# Conference Committee A conference committee is a temporary joint panel of House and Senate negotiators appointed to reconcile differing versions of a bill passed by the two chambers. Its product, the conference report, must be adopted by both chambers without amendment. Once the standard endgame for major legislation, formal conferences have become rare in the modern Congress — replaced by leadership-negotiated "ping-pong," in which the chambers exchange amended versions until one accepts the other's text. The decline shifted final-text power from committee specialists to party leadership offices. Documented in the [[How a Bill Becomes Law]] process map. See also [[Congress Hub]] and [[Committees Hub]].