[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 64 (Monday, May 22, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Page S4229]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ORDER OF BUSINESS

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, before we do the closing remarks, we are 
waiting to see if Senator Daschle has any remarks he would like to make 
at this point.
  Just so Senators will be aware of the likely schedule this week, of 
course this is the week before the Memorial Day recess. We have a 
number of conferences that are completed or nearing completion, so we 
could have votes on a number of conference reports this week, including 
but not necessarily limited to bankruptcy reform, crop insurance, the 
satellite loan conference report, and the e-commerce digital signature 
conference report. Not all of those have been wrapped up, but we are 
hopeful that one or all four of those will be available during the 
process of the week's schedule.
  We also are expecting to receive from the House early in the week the 
Agriculture appropriations bill. We had hoped to go to that bill 
tomorrow and then, of course, as soon as it was received from the House 
we would go to the House-passed bill. If the House is not able to 
complete action on the Agriculture appropriations bill on Tuesday, then 
we will need to confer with the leadership on both sides of the aisle 
and decide exactly how we can go to that bill and have its 
consideration completed before the week is out. But I want to emphasize 
before we go home for Memorial Day, we must complete the Agriculture 
appropriations bill.
  We are still hoping that the House will be able to act on the 
legislative appropriations bill and we will be able to complete action 
on it also before we leave.
  So we will be having votes possibly into the night on Tuesday. We 
could very likely have a late session Thursday. Members should expect a 
session on Friday. If we are not through with the Agriculture 
appropriations bill, then we will keep going until we complete it. We 
could be in session Friday night or Saturday. This is work that has to 
be done. For reasons which I need not repeat at this point, we are 
behind schedule in getting that done. We need to complete it.

  I am not going to propound a unanimous consent request at this time 
on nominations, but so everybody will know, we have now been discussing 
the possibility of an agreement to take up as many as 72 nominations. 
There may still be some objections to one, two, or three of those. 
Somewhere between 65 and 72 nominations have been offered by the 
majority that we could take up and consider. Most of them would be 
confirmed, without the need for debate, in wrapup or on a unanimous 
voice vote. In at least four or five cases, some time would be 
required, with regard to the FEC nominees and at least a couple judges, 
with recorded votes necessary on somewhere between four and six at the 
most.
  We could complete up to as many as 72 nominations in the next 24 
hours, including 16 new Federal judicial nominations. Again, three or 
four of those nominations for judgeships could require recorded votes, 
but I believe we could get them all done.
  There has been objection from the minority. I discussed the situation 
with Senator Daschle this morning, and he is still working on it. We 
hope we can get this resolved shortly without having to spend the whole 
week just on nominations. This really should be done in 5 or 6 hours 
with five or six votes and the rest of them done without any 
objections. There are a variety of nominations: U.S. marshals, U.S. 
attorneys, IRS oversight board members; Administrator, drug 
enforcement; two National Transportation Safety Board members; one 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission member; eight various Department of State 
positions, including the special negotiator for chemical and biological 
arms control issues, and a number of other nominees.
  I want it on the record that we are prepared to go to those at this 
point.




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