[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 154 (Friday, September 26, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9559-S9560]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, following the remarks of the leaders, if 
there are any, we will be in a period of morning business, with 
Senators allowed to speak for up to 10 minutes each.
  I ask that on the Democratic side--we are going to try to do this on 
a rotating basis--on the Democratic side Senator Harkin and Senator 
Schumer be the first speakers.
  Negotiations on the agreement to vote in relation to the stimulus 
legislation is ongoing. If we have a vote on that legislation, it will 
be at 11 or 11:30 a.m. today. That will be the only vote today. We hope 
to reach agreement so we can have that vote, as I indicated.
  We also should tell everyone we are working very hard to do something 
on the bailout of our financial institutions. We know we have an 
obligation to do that. A lot of Senators have a lot of questions about 
where we are in this situation.
  We were at the White House last night. Our meeting was reconvened on 
the second floor of the Capitol last night, and Secretary Paulson was 
here, Senator Dodd, Senator Gregg, Chairman Frank, and Chairman Baucus. 
They worked into the nighttime and finished at 10:30, 11 o'clock last 
night. They are going to reconvene this morning.
  Right now, out of 100 percent of the Congress--we have the Democrats 
in the Senate, Republicans in the Senate, Democrats in the House, 
Republicans in the House--we only have three of those Members trying to 
work something out. The House has basically walked away from 
everything. We were doing pretty well until the meeting at the White 
House yesterday.
  We are going to continue to work hard. We understand the urgency of 
addressing this situation. We will have more to say about this issue 
later. We are doing our very best.

[[Page S9560]]

  I hope the two Presidential candidates will go to the debate tonight 
and leave us alone to get our work done here. It would be a great aid 
to what we are trying to do.
  We are going to come in about 9:30 Saturday morning. We are going to 
vote an hour after that time on the CR. There is other business we can 
do tomorrow. We will try.
  It is quite evident we will be in session next week. We have a lot of 
business to do that has not been done. I will mention a couple. We have 
the DOD authorization, which is very important, rail safety, Amtrak. Of 
course, I have already talked about the financial crisis legislation. 
We have the Indian nuclear agreement. I have had a number of 
conversations with Secretary Rice and President Bush on this issue. We 
have another bunch of bills a Republican Senator has held up, and we 
probably will have to file cloture on those before we leave.
  There are a number of moving parts. We are going to try to put them 
together. We are going to do our very best to keep Senators advised as 
to what is going to happen chronologically. As everyone who serves in 
the Senate knows, we cannot be specific at any given time. We will do 
our best so people have an idea of what the weekend holds and what next 
week holds.
  Next week, as I indicated before, is a little bit more complicated 
because we have a Jewish holiday starting at sundown on Monday, ending 
sundown on Tuesday. So we will not be working that period of time, that 
is for sure.

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