[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Page 15196]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               RECOGNITION OF THE ACTING MINORITY LEADER

  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brownback). The Senator from Nevada is 
recognized.
  Mr. REID. As we all knew yesterday, the problem with not having 
amendments was that CBO had not completed scoring on the Medicare bill. 
It is my understanding there is scoring on the bill and Senators 
Grassley and Baucus will offer either some technical changes or maybe a 
substitute to comply with mistakes made by staff during the very busy 
weekend they had.
  Is that the understanding of the leader?
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, that is generally my understanding. Again, 
for our colleagues, in order for the process to start and to allow us 
to really begin the amendment process, we have to have what is called a 
scoring from CBO. We were in touch with them at 8:30 and 9 this 
morning. It is my understanding we will have that scoring, but before I 
can say anything further with absolute certainty, we will know 
something in the next 30 minutes or so. Once we get that scoring that 
is both in the aggregate but also line by line--and we did not have a 
line by line at 7 this morning, and people are working around the clock 
on it, but once we have that line by line, we will be able to go 
directly to the managers' package and then also directly to the 
amendments. I am very hopeful that at 10 this morning that process will 
start.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I say to the leader, now that we have had 
people make a lot of opening statements, we are waiting to offer 
amendments. Senator Stabenow is going to offer our first amendment, 
following whatever the managers decide to do with their opening 
amendments.
  So we are anxious to go to work, and hopefully we can do that as soon 
as possible. However, as we all know, it cannot be done until the 
scoring is complete. Otherwise, a point of order would be available 
against any amendment. So we look forward to getting into this as 
quickly as we can.
  Mr. FRIST. Again, all of this demonstrates that everybody is working 
as hard as they can to address this situation in a reasonable, step-by-
step fashion. So I am very pleased with where we are today. Both sides 
are very anxious to begin the amendment process, which is very good 
because all too often people push their amendments off until the last 
minute and we have many amendments flowing. In this particular case, we 
have encouraged people to come forward and let the managers know what 
amendments they plan to offer and then talk about the amendments so 
they can adequately plan. Indeed, that is underway.
  I yield the floor.

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