[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 18]
[Senate]
[Pages 24190-24191]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                PROGRAM

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, next week, the Senate will consider the 
deficit reduction bill, a bill I spoke on in my opening comments today, 
a bill about which I am very excited. It answers the question of doing 
what is right, what the American people expect, and that is getting our 
deficit down, reducing the deficit by slowing down, by reducing that 
mandatory or entitlement spending growth.
  We will complete action on that important measure on Thursday or 
Friday. We will have a very long day on Thursday. I encourage our 
colleagues not to schedule anything else on Thursday because we will be 
voting a lot on the floor of the Senate and will do so in the fashion 
that we voted this week--having votes scheduled and
  
  
  
[[Page 24191]]

strictly cutting off votes if Members are not here.
  Under the time agreement that was reached last night, we will have 
plenty of time for debate each day with many votes over the course of 
the week. I urge my colleagues--and I feel I say this again and again--
to be judicious in their offering of amendments. We will work with our 
colleagues on the time. We want to have and will have plenty of time 
for debate and amendments. We do not need to bring every amendment to 
the floor to make a message when it is pretty clear what the outcome 
will be.
  Again, we will protect everybody's right and opportunity to have full 
debate and vote accordingly, but I ask people to judiciously consider 
what amendments they bring to the floor.
  Next week we will also address the Agriculture appropriations 
conference report under a very short time agreement. We will also 
address any other conference reports available, as well as executive 
nominations that are ready for Senate action.

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