Great example of how parliamentary rules help resolve exactly these kinds of disputes. Here, it is the “scope of conference” rule.
(short thread) https://twitter.com/jbarro/status/1291776532663472134

If any covid relief bill gets through the Senate, it would have to be reconciled with the House version that’s already passed. Traditionally this is done via a conference committee.

The conference committee negotiates a compromise between the two versions. But under parliamentary rules, that compromise must remain within the “scope of differences” between the two versions.

For policy language, it’s sometimes tricky to know what’s within scope and what goes beyond either version of the bill. But with numbers it’s very very easy.

If the House bill provides $3T in spending and the Senate bill provides $1T, then the conference can agree to any number between those two. Simple!

If Congress just used its regular rules of procedure, a compromise would be reached in short order. But this would require Senators and Members to take “uncomfortable” votes so they’d rather just let a handful of party leaders decide what the compromise should be.

And without any parliamentary rules to guide those deliberations, you have the possibility that one side or the other will just dig in and bring the whole thing to a standstill. Which is exactly what we’re seeing. /end