[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 119 (Tuesday, September 28, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Page S9761]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, today we will begin a period of morning 
business for up to 60 minutes. The majority will control the first half 
of that time and the minority will control the remaining second half. 
Following the 1 hour of morning business, the Senate will resume the 
pending intelligence reform legislation.
  I do once again congratulate the chairman and ranking member, 
Senators Collins and Lieberman, for their opening remarks yesterday. I 
am pleased we are now underway on this historic bill. We had a good 
start yesterday. We had a number of Members participating in the debate 
yesterday. Three amendments were offered, and they are now pending.
  It would be my hope we could continue to make progress on the bill 
over the course of today, continue the good progress from yesterday and 
dispose of a number of amendments in addition to the ones that have 
been offered. Thus, we can expect votes over the course of the day on 
the intelligence reform amendments.
  As is usual on a Tuesday, we will be breaking from 12:30 to 2:15 for 
the weekly policy luncheons. Again, as I mentioned yesterday, as we all 
know, we have scheduling challenges over the course of the week during 
the nights, which in many ways is good because it means we absolutely 
must focus, beginning right up front in the morning, and work through 
the day to process the bill, to process amendments, and to, of course, 
vote.
  Again, I think every evening this week there are major commitments by 
both caucuses and the caucuses working together. Thus, we really 
absolutely must continue to work aggressively over the course of the 
day. There are a lot of people with a whole range of amendments to 
offer. We have had a long time for people to both now look at the bill 
but also, since late July, to have Senators and their staffs address 
the important issues and the recommendations which were made public in 
late July by the 9/11 Commission and since that time through a lot of 
hearings during August in the Governmental Affairs Committee that had a 
superb markup where a number of amendments were offered, debated, and 
adopted.
  It gave the Senators on that committee the opportunity to highlight 
the important issues, to dispose of a number of them, but also, I 
believe, to make it so on the floor, when we address amendments that 
are similar to and in some cases maybe even the same amendments, we can 
deal with those in very expeditious ways since so much groundwork has 
been laid.
  I am going to encourage, with the leadership on both sides of the 
aisle, the managers to gather these amendments just as soon as 
possible. All 100 Senators need to recognize that we have very few 
days, really just a few more than a handful of days, before we depart 
on October 8. Although we have dealt with many of these issues over the 
last several days and weeks, it is critical that we see the amendments 
so we can plan out the next several days on the bill. I have encouraged 
all of our colleagues to bring those amendments to the managers today, 
this morning.
  With that, I will close my remarks and turn to the Democratic leader 
either for general comments or comments on the course of the week.

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