[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 77 (Thursday, May 22, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6941-S6942]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ORDER OF BUSINESS

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I thank the two managers for their hard 
work and willingness to stay late into the evening in an effort that 
some said could not be done over the course of the last 3 days, but 
both managers said we were going to do it. I congratulate them for 
delivering on that commitment.
  In a couple of moments, we will have an additional vote on a Ninth 
Circuit court judge.
  Before doing that, the Democratic leader and I wanted to have a 
general understanding with our colleagues of where we are and where we 
will be going over the next couple of days, or next couple 12 hours, 
say, 18 hours. We will see how long it will be.
  It is my understanding we will be receiving sometime in the next hour 
the conference report on the jobs and growth package. It will be filed 
shortly in the House. I don't know exactly what time that will be. We 
just left there. Hopefully, it will be in the next hour or so. It is my 
hope we will be able to begin debate tonight, following the vote on the 
judge, on the jobs and growth package.
  If that is the case, what I think, in talking to the Democratic 
leader, we would like to accomplish is the debate, which statutorily 
would be 10 hours, would begin, although we will not officially start 
the clock at that point, right after the vote on the judicial nominee. 
If that were acceptable to our colleagues, again, depending on what 
time the language arrived and papers could be filed, we would be able 
to vote on final passage tomorrow morning. This is on the jobs and 
growth package.
  That is not all the business and I will comment on the other 
business.
  Ideally, we would be able to vote sometime around 9:30 tomorrow, 
although we cannot say with certainty at this juncture.
  If that were the case and we were able to complete that vote, we 
still have the debt limit extension to address, which is something that 
we have to, absolutely no question about it, deal with tomorrow. 
Everyone agrees with that, although I do understand there will be 
amendments from the other side of the aisle to allow discussion. Some 
of those amendments will be substantive and useful to discuss and 
debate and some, hopefully, will disappear, and we will talk about the 
issues at some point. I believe we are talking about eight amendments.
  We will have to pass the debt ceiling extension tomorrow. How many 
amendments, we have not yet decided. We have to wait until tomorrow. I 
am not sure how long we need to talk on the debt ceiling, but if we had 
the vote on the jobs and growth package at 9:30 in the morning, I 
imagine there is a period we might be able to agree to tonight--or may 
not--at which time we start the amendment process and have a series of 
amendments, hopefully one after another, or I would encourage that to 
be the case.
  People have a lot of commitments tomorrow and tomorrow evening. We

[[Page S6942]]

want to do the business in a very deliberate way. That is a rough 
outline.
  Let me turn to my distinguished colleague, Senator Daschle, to 
comment. Right now we are talking not unanimous consents but a general 
understanding of how the next day will play out.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, the majority leader and I have been 
discussing this now for the last several hours and he has described it 
accurately. Our hope is we can use this evening productively, knowing 
that a lot of people have schedules tomorrow afternoon and tomorrow 
evening they will want to keep.
  While it would be difficult for us to agree at this point to begin 
the deliberative process on the conference report until we have 
actually had a chance to see it and review it, there is no reason why 
we cannot begin the debate.
  We are suggesting that we informally begin the debate, have people 
address the issues if they want to be heard on the issues. If we can 
get a copy of a conference report in the next couple of hours, we may 
be in a position then to retroactively agree to the time already spent 
and make a commitment with regard to the time certain on the conference 
report itself. That could be as early as tomorrow between 9:30 and 10.
  It would then be our hope we could move to the debt limit. We are not 
sure yet how many amendments may be offered, but we will try to limit 
the amount of time on each amendment so we can accommodate the 
schedules, with the expectation that by early afternoon we could 
depart.
  The majority leader has articulated this understanding accurately and 
we will work with him to see if we can accomplish this in the next few 
hours.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, let me add, for tomorrow we do the jobs and 
growth package, we would take what time is necessary on the debt 
ceiling extension, and then we also have one other issue, which is 
unemployment insurance, which we will be addressing tomorrow. Again, 
all of this can be done in a very short period of time. These are not 
new issues. In each and every one of them, we know what the 
consequences are. They have been debated. The jobs and growth package 
we talked a lot about, although it is not exactly as written now, but 
the issues we talked about and discussed.
  On all three of these issues, we will finish them. We could finish 
them, actually, early afternoon tomorrow if we stay focused, and that 
will be my intent. I understand some people on the other side of the 
aisle may want to talk on the debt ceiling and possibly unemployment 
insurance as well.
  I think if we work together in a collegial way, we will be able to 
complete all of this legislation. Again, it has been an ambitious 
schedule for the week, but based on what we have seen over the last 3 
years, we are making progress as we go forward.

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