[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 149 (Thursday, September 18, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8963-S8964]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, following the remarks of the two leaders, 
the Senate will proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators 
allowed to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.
  I have been in contact with the Republican leader. We hope, in the 
near future, to be able to enter a unanimous consent agreement to move 
forward on the tax extenders legislation, with limited debate. We also 
were unable to reach an agreement to consider the Advance America's 
Priorities Act. I am expecting a call from Senator Coburn momentarily 
to see if we can work our way through that. If we are unable to reach 
an agreement today on the extenders package--and we certainly think it 
would be possible, with an agreement, to work through the Coburn 
problems, but if we cannot do that, we will have to have a cloture vote 
in the morning on S. 3297. I hope that is not necessary.
  I remind everybody that the adjournment date is next Friday. Everyone 
who holds things up must be very careful that they are not holding up 
our getting out of here on time. We have to do the extenders. We have 
to do the energy legislation. We have to do work on the stimulus bill, 
a CR, and a few other things that are absolutely necessary. I have 
spoken to the House leadership, and they want to be out by next Friday. 
But we have to send them some things before we can be out by next 
Friday.
  I remind everyone that it is possible that we might have to work the 
next few days. There is nothing to change that at this stage. Monday, 
there will be no votes. I announced that some time ago. That being the 
case, whatever we do this week, then we have next Tuesday, Wednesday, 
Thursday, and Friday, and that is our adjournment date. If we don't 
finish our work by next Friday--or Saturday, if that is the case--the 
following week is a Jewish holiday, Rosh Hashanah, which means we would 
have to come back the following Wednesday. So I hope everybody 
understands how difficult this is. One of the Senators said to me: Why 
aren't you more definite in what you are scheduling? I just cannot be, 
with the procedures in the Senate. One or two people can really throw a 
monkey wrench into how we move forward.
  I hope we can have a very productive day. It is possible that we can 
complete the tax extenders and the energy legislation today. We could 
do that all today. There is no reason we can't. We know what we need to 
do. We need to pass the paid-for extenders on energy. We need to have a 
vote on AMT, whether we are going to pay for that, and we need to have 
a vote on the rest of the extenders package. Time limits are in

[[Page S8964]]

the proposed unanimous consent agreement. We can do that quickly, and 
we can then move to have the votes on the energy package. Senator 
Bingaman has an amendment. We have a House bill. We could move to 
substitute the Bingaman amendment for that. The Republicans have 
something they want to do on drilling. And then we will see if there is 
going to be the alternative offered by the Gang of 10. We could do that 
all today. We may go into the evening a little bit. But I hope Senators 
realize that every little bit of time that we don't have an agreement 
to move forward with legislation, it makes it more apparent that we are 
going to have to be here tomorrow, maybe Saturday, and certainly after 
the adjournment date.

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