[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 17 (Monday, February 4, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S561-S562]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, today the Senate will resume consideration 
of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act legislation. Senators 
Whitehouse, Cardin, and Feingold have said they will come and offer 
three amendments this afternoon. After finishing these, we will have 
about eight more amendments offered. They will all have time 
agreements, except Senator Feinstein's, but that is not a problem at 
all. They can probably work out the language on that, and it probably 
won't have to be debated.
  There is no reason we cannot finish this most important legislation 
tomorrow. We should vote on those three amendments tonight. I hope we 
can do that. There will be other things that can be debated tonight.
  Tomorrow, I would like to come in and have three of the most 
controversial amendments offered in the morning. One deals with the 
Dodd-Feingold amendment to strike retroactive immunity from the 
legislation--that part of the Intelligence Committee legislation; the 
amendment offered by Senator Cardin, who changed the--one amendment is 
to take away retroactive immunity. The other is to deal with

[[Page S562]]

the substitution, which is a Specter-Whitehouse amendment. Finally, 
there is one by Senator Feinstein, which deals with exclusivity of 
having the FISA Court, the one that handles the intelligence 
eavesdropping we do in this country. I would like to do those in the 
morning. We can do that. There will be 2 hours per amendment. We can 
finish those and have votes in the afternoon. The rest of the 
amendments are limited to several minutes on each side. Some can 
probably be worked out.
  We need to finish this legislation very quickly, and we need to 
finish the conference as soon as we can. That is what I would like to 
do tonight and tomorrow.
  I have had a conversation with the Republican leader, and we are 
going to give him my proposed amendment--that is, the Finance Committee 
package. Basically, the only thing that would be added to that is 
legislation dealing with LIHEAP, which has wide-ranging support on both 
sides of the aisle.
  We also would take from the House bill some of the language they 
have, which would add to what we have in the bill. So we hope to get to 
that.

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