[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 19]
[Senate]
[Pages 25745-25746]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                PROGRAM

  Mr. FRIST. Madam President, we will resume business on Monday 
afternoon. The two managers of the Foreign Operations appropriations 
bill will be here and available so that Members may come to the floor 
and offer amendments. As always, I encourage Senators to notify their 
respective cloakrooms if they intend to offer an amendment to this 
bill. At this time there are only a few amendments that have come 
forward that are known. Therefore, I hope the Senate will complete the 
bill by early next week. I do remind my colleagues the first vote of 
Monday's session will be at 5:30. Under the order, that vote will be on 
invoking cloture on the Leavitt nomination. I fully expect that cloture 
will be overwhelmingly invoked, and the Senate will then be able to 
have an up-or-down vote on the confirmation of this qualified candidate 
to the President's cabinet. We have provided time on Monday for 
Senators to speak prior to the vote. However, again, I hope once that 
vote is taken, we will be able to move quickly to a vote on the 
confirmation of Michael Leavitt.
  I want to also mention once again the very important issues that 
still need to be addressed prior to the adjournment of this session. 
There are a number of issues, including Healthy Forests, the Internet 
tax moratorium, the CARE Act, going to conference, gun liability--that 
is, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act--fair credit 
reporting, on which we reached consent to proceed yesterday. Hopefully 
this can be done quickly with no further delay. Obviously, we continue 
next week toward completing the appropriations process. I was 
encouraged with yesterday's pace on the Transportation-Treasury bill. 
With the cooperation of all Members, we were able to complete that bill 
over the course of the day. I hope we will be able to continue that 
trend and move expeditiously next week on the remaining bills.
  This week we also finally finished with congressional action on the 
partial-birth abortion ban. That bill will be presented to the 
President for his signature to become the law of the land. The Senate 
expedited passage this week of the anti-spam act. The 97 to zero 
passage on that vote shows the importance and the need for this 
legislation for which the American people have called.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader.
  Mr DASCHLE. Madam President, we have offered to go to the Healthy 
Forests legislation with no limitation on amendments. I hope we can 
work that out. We also have indicated we could send the CARE Act over 
to the House without going to conference and allow them to take it up 
immediately. I hope we can do that next week as well. Next week 
certainly can be a productive week.
  I ask the majority leader if it is his intention to dual-track the 
schedule for the coming days to accommodate debate and hopefully 
resolution on appropriations bills for a certain period during the day 
and then the possibility that we could take up and debate some of the 
bills we have discussed as priority items later on in the day, to 
accommodate both authorizing and appropriations bills prior to the end 
of the session.
  I yield for that purpose.
  Mr. FRIST. Madam President, through the Chair, as we have discussed 
informally, it is our intention to address all of these issues and to 
do so and at the same time handle the tremendous challenge of 
addressing these appropriations bills will require us to, so called, 
dual track which in essence means take the necessary time on the 
appropriations bills each day, using that as the focus, but at the same 
time recognizing there is other very important business we will be 
doing over the course of that day. Generally we will try to do it in 
the evenings, but we can adjust that according to the schedules of the 
various managers.
  Madam President, it will take patience on both sides of the aisle, in 
part because of the amount of time it will require all of us to be on 
the Senate floor, but also from an organizational standpoint.
  The intention will be to try to keep things as organized as possible 
and focused on the appropriations bills. If it looks like any time can 
be spent more profitably on a dual track, we will do that.
  Generally, I would like to do appropriations bills through the 
morning and very late in the afternoon, and at that juncture be able to 
dual-track with these other issues.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Madam President, I appreciate very much the majority 
leader's reply. The bills he has mentioned and the appropriations bills 
left to be done are all bills that ought to accommodate a great deal of 
bipartisan effort. There is nothing on the list that he has proposed, 
if I can recall the list, that would generate divisive debate. There 
are going to be amendments.
  I was just talking to my Governor, and he again expressed concern 
about the current form of the Internet tax bill as it relates to States 
and lost revenue they could experience because the bill has been 
changed. But on that bill and Healthy Forests, the fair credit 
reporting bill, and a number of other

[[Page 25746]]

bills, I think there is ample bipartisan interest that could 
accommodate a very aggressive schedule, and I look forward to working 
with the majority leader to see how much we can accomplish next week.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. FRIST. Madam President, one thing I did not mention over the 
course of the week is the vote on the Class Action Fairness Act. 
Although I was very disappointed in the outcome; that is, we were not 
able to proceed with that--I think it did focus the attention of both 
sides of the aisle. It was a bipartisan vote, but it wasn't bipartisan 
enough to be able to proceed to it this week. But I will add that on 
both sides of the aisle people have come forward and said we are very 
serious about doing this in a way that is appropriate.
  I think there may well be an opportunity, at the appropriate time, to 
address that issue. The Democratic leader and I are both personally 
involved with asbestos. He has mentioned it and I have mentioned it. 
That should send a strong signal to people that we are seriously 
committed, in a bipartisan way, to addressing an issue that is 
affecting families, the economy, and jobs; and I do hope that those 
discussions will continue to be productive as we go forward.
  Having said that, next week is going to be a very busy week. I look 
forward to it being a very productive week.

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