[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 18]
[Senate]
[Pages 25383-25384]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               RECOGNITION OF THE ACTING MINORITY LEADER

  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The assistant Democratic leader is 
recognized.
  Mr. REID. While the majority leader is in the Chamber, I say on 
behalf of the minority, we acknowledge the importance of class action, 
Healthy Forests, charitable choice. Those are the ones I remember the 
leader speaking of. For example, charitable choice could be done within 
a matter of minutes and sent directly to the House. There has been a 
decision made by the majority--and I think not a proper one--to take it 
to conference. We could send it immediately to the House.
  We are working very hard to try to cooperate with the majority on the 
most important piece of legislation, class action. A vast majority of 
Members on this side of the aisle want to do something on class action. 
We have had as our point person on this John Breaux, and he has had 
contact with the majority to try to come up with something on this 
issue. I think we are very close to working something out.
  Healthy Forests, as the leader knows, is a difficult issue. For 
Western States it is extremely important. We hope that can be resolved 
quickly.
  I bring to the leader's attention, however, we also have those 
appropriations bills we need to do. I spoke very briefly this morning 
with the distinguished Presiding Officer. He has been in contact, as I 
am sure the leader knows, with Senator Byrd. Maybe there is still 
something we can do on those appropriations bills to get, if not all of 
the six we have not passed here done, at least some of them completed. 
We have those most important conferences. We have had, as far as I am 
concerned, a difficult time getting a conference completed on the 
energy and water appropriations bill. That has been a bill we usually 
bring up first because it is so important to Members in the House and 
Senate. I spoke this morning to Majority Leader DeLay, saying we need a 
little help from the leadership in trying to move that.
  I hope, in addition to these other important items the leader has 
mentioned, we can work together to come up with some program to get 
some of the appropriations bills passed. I think it is important for 
the country.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments just made by my 
colleague and I think his comments reflect the amount of work we 
absolutely must accomplish in the next few days. I say that because in 
terms of the numbers of days in the weeks remaining, there are very few 
legislative days. We should all redouble our efforts and focus on each 
and every one of these bills. They are all very important.

[[Page 25384]]

  I know it may seem, as the Republican leader, I am encouraging the 
resolution of these bills by bringing them to the floor. That is 
exactly what I am doing, so we can all redouble our efforts to 
accomplish what really we want to do mutually: Go through each of 
these, have the appropriate debate and amendment on the floor as we go 
forward.
  Mr. REID. One bill I did not mention that I feel strongly about is 
fair credit reporting. That is also very important. I bet my office has 
received 100 phone calls in the last couple of legislative days dealing 
with that legislation. We hope something can be worked out on that 
also.

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