[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3650-3651]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                PROGRAM

  Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, tomorrow the Senate will resume 
consideration of the budget resolution. When the Senate resumes debate, 
we will have 40 hours remaining of the 50-hour time limit for debate. 
It is the intention of the bill's managers to begin the amending 
process tomorrow morning. It is my hope that Members who wish to offer 
amendments will do so and also contact both myself and the ranking 
member, Senator Conrad, in order, if at all possible, to prevent a 
vote-arama

[[Page 3651]]

being drawn out at the conclusion of the debate.
  I would also like to inform my colleagues that rollcall votes will 
occur throughout tomorrow. Senators will be notified when those votes 
are scheduled.
  Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, let me add my voice to the Chairman's 
voice on the question of amendments. We have gone back and looked over 
past budget resolutions, and we have seen that there has been 
substantial duplication in amendments, all of them included in what the 
chairman calls a vote-arama.
  We believe if we all use a little more discipline we can reduce the 
number of amendments considered and still have a thorough debate on the 
key issues and the key differences between us. I am urging my 
colleagues to think if they have an amendment that is on No Child Left 
Behind, that they group together with other Senators who might be 
similarly inclined and offer an amendment together rather than three or 
four different amendments on the same subject.
  I ask our colleagues that we have a good, full debate, we use this 
week well, we express the differences between us in a responsible way, 
but at the end, that we do not have a whole series of relatively minor 
amendments or repetitive amendments so we can have the best expression 
of the Senate's position on the budget.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. NICKLES. I concur with my colleague, Senator Conrad. He is 
exactly right. The Senate can manage debate on the Senate resolution 
and conduct itself much better than we have in the past. Senator Conrad 
has been very helpful in making that happen. I think the debate we had 
today was a very good debate. We were expecting to yield back a lot of 
time. Frankly, we did not yield back much time because there was good, 
significant debate. We did not have prolonged quorum calls. We had a 
lot of speakers on both sides to present their views. I thank our 
colleagues for doing that.

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