[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 149 (Wednesday, October 22, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13011-S13012]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  ENERGY CONFERENCE COMMITTEE MEETING

  Mr. DOMENICI. I have an announcement on behalf of myself and Chairman 
Billy Tauzin from the House of Representatives. We have scheduled a 
conference meeting for Tuesday morning.

[[Page S13012]]

The tax writers should have completed their work on tax provisions in 
time to meet that schedule. We will provide conference language to all 
House and Senate conferees, Republican and Democrat, 48 hours in 
advance of the conference. We plan to make the language public 48 hours 
before the conference.
  We see no reason that final passage of this bill cannot occur soon 
after the conference. Members of Congress have spent the past 3 years 
negotiating the resolution of a difficult regional issue and many 
national issues that pertain to energy and America's future. We are on 
the verge of completing work on a comprehensive Energy bill for the 
first time since 1992. This Senator believes this bill is even more 
significant than the 1992 bill.
  To repeat, Chairman Billy Tauzin and myself, as chairman of our 
committee in the Senate, are announcing we will have a meeting of the 
conferees on the Energy bill on October 28, Tuesday, 10 a.m., in 
Dirksen 106. We have scheduled this conference for Tuesday morning, but 
implicit in my statement is that the tax writers have not completed 
their work on the tax provisions, but the two chairmen are suggesting 
in this announcement they should have their work completed in time for 
us to release that with the conference report, since it is part of it, 
without which there is not a conference, without which we do not know 
whether the rest of the work is valid or has to be changed.
  Everyone who is interested at the leadership level is working to get 
this tax provision done. I want to repeat, it is not done. We do expect 
it to be done in time for this announcement to be effective.

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