[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 22]
[Senate]
[Page 30896]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   RECOGNITION OF THE MINORITY LEADER

  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The minority leader is recognized.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, it is my understanding that we already 
have an agreement where we will alternate in recognition of Senators on 
either side of the aisle as we debate the Medicare bill. We have 
several hours of requests already from our colleagues. I will not 
propound a unanimous consent request, but I might propose that we 
consider limiting at least comments today on the floor to 15 minutes to 
accommodate as many Senators as possible.
  I know there are a lot of Senators who are going to be attempting to 
schedule their day around their opportunity to come to the floor. If we 
have that understanding, if there are four or five in line, it would 
seem to me it would work. As I say, I will talk to the majority leader 
about that. I do hope Senators on this side of the aisle will call the 
cloakroom or call Senator Reid or myself to let us know their 
intentions with regard to speaking so that we can coordinate the 
effective use of time.
  As the majority leader has already announced, we will be in tomorrow 
as well. So Senators will have an opportunity to speak throughout the 
weekend in addition, of course, to Monday. We will work with him to 
accommodate all Senators who wish to speak. We will work on a time 
certain for a vote at a later date.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, as our colleagues are well aware, the 
Democratic leader and I have set aside all day today, and we can stay 
as late today as necessary. We initially said around 5, but this issue 
is so important, and there are so many people, as the distinguished 
leader implied, who do want to come to the floor, and it is the only 
opportunity for some to come, therefore, we are going to spend all day 
today on it, as much time tomorrow as necessary, and in all likelihood 
Monday morning.
  I hesitate a little bit trying to limit people to 15 minutes because 
I do know some people have 30 minutes of comments, but I think that we 
should stress keeping the comments to as short a period as possible to 
make their points because we have a lot of people on both sides of the 
aisle who have called and said we are going to be there all day 
Saturday; we want to be able to participate.
  With this many Senators, it does mean that people need to keep their 
remarks fairly short. I understand we will be alternating back and 
forth. We do want to keep the time equally divided so that both sides 
will have the opportunity over the course of the day to speak. Then if 
there are a number of people who have waited and are unable to talk 
today or tonight, if we need to go into later tonight, we can come in a 
little bit earlier tomorrow or stay longer tomorrow as well.
  Again, I appreciate the cooperation of all of our colleagues because 
it is not customary for us to be in session on Saturday, and certainly 
not on Sunday, but in order to pay respect to people's schedules over 
the holidays and to address this very important issue, we have elected 
to spend all day today and possibly tomorrow.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The minority leader.
  Mr. DASCHLE. I ask the majority leader if it is his intention to set 
aside a moment of silence this afternoon in commemoration of the 40th 
anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy. It is my 
understanding that some thought had been given to that time, and I 
think it would be helpful, if that time has been set aside, if we could 
make that announcement in the interest of all Senators.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I believe the time will be set aside at 
12:30 today. If there is a change in that particular time, we can make 
that announcement very shortly.
  Mr. President, I do have a statement on an unrelated issue, which I 
can do now or we can proceed.

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