[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Page 22940]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      COMPLETING THE SENATE'S WORK

  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I also concur with the majority leader. I 
think today is going to be a very important day, because we will now 
have completed the first phase of the Senate's work in response to the 
9/11 Commission recommendations. I have said this now on several 
occasions, but I think it bears repeating--it would not have happened 
were it not for the great effort made by the Senator from Kentucky and 
the Senator from Nevada, our two assistant leaders. I congratulate them 
and I appreciate their excellent work.
  The majority leader also noted an interest and absolute necessity of 
finishing work on the foreign sales credit bill. I will be supporting 
cloture as well. I know there are all kinds of conflicting views about 
how many votes, what kind of votes, and what time the vote should be on 
Sunday. I know it is an inconvenience to a lot of Senators and we will 
try to accommodate those concerns as best we can. I think a Sunday 
vote--at least one--is unavoidable. I apologize to those who are 
inconvenienced. I don't think we have any choice given our 
circumstances. I also hope we can finish homeland security. As the 
majority leader has said on several occasions, it is important that we 
finish the homeland security bill. We cannot leave, as he has noted 
several times, without finishing that. It sends a terrible message to 
the country if we are not in a position to complete our work. I know 
the conferees are almost finished. So I hope we can complete our work 
over the course of the next several days.
  We will work with the majority in making sure these unfinished items 
are completed, even though we cannot say at this point how much more 
time it is going to take to do so. I appreciate the majority leader's 
determination to finish our work before we leave. We will work with him 
to do that.

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