[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 126 (Friday, September 24, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Page S11421]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ORDER OF BUSINESS

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, again I thank the members of the VA-HUD 
appropriations subcommittee and the full committee for their good work. 
Also, I am pleased we were able to work out an agreement as to how we 
could proceed for the remainder of the day. We have now completed 
action on the VA-HUD appropriations bill. The education issue that was 
being discussed earlier by Senator Daschle, Senator Gregg, and Senator 
Kennedy, and others who will be commenting in a few minutes, those two 
issues will be considered back-to-back on Monday.
  There will, obviously, be no further votes today. The next votes will 
occur at 5:30 on Monday. As it now stands, there will be two votes at 
that time.
  The Senate has done good work this week. In addition to completing 
action on the VA-HUD appropriations bill, after a lot of delay and 
unnecessary obstruction, in my opinion, we were able to complete the 
Interior appropriations bill, and we also passed, by an overwhelming 
vote, the defense authorization conference report for the year--a good 
bill. Senator Warner and his Armed Services Committee members, Senator 
Thurmond, Senator Levin, did an excellent job on that bill. I certainly 
expect and hope the President will sign the defense authorization 
conference report and, hopefully, the Interior Committee conference 
will get underway on Monday, and the VA-HUD conference as well.
  That leaves only one appropriations bill to be considered in the 
Senate before all 13 of them will be completed. I believe we are well 
ahead of where we have been in many years in getting that done. It is 
actually possible that we could get the Labor-HHS-Education 
appropriations bill up by Tuesday or Wednesday of next week and either 
complete it before the end of the fiscal year or within a day of that, 
and then, of course, go to conference.
  Will it be easy? No. I am sure it is going to be an interesting 
debate, but that is as it should be. I look forward to completing that 
work and moving forward with the appropriations conference reports. I 
hope there will be one or two conference reports that might be 
available on Monday. Whenever they become available, we will consider 
them that day or the next day. Energy and water is close to being 
completed, I believe, and Agriculture is still in the mill. We hope to 
get those done.
  I do want to emphasize that I think the way we worked out handling 
this education issue is much better than having it on the VA-HUD 
appropriations bill. It does not relate to the VA-HUD bill. I did not 
think it should have been offered on that appropriations bill, even 
though it was offered as a sense of the Senate. It is better to handle 
it the way we have agreed to do it.
  Senator Daschle seemed to question whether we intended to go to the 
Labor-HHS appropriations bill. I have been saying for weeks we intend 
to do it. As soon as the committee reports it out, we will have it on 
the floor as soon as the rules allow. I have been saving next week for 
its consideration. Education amendments, I am sure, will be offered 
next week when this bill is considered in the Senate.

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