[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Page 4958]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, today the Senate will continue to vote 
on the remaining amendments to S. Con. Res. 101. Needless to say, votes 
are expected to occur throughout the morning with an expectation of 
voting this afternoon and perhaps into the evening, if we are not able 
to resolve some of the pending sense-of-the-Senate amendments and other 
amendments.
  There are 2 minutes of explanation on amendments prior to each vote. 
To make this process as smooth as possible, I ask that Senators remain 
in the Chamber between votes. I thank my colleagues for their 
cooperation.
  We will be talking with various Senators about amendments. So that 
everybody will know, there are 75 amendments filed by Republicans and 
36 by Democrats. We are going to work with our Democratic minority whip 
and the ranking member of the Budget Committee to see if we can 
encourage a number of Senators to accept sense-of-the-Senate proposals 
and let us accept them on both sides. We will be working diligently at 
that. If we don't have success, then looking at this, I say that 
probably we would not finish before 6 o'clock tonight, or even later. 
We will work very hard. If Members will help us, we can do better than 
that.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. L. Chafee). The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, we have lined up five votes on each side. I 
say, however, to my friend, the manager of the bill, there is a 
tremendous amount of staff time that is still going to be required. 
Each side has not been able to review each other's amendments. I 
respectfully suggest to the majority that the minority doesn't think we 
have done anything untoward in offering amendments. We have offered 
half as many as the majority. This doesn't mean they should have twice 
as many cleared as we have cleared. If both sides can work out the 
clearance, that is fine.
  The point I am trying to make is that we are trying to work our way 
through this amendment process. If there is some effort, in effect, to 
try to punish us by staying here late to work through these amendments, 
we are willing to do that. I think the more logical way to go would be 
to work our way through the amendments.
  I say to the distinguished Senator from New Mexico, we would be much 
better off if we gave the staff a matter of hours, perhaps days, to 
work their way through these amendments. These are very difficult 
subjects. As to the sense-of-the-Senate aspect, most of those have been 
resolved. There are some that are very substantive in nature, and we 
need to work our way through them.
  I personally think it is going to be impossible to finish this bill 
today. If we have to vote on all these amendments, we are not talking 
about 6 o'clock tonight; we are talking about 6 o'clock Monday morning. 
It is up to the majority whether they want to put us through this. I 
think the more logical way to do it would be to have our very 
proficient staffs work on these amendments over the weekend and get it 
down to a reasonable number so we can complete this bill next week.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. DOMENICI. We will carry the Senator's message to the majority 
leader. Right now, we have 10 votes that we are willing to proceed 
with, 5 on each side. The first one is the Santorum amendment on 
military benefits; followed by Conrad on lockbox; Abraham on Social 
Security lockbox; Johnson on veterans; Ashcroft on Social Security 
investment; Mikulski on digital divide; Senator Bob Smith on 
prescription drugs; Graham of Florida on education; Voinovich on 
reconciliation instruction and taxes; and Kennedy on Pell grants.
  I yield the floor.

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