[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 155 (Monday, October 15, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Page S12832]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, today, we are going to have morning business 
for an hour after Senator McConnell and I finish our brief remarks to 
the Senate. The time will be equally divided and controlled. Following 
the period of morning business, the Senate will resume consideration of 
the Department of Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations Act.
  Under an order previously entered, people have until 2:30 p.m. today 
to file any first-degree amendments to the bill. We are going to finish 
this bill perhaps not tonight, but I hope we can finish it tomorrow 
because we are going to move then to the Labor-HHS legislation.
  Tonight we are going to have a vote, and we are going to see if we 
can come up with an amendment to the appropriations bill we are working 
on. If not, there is still a judge we need to have approved, and we 
will do that tonight.
  I hope everyone understands we need to do the Labor-HHS bill. That 
would be the sixth bill we will have completed. We are going to start 
that bill as soon as we finish the bill that is before us, the 
Commerce, Justice, Science appropriations bill, and we are going to 
finish that bill this week. We have to do that.
  The farm bill is so important all across this country, and the markup 
of that bill is scheduled for next week. The reason we have to finish 
the Labor-HHS appropriations bill this week is the chairman of the 
committee the farm bill will come out of is Senator Harkin, who is also 
the chairman of the subcommittee that deals with Labor-HHS. So we have 
to finish that. I hope it does not spill into the weekend. We have 
talked about that several times this year and rarely have we had to do 
it. But we need to get that done.
  After this week, we will only have four work weeks before we have our 
Thanksgiving Day recess. We are all on line to see what we can do to 
work out our differences with the White House to finish our funding for 
this year. We need to do that, and finishing this bill will point us in 
that direction.
  Thank you, Mr. President.

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