[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 19]
[Senate]
[Page 25751]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, today the Senate will resume consideration 
of the Foreign Operations appropriations measure. Senator McConnell and 
the ranking member will be available to discuss and debate amendments. 
There is an expectation that this bill can be completed in short order. 
Therefore, if Members do intend to offer amendments, they should 
contact the cloakroom soon so they are not precluded by a unanimous 
consent agreement.
  As a reminder, at 5:30 p.m. today, the Senate will conduct a cloture 
vote with respect to the nomination of Michael Leavitt to be 
Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. That rollcall 
vote will be the first vote of today's session. I do anticipate we will 
be able to invoke cloture and, therefore, would like to complete this 
nomination procedure at some point tonight.
  For the remainder of the week, we will consider and complete the 
appropriations bills that are available. I will be discussing with 
Senator Stevens the remaining appropriations process. This week, we 
will also be addressing any appropriations conference reports that are 
made available.
  In addition to these bills, the Senate must still act on the fair 
credit reporting bill. I look forward to the first opportunity to bring 
that bill to the floor, most likely this week. The Internet tax 
moratorium legislation has been discussed as a possibility for this 
week. I do hope Members will be able to work out any differences on 
that bill. We will need to address this bill soon due to the existing 
expiration of that moratorium.
  Healthy Forests continues to remain a challenge. There had been an 
initial hope for an agreement to move forward on this bill with 
amendments that would be relevant. However, we have not been able to 
have an agreement reached on the relevancy of those amendments, and we 
will have to consider other options.
  The CARE Act is still sitting at the desk ready for conference, but, 
once again, there is an outstanding objection to that procedure. I 
mentioned at the end of last week and will mention again, the gun 
liability measure is one that should be considered before we close out 
this session. Again, we will be looking for time to do just that.
  As mentioned on the floor at the end of last week, we expect to be 
dealing with the appropriations bills for the most part over the course 
of the day and spending the early or very late afternoons and early 
evenings addressing these other very important measures. There may be 
exceptions to that as issues present themselves, but it will be 
important for us to continue a dual-tracking approach as agreed to on 
both sides of the aisle to address the important issues that must be 
addressed.
  As we know and will see later this afternoon and evening, nominations 
are critically important. They are always a focus. Tonight's vote shows 
the challenge we have on each and every one of these executive 
nominations, as well as all of the judicial nominations. I will 
continue to look for ways to give the executive nominations their due 
process--an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor. Again, this is with 
respect to both executive nominations and judicial nominations.
  The list I have just mentioned is lengthy in part, but it is within 
reason. We can complete these issues, and we will do our very best to 
complete all these issues, including the appropriations process, 
including the Energy conference report, including the Medicare 
prescription drug conference report, before we leave. It is going to 
require working together. It will require a lot of cooperation on both 
sides of the aisle to accomplish that.
  With that cooperation, with the expectation we can work hand in hand 
on these issues, we will be able to still adjourn in a timely way this 
year.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I would like to speak for 6 or 7 minutes 
as in morning business. I ask unanimous consent to do that.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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