[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 16]
[Senate]
[Page 21978]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, today we are turning to consideration of 
the Department of Defense appropriations bill. Chairman Stevens and 
Senator Inouye are ready for Senators to come forward with their 
amendments. We hope to have an agreement that all first-degree 
amendments will be filed at the desk no later than 5 p.m. today. The 
Democrat leader and I were just talking to that effect, and we will 
continue to work for the next several minutes on that.
  This would enable the two managers to review--and this is very 
important--allow them to review the legislative language to see what 
amendments may be acceptable on both sides. We have been unable to lock 
that agreement in place at this time, but I will continue to talk with 
the Democrat leader to see if that would be possible.
  As I previously announced, there will be no rollcall votes today or 
tomorrow in observance of the Rosh Hashanah holiday. Any votes ordered 
today or tomorrow will occur at sundown on Wednesday. In all 
likelihood, we will be stacking votes at that time.
  Having said that, we will be in discussion during this period, so 
Members can come forward and offer their amendments. I encourage 
Members to come to the Senate and not wait until later in the week. We 
are going to finish this bill before our next recess. We are making 
real progress on the appropriations bills. We need to continue that 
process. As we all know, the fiscal year has just passed. We are 
working on a continuing resolution. It is critical we continue to make 
progress on these bills. We have Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, 
and Friday of this week to complete the Department of Defense 
appropriations bill. I hope we will be able to finish it Wednesday or 
Thursday, but we are not going to leave until we complete this bill.
  A number of other pieces of very important legislation are being 
discussed, debated, talked about, and written. One of those is the 
pensions legislation. The Committee on Finance and Committee on HELP 
have a bipartisan package on which we expect to reach a unanimous 
consent agreement so we can consider that bill this week as well.

                          ____________________