[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 49 (Wednesday, April 23, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Page S3467]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, this morning, the Senate will begin 
consideration of the Chemical Weapons Convention Treaty. Under the 
previous order, there will be 10 hours of debate to be equally divided 
between the chairman and the ranking member or their designees and 1 
hour under the control of Senator Leahy. Also, in accordance with the 
agreement, a limited number of amendments are in order to the 
resolution of ratification.
  The Senate will recess at 12:30 p.m. until the hour of 2:15 to allow 
for the weekly policy meetings, and when the Senate reconvenes, we will 
resume consideration of the treaty. I hope that perhaps we could get an 
agreement to have one of the votes occur later on this afternoon. I 
believe there may have been some discussions on that. If not, we will 
have the votes on motions to strike, if any. There, I believe, were 
five agreed to in our unanimous-consent agreement, and, of course, we 
are anticipating that the final vote will occur sometime tomorrow 
night, I assume between 5, 6 and 8 o'clock. And, of course, as always, 
we will notify Senators of anticipated rollcall votes as early as 
possible. But there would not be one, if any, today until late in the 
day. There will be a number of votes throughout the day on Thursday, 
and I urge Senators to be prepared to answer the votes quickly so that 
we can get through the five motions to strike that may be offered under 
the agreement and to final passage at a reasonable hour tomorrow.
  Also, unless there were a lot of yielding back of time, I do not 
anticipate that we could finish even in the early afternoon or late 
afternoon on Thursday. I think it clearly is going to go into the 
evening.
  With that, Mr. President, I would be glad to yield the floor.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, will the majority leader yield?
  Mr. LOTT. I will withhold yielding the floor and yield to the Senator 
from Delaware.
  Mr. BIDEN. Before the clock starts to toll here on the 10 hours, I 
understand the distinguished chairman of the committee is running just 
a little bit late, and he asked whether or not it would be permissible 
to have a 10-minute quorum call; is that correct?
  Mr. KYL. He is willing to go ahead if you would like.
  Mr. BIDEN. I would like to just wait and give the chairman the 
opportunity to make his statement.
  Mr. LOTT. We will put in a quorum then until the chairman is here and 
ready to resume the discussions. I know they are going to be very 
interesting.
  The Senator from Delaware is not going to go through that whole book, 
is he?
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I say to the distinguished leader, 
depending on how many votes we have, I may go through only a very small 
portion of it.
  Mr. LOTT. I yield the floor and I observe the absence of a quorum, 
Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Allard). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  We have a number of items that need to be read, under the previous 
order.

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