[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 119 (Tuesday, July 24, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9854-S9855]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ORDERS FOR WEDNESDAY, JULY 25, 2007
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate
completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 9:30 a.m.,
Wednesday, July 25; that on Wednesday, following the prayer and pledge,
the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be
deemed expired and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their
use later in the day; that there then be a period of morning business
for 60 minutes, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10
minutes, with the time equally divided and controlled between the two
leaders or their designees, with the Republicans controlling the first
half and the majority controlling the second half; that at the close of
morning business, the Senate resume consideration of H.R. 2638.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I turn to my distinguished colleague, the
Republican leader, and ask if he has any statements.
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I have nothing to add. I look forward
to making progress on the bill tomorrow.
Mr. REID. I say that the Republican leader wasn't on the floor, but I
will repeat for his benefit what I said a little while ago. I spoke to
Josh Bolton earlier today about the appropriations bills. Of course, it
would be great if we could have an overall scheme as to how we can
complete them. In the meantime, if we can get them done, we should
proceed through these bills one at a time and recognize that the power
of the White House, whether it is a Democratic President, a Republican
President in the appropriations process, comes during the conferences,
anyway. The House can move things very quickly. So all these are ready
to go to conference. I hope we can move through these individual
appropriations bills and hopefully have some recognition of what we are
going to try to accomplish in conference before we go to conference and
work some of these out.
The first test will be this bill we are working on now. There has
been some moving on it today. Senator Cochran is the one who suggested
to me if there is no progress tomorrow, that we should move to third
reading. When I say ``no progress,'' people just waiting around, not
offering any amendments. So that is where we are. I hope we can finish
this soon, do what we need to do on SCHIP, and do the 9/11 conference
report, which I understand is almost
[[Page S9855]]
finished. When I say almost, 100 percent of it needs to be done, and 99
percent of that has been done.
We have taken out the language the Republicans did not want,
especially the President, dealing with the union situation. Even though
it was hard for us to swallow, we took that out to make it more
palatable to my friends on the other side. We will come back in
September rested and invigorated and ready to do some other things for
the country.
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I would add with regard to the
appropriations bills, as the majority leader knows, I have said both
publicly and to him privately, it is my preference to pass each of the
bills. We are running considerably behind the House. We have got a long
way to go, but I think there will be a lot of cooperation on our side
in trying to get the appropriations bills signed and get them down to
the President. We have a recent history of malfunction on both sides.
Last year when the majority was in my party, we failed to pass 11 out
of 13 appropriations bills. In 2002, when the Democrats were in the
majority, they did the same thing. So there is ample opportunity to
point fingers at both sides for not completing the appropriations
process as we should. But I would predict to the majority leader there
will be a great deal of cooperation on our side in getting through
that, moving as rapidly as possible so we can function as we should.
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