[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 11058-11059]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                PROGRAM

  Mr. McCONNELL. Tomorrow, following morning business, the Senate will 
resume consideration of the DOD authorization bill.
  Earlier today we were able to lock in a final list of first-degree 
amendments to the bill. While this will help Senators Warner and Levin 
begin working on a schedule for the consideration of amendments, I was 
disappointed the list included, unfortunately, 200 possible amendments. 
I encourage Senators on both sides of the aisle to show restraint in 
offering amendments. Nothing requires all 200 of those amendments, in 
fact, be offered. With everyone's cooperation, we should be able to 
finish this bill this week.
  With that being said, the chairman and ranking member will be here 
tomorrow working through those amendments. We do expect rollcall votes 
throughout the day tomorrow in relation to these amendments and 
Senators will be notified when the first vote is scheduled.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, if my distinguished colleague will yield for 
me to comment.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I yield.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, we are so grateful we are now moving to the 
Defense bill, getting off the cloture vote. This was a good move. We 
appreciate that very much.
  Realistically, we have about 140 amendments. The majority has over 90 
amendments. That is a lot of amendments. Many of the amendments, as we 
know, will not be offered. There are a large number of irrelevant 
amendments which are just a ``holder'' in case something comes up that 
is not anticipated. However, we still have scores of amendments that 
people will offer. A number of these amendments, the managers will work 
through and we will be able to dispose of one way or the other.
  However, we are not going to finish the bill Thursday. There is an 
important trip Members are taking to commemorate the anniversary of the 
Normandy invasion and a number of Senators will be leaving for that 
sometime Thursday evening, I understand.
  I further note we will not be able to work on this bill Friday. That 
is my understanding, at least. Certainly there will not be any votes.
  We want to work to finish this bill. As I mentioned earlier today, 
there is

[[Page 11059]]

not anything we can be more importantly engaged in than working on this 
Defense bill. Yesterday, five soldiers were killed. We have averaged 
two deaths a day for the last 2 months. We are approaching 5,000 of our 
military personnel who have been injured, many of those grievously 
injured.
  We are going to be as cooperative as we can. This is a bill we want 
as much as the majority. That is why we raised this issue a week ago 
last Friday and did not want to move off the Defense bill to go to the 
important class action legislation.
  This may be our only opportunity to talk about this issue this year. 
I hope people are not thinking we were not cooperating. We cannot 
finish it in 2 days. It is impossible, legislatively impossible. We 
should get off that and understand that.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the assistant Democratic leader has 
indicated we have had some casualties this week. It is also important 
to point out this is the smallest number of casualties of any major war 
in the history of the United States by far.
  We just had an opportunity this past weekend to open the World War II 
Memorial and remember the over 400,000 Americans who were lost in that 
great conflict. It is impossible to fight the war on terrorism with no 
casualties. We regret every single death and every single injury, but 
given the enormous task, we have already completed liberating over 50 
million people in the last 2\1/2\ years. It has been done in an 
extraordinarily effective way with minimum loss of life on our side. We 
all agree our military forces are quite extraordinary in the task they 
are undertaking.
  Speaking of World War II, in addition, tomorrow at 5 p.m., there will 
be a reception honoring Senators Akaka, Hollings, Lautenberg, Inouye, 
Stevens, and Warner, all of whom served in World War II. We will devote 
the hour prior to the reception to speeches in the Senate honoring 
their service.

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