote, but it still has to be approved by the second chamber's committee.

If a House bill is on the House calendar when a Senate bill is passed by the Senate, it still has to be passed by the House committee to which it's assigned, but it doesn't have to be scheduled by Calendars. The House author can simply call up the Senate companion bill when the House reaches his bill on the Calendar.

Thanks for the explanation, Bladed. So it looks like Homeland Security was trying to cut a week or two out of the process by holding hearings on the House companions that were being passed out of the Senate.

Bladed wrote:

dac1842 wrote:In the House the biggest obstacle to overcome is the Speaker of the House. He lost sight of his role many years ago, and likes to be a dictator, without the tator...
He likes to kill bills in the calendars committee...

The thing about Straus and his minions in the Calendars Committee is that they generally like to maintain plausible deniability. They want to be able to deflect blame or claim they just ran out of time. With Calendars (presumably, depending on the actions of the Homeland Security & Public Safety Committee) getting the major gun bills so early this session, the members of the Calendars committee (and, by proxy, Straus) are going to have to decide whether they're willing to leave their fingerprints on the corpses of open carry and campus carry.