[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 165 (Monday, December 19, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Page S13976]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. FRIST. Madam President, there will be a period of morning 
business this morning. Over the course of this morning, the House has 
passed both conference reports, the DOD appropriations conference 
report and the spending reduction reconciliation report, as well, early 
this morning. The first DOD appropriations passed 308 to 106 and the 
spending reconciliation 212 to 206 in the House just a few hours ago.
  As our colleagues know, we have been waiting for House action on 
those bills so those bills could be sent to this body. They have now 
completed their work on DOD appropriations, DOD authorization, and the 
spending reconciliation bill, all three of which we will be addressing 
over the next several days.
  There has been a tremendous amount of work among and between the 
House and the Senate and among various interested parties, and now we 
are on the final stretch before the holiday season. It will be a 
difficult time to get through the next couple of days because of a lot 
of tension, but I ask for our colleagues' understanding and patience as 
we go through what will be challenging for us as quickly as possible to 
address these issues. But all of these will be addressed, plus many 
others. We will be working over the course of the morning to schedule 
both conference reports, DOD appropriations and the spending 
reconciliation conference report.
  I hope we can schedule Defense authorization, which is another bill 
we have had on the floor and off the floor and on the floor, and 
Chairman Warner has done a tremendous job with that bill. We were 
hoping to do that several days ago, but the House had not acted on it 
until this morning. It has now been completed, and we are ready to go 
to that hopefully this morning. Hopefully here in a few minutes we will 
have a short time agreement, and then I will be working with the 
Democratic leader to schedule an appropriate time for that vote.
  On the deficit reduction conference report, as my colleagues know, we 
have 10 hours for debate before that vote. We want to start that time 
as soon as we can. Every hour we put that off is just an hour later 
that we will get out of here. We want to get that time started and that 
debate started as soon as possible--10 hours before we vote on the 
deficit reduction conference report.
  A number of other issues are outstanding. In terms of judges, I am 
not sure exactly when the next vote will be until we work out the 
schedule this morning. We will not have any rollcall votes this 
morning, but I think we have told all of our colleagues that from noon 
on, we may well be voting. We will just have to alert people in terms 
of the time.

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