[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 80 (Thursday, May 15, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4211-S4212]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, following leader time, the Senate will 
resume consideration of the conference report to accompany the Food, 
Conservation, and Energy Act, H.R. 2419. There will be 90 minutes for 
debate on the conference report.
  I might add in passing that Senators worked until about 11 o'clock 
last night on this important piece of legislation.
  The Senate will vote on any motions relating to the conference report 
prior to a vote on its adoption. Senators should expect the first vote 
of the day to begin about 11:05, 11:10, depending on how long Senator 
McConnell and I take. Upon disposition of the conference report, we 
expect to begin the process of appointing conferees to the budget 
resolution conference. Senators should expect rollcall votes to occur 
throughout the day.
  I would note that there is a 1 p.m. filing deadline for first-degree 
amendments to the collective bargaining legislation, H.R. 980.
  As I mentioned last night, when we finish adoption of the conference 
report, it will be up to Senators Judd Gregg and Kent Conrad to 
determine how many motions will be filed to instruct conferees. Other 
Senators can do that, of course, but it would have to be through the 
two managers. There is a total of 10 hours on that. We would hope that 
time could be shortened significantly. We are going to finish that 
tonight, the appointing of conferees.
  I have spoken to Senator Dorgan. We have the media cross-ownership 
matter that he has proceeded forward with under a statute Senator 
Nickles and I passed in the early 1990s. The statutory time limit on 
that is 10 hours. Senator Dorgan told me last night that he would take 
1 hour. I would hope others wouldn't take much more time than that. 
That being the case, there is an opportunity to finish that tonight. I 
hope that is the case. Otherwise, we would finish that tomorrow.
  Tomorrow, we have scheduled now a cloture vote on the collective 
bargaining matter we worked on this week. As I indicated last night, we 
are going to see if Senators Kennedy and Gregg can work something out 
on that, along with the comanager of the bill, Senator Enzi. If they 
can give us some way to proceed to complete that, maybe we can work out 
a unanimous consent that we wouldn't have to do the cloture vote. I 
think the ability to do that is somewhat slim, but I never give up 
hope. It might be possible.
  The point being, we have a lot to do. We are going to work late 
tonight unless there is some agreement that shortens the time 
significantly on the appointing of conferees and the cross-ownership 
issue dealing with the Dorgan proposal. I think that is what we have 
ahead of us.
  The reason I am making sure we complete everything this week, the 
House is going to pass, sometime today, the supplemental. We have no 
votes on Monday. I would hope we could start maybe on that issue on 
Monday because we would like to do some other things next week. But 
that is a big issue to deal with. The House can jam things through, as 
we all know, because they have different rules than we do. But over 
here we have to follow our rules, which are not the

[[Page S4212]]

House rules. So one of the first things we will do when we see what the 
House finally does, because we don't know yet, is I will sit down and 
talk to the Republican leader and find out if there is a way we can 
proceed to allow people to do what they think is necessary on the bill 
but at least make it so it is more understandable and we are not here 
this coming Friday, a week from tomorrow, 8, 9 o'clock at night, still 
trying to figure out what we are going to do on that. As contentious as 
this matter is, I would like to have an orderly process on which to 
move forward.

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