[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Page 9470]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


[[Page 9470]]

                          THE SENATE'S AGENDA

  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, we will go to the Senator from Minnesota 
shortly and then the Senator from Texas and then the Senator from


Idaho. In the meantime, while they are coming, let me say I have 
briefly listened to my friends on the other side of the aisle, 
interestingly enough, complaining about not getting anywhere. Let me 
talk a little bit about that.
  We have been here on the floor now for some time talking about the 
kinds of things people want to do in this country; for instance, 
education--elementary and secondary education. We had to pull that 
after a whole week of discussion and debate because our friends on the 
other side of the aisle didn't want to move forward. They wanted to 
bring up the same things they have brought up every time we have come 
into this Chamber, and they have done it over and over and over again.
  If you want to talk about getting something done, we ought to talk a 
little bit about education, a little bit about Social Security, a 
little bit about the military and doing some things for security that 
we ought to do for this country. Frankly, I think some of us get weary 
of the same litany every day and going back and forth on the same 
thing. We have already talked about gun control; we have gun control 
pending. We have talked about Patients' Bill of Rights; it is pending. 
It is out there in conference committee. What we need to do is address 
ourselves to some of the issues that are here.
  You can see that I get just a little bit excited about this. But we 
have an opportunity to do some things. We have to do some things on 
this floor, and we need to move forward and stop this business of 
holding up everything so we can talk about trying to make issues for 
the election instead of trying to find solutions.
  I yield to my friend, the Senator from Minnesota.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. GRAMS. Thank you very much, Mr. President.
  I thank my colleague from Wyoming for all his good work in trying to 
keep us focused on the issues about which we are concerned.

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