[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 16]
[Senate]
[Page 21952]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, in a moment we will proceed to the 
conference report to accompany the FSC/ETI, or JOBS bill. It is my 
understanding that we would be unable to reach a time agreement on the 
conference report, and therefore I will file a cloture motion on it 
this morning.
  Immediately after filing of that cloture, we will begin the vote on 
invoking cloture on the McConnell-Reid substitute amendment to the 
intelligence reform and homeland security resolution. The managers made 
substantial progress over the course of yesterday and last night. At 
this juncture, we are down to only a handful of amendments.
  Senators who do have amendments remaining should stay close to the 
Chamber this morning as we hope to move quickly on the underlying 
resolution. If Members are not timely in coming to offer their 
amendments, we will be moving to adoption of the resolution.
  At this juncture, we really should have no delay. Every hour that we 
delay over the course of today means an hour later before we adjourn, 
whether that is later tonight or tomorrow or the next day. We need to 
move on to complete the remaining legislative items before our 
adjournment. As we all know, the clock is working against us.
  We will finish the pending intelligence reform resolution. We will 
finish the FSC/ETI conference report. We will finish the Homeland 
Security appropriations conference report. Finally, we also expect to 
finish the Department of Defense authorization conference report.
  Obviously, from those four items you can see we have a lot to do, a 
full plate of business before our adjournment. Yet all of these can be 
handled expeditiously, but it is going to take the cooperation of each 
and every one of our Members. Individual Members are going to be able 
to determine whether we have to continue to work through the weekend, 
including Saturday and Sunday, to complete our business.
  I don't believe, if you look at it and you look at where each of 
these four items is, that it is necessary for it to take that long. We 
can very efficiently work through these items, but every Senator is 
going to have to cooperate. If not, it will be necessary to continue 
late tonight, Saturday, and possibly Sunday with these four items we 
must complete before adjourning.
  We will be voting throughout today and, if necessary, tomorrow and 
into Sunday. I believe we could finish all of this even late today if 
Senators focus on it and work together. Again, we need to finish all 
four items before we adjourn.
  I will be happy to yield for a moment to the Democratic leader before 
proceeding to the FSC conference report.

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