[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 124 (Thursday, September 17, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10451-S10452]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, we are still consulting with both sides to 
see if we will be able to go forward this morning. It is Thursday 
morning and it seems to me this would be a good time to make some 
legislative progress on the people's business. We had great difficulty 
yesterday, trying to schedule votes around Senators' own interests 
which I thought, in many instances, were inappropriate. I urge my 
colleagues to not put their own conveniences over the interests of the 
people's business or their other 99 colleagues.
  Also, while there are obviously distractions and disagreements on 
what should be the business of the Senate, there are some things that 
we can do and should do. Unfortunately, yesterday we were not able to 
even go forward with debate because we could not get an agreement as to 
how to proceed on the issues. We have a unanimous consent agreement 
that we reached last Thursday that seemed to be fair and satisfactory 
to one and all on how to proceed on the bankruptcy reform legislation, 
including, at the insistence of the Senator from Massachusetts, a vote 
on a minimum wage.
  We agreed that we would have a vote as soon as we took up the 
bankruptcy bill, we would have 2 hours of debate on minimum wage and 
then a vote. The Senator indicated he had hoped we would do that in the 
morning, rather than late at night, and we have wanted to try to 
accommodate that. But when we said, OK, good, Thursday morning, we will 
start at 9:30, we will do the debate, have a vote at 11:30 on minimum 
wage, he indicated he didn't want to do that.
  So I don't know. I understand maybe he has a press conference at the 
White House, but he has to make a decision here. You know, are we going 
to go for press conferences, or are we going to go for the vote on 
something he says is very important to him, the minimum wage issue? I 
assume he will be here later and we will get something worked out as to 
how to proceed on that. In the

[[Page S10452]]

meanwhile, I hope we can go ahead and go forward with bankruptcy, 
bankruptcy amendments. We have a list that we agreed to, amendments 
that are not subject to second-degree.
  There was a misunderstanding about one of them, and the sponsor of 
that amendment has very graciously agreed to not offer that amendment, 
Senator Hatch, on the intellectual properties issue. And there are some 
other controversial issues that we are going to work together on in a 
bipartisan way.
  So I hope we would try to make some progress on that. Senator Durbin 
is here, one of the sponsors of the bankruptcy reform bill. Senator 
Grassley is right here ready to go. So as soon as we can get a 
confirmation that we were able to get together on that, we will make 
that announcement to Members.
  I might say, we should expect votes on amendments throughout the day. 
And, from 2 to 6 this afternoon, we will have the debate on the 
partial-birth abortion ban veto override. And then we hope to come back 
to the bankruptcy after that, and then have a couple of votes tonight 
on amendments--one or two or three, whatever--that we can stack, so 
that Members will know when those votes would occur.
  Let me read here now the unanimous consent that we have worked out.

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