[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 61 (Tuesday, April 17, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4551-S4552]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, this morning the Senate will be in a period 
of morning business for 60 minutes, with Senators permitted to speak 
for up to 10 minutes each. The first half of morning business is 
controlled by the Republican leader or his designee or designees and 
the last portion controlled by the majority. Following morning 
business, the Senate will resume consideration of S. 372, the 
Intelligence authorization bill.
  Yesterday, it was unfortunate that the Senate did not invoke cloture 
on the intelligence legislation. However, I did enter a motion to 
reconsider the failed cloture vote. We will have that vote again at 
some time.
  Also today, at 12:30 p.m., the Senate will recess for the party 
conferences. We have no votes scheduled today because of the inability 
to move forward on the very important intelligence authorization as a 
result of the Republicans in unison voting against our ability to go 
forward. If there is no change in that, we made a couple of proposals 
yesterday which were all objected to, as to being able to move forward 
on germane amendments, relevant amendments.
  We will have a cloture vote on another issue that it appears at this 
time the Republicans are going to block; that is, the ability for 
Medicare to negotiate for lower priced prescription drugs.
  We are going to continue to move forward on our desire to allow the 
intelligence community, the 16 agencies that work for the Federal 
Government, working in espionage and other such important issues, to 
allow them to have legislation that brings us up to date. For the last 
2 years, there has been no legislation in that regard because the 
Republicans did not move forward. We are going to continue to try to 
move forward even though the Vice President does not want this 
legislation.
  We also are going to continue to speak for the American people in 
allowing Medicare--one of the most important programs ever developed by 
this country has been Medicare. I can remember my first elected job on 
the board of trustees of then Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital, the 
largest hospital district in the State of Nevada at the time. When I 
took that job, 45 percent of those people who were senior citizens who 
came to that hospital had no insurance, and children, spouses, friends, 
and neighbors had to agree to pay their hospital bill or they would not 
be taken care of.
  The situation now is that virtually every senior citizen, as a result 
of Medicare having passed--that passed during my term of office on the 
board of trustees--virtually every senior citizen now has the ability 
to be taken care of, except Medicare cannot now negotiate for lower 
priced prescription drugs. The insurance industry can, the Veterans' 
Administration can, HMOs can, but not Medicare.
  We are going to continue to try to move forward on that issue even 
though the Republicans obviously are being led down the wrong path by 
the pharmaceutical industry and the insurance industry and HMOs. We are 
going

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to continue to try to do the business of the American people even 
though sometimes it is difficult.
  I yield the floor.

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