[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Page 12575]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. LOTT. Madam President, today the Senate will be in a period of 
morning business until 1 p.m. Following morning business, the Senate 
will begin consideration of the energy and water appropriations bill 
with amendments expected to be offered throughout the day. Votes were 
scheduled to occur at 5:30 p.m. However, we expect to reach an 
agreement, hopefully within the next few minutes, requiring Senators to 
file amendments to the energy and water appropriations bill by 5 
o'clock today. Assuming that is agreed to, then there would be no votes 
today.
  As a reminder, a series of votes will occur on Tuesday beginning at 
2:15 p.m., and the first votes in the series will be on the completion 
of the Y2K legislation, to be followed by cloture votes on the Social 
Security lockbox issue and the oil, gas, and steel appropriations bill.
  So we will have three votes at 2:15, and we may even have additional 
votes at that time because we could have amendments that will have to 
be voted on with regard to the energy and water appropriations bill and 
even, hopefully, final passage.
  For the remainder of the week, we expect to complete the energy and 
water appropriations bill no later than the close of business Tuesday. 
Today, I will file cloture on the House-passed Social Security lockbox 
bill, with that cloture vote occurring on Wednesday. We also expect to 
continue with the appropriations bills process when they become 
available, hopefully disposing of all that would be available to us. 
That could include the military construction appropriations bill, 
legislative branch, transportation, and State-Justice-Commerce.
  I realize we can't do all those this week, but we will work with the 
Democratic leadership to see if we can maybe do one or more of those 
bills in a short period of time. We also have entered into an agreement 
with regard to State Department authorization, with a limited amount of 
time and, I presume, a limited number of amendments. We will try to 
find an opportunity to do that this week. Perhaps Friday morning we 
could take up that bill and complete action on it by noon, and that 
would be the final vote of the week.
  Therefore, I think Members should be aware now votes will occur on 
Friday. This will be a very busy week with votes occurring every day, 
and we probably will go into the evening at least on Thursday. But it 
will depend on how things proceed.
  Let me take a moment now to express, frankly, my disappointment in 
the Senate at the number of Senators who have indicated they will not 
be here or would not be here for a vote late this afternoon. Senator 
Daschle and I have discussed the dates on Mondays or Fridays when we 
knew we would not have votes. We have advised Members of that. That was 
true last month, and we have indicated a couple dates here in the next 
month or so. But unless we say there will not be votes, Members should 
expect to have votes occur sometime after 5 o'clock on Mondays and up 
until 12 o'clock on Fridays.
  Because of the large number of Senators who were not going to be able 
to be here this afternoon, we have decided to defer the votes until 
tomorrow. But that inconveniences other Senators, some of whom came all 
the way back across the country to be ready to vote at 5 o'clock, only 
to find that because of the number of Senators who say they are not 
coming back, we are not going to have a vote.
  So I am very disappointed in that. I have to assume some of the 
responsibility because we could go ahead and say we are going to vote 
at 5:30. But I do have to take into consideration that we do have a 
large number of Senators who would not be present for a vote.
  So I am taking this opportunity to publicly admonish the Senate as a 
whole. Last week, I had Senators who said, well, we shouldn't vote on 
Tuesday morning. I had some Senators say we can't be here at Thursday 
noon. If it continues at this pace, we will have votes stacked in 
sequence on Wednesday afternoon at 3 o'clock, which would suit me fine, 
but I don't think it is a very good way to do business. I do intend to 
have votes on Fridays so we can complete our work. It is not that I 
necessarily want them; it is because we have to have them in order to 
complete our work. So I hope Senators will plan on being here on 
Mondays and Fridays because we do assure them that there will be no 
votes before 5 and no votes after 12. But I was very disappointed in 
what the whip check looked like for today.

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