[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 71 (Wednesday, May 2, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5439-S5440]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, the Senate will now begin a 60-minute period 
of morning business, the majority controlling the first half, 
Republicans controlling the final portion. Following the usage of all 
morning business, we will resume consideration of S. 1082, the FDA 
authorization legislation.
  Yesterday, Senator Dorgan offered an amendment relating to drug 
reimportation. A cloture motion was filed on that last night. The 
cloture vote will occur tomorrow morning. Amendments in the second 
degree to the Dorgan amendment would have to be filed 1 hour prior to 
the cloture vote. I hope other Members who have amendments will file 
them as quickly as possible, to work with the managers. We have 
Senators Kennedy and Enzi who are handling the legislation. They have a 
good relationship. They have done a lot already on this complicated 
legislation.
  Yesterday, I indicated to the staff on both sides of the aisle that 
it may be necessary to have votes as early as noon on Monday. I hope we 
can finish the FDA bill tomorrow. If we can, then likely there would be 
no votes and we would move to other legislation, which would be WRDA, 
which has passed the House overwhelmingly. It came out of committee 
under the guidance of Senators Boxer and Inhofe, and we should be able 
to finish that bill next week.
  Immigration is still on line to come up in the last 2 weeks of this 
work period. Next Wednesday, a week from today, I will rule XIV 
legislation that will put us in line to move to this during the last 2 
weeks of this work period. It is legislation that is badly needed. We 
have had numerous meetings of Democratic and Republican Senators that 
have been going on for about 3 months. Progress has not been as we 
anticipated on either side, but we are going to move to this. Something 
has to be done. If we don't complete this legislation over here, then 
it certainly won't be done this year. Next year, a Presidential 
election year will make it very difficult. The three areas, of course, 
that are of concern are border security, and it is necessary that we 
visit that to see what can be done; with temporary workers, a pathway 
to legalization for the 12 million people who are here with bad paper; 
then we have to finally make sure we do something to make sure the 
employer sanctions aspect of the law is meaningful. At the present 
time, it is not. We have a lot to do there. I have had conversations 
with Senator Kennedy, Senator Leahy, and a number of other interested 
Senators over the last several weeks, including Senator Kyl and others 
on the Republican side.
  Mr. President, the President did veto the spending bill we sent him 
last night. It is unfortunate, but he did veto it. There will be a 
veto-override vote in the House tonight, it is my understanding.
  The first piece of legislation dealing with another bill to send to 
the President will come to us from the House. I have had a number of 
consultations with Speaker Pelosi. At this stage, we are going to wait 
and see what happens at the White House today. The ball is in the 
President's court. He has to come forward with something that is 
satisfactory to Democrats and a significant number of Republicans.
  There has to be some change of direction in the war. We find 
ourselves in

[[Page S5440]]

the middle of a civil war where hundreds and hundreds of people are 
being killed each week, where we are losing soldiers at a rate that is 
untoward even in this war. Last month was the highest casualty rate 
this year. In the 51 months of the war, it is one of the highest 
casualty rates. So it is something for which we have to carry the 
wishes of the American people into legislation and change this war and 
bring our troops home.

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