[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Pages 6518-6519]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, once again today, the Senate will be in a 
period for morning business for 60 minutes. Following that time, the 
Senate will resume debate on the emergency supplemental appropriations 
bill. We have several amendments pending from yesterday that are 
currently under review, and Members may want to speak to those 
amendments.
  Much of the day yesterday we spent--both on the floor and off the 
floor--discussing the immigration issue. The issues surrounding 
immigration are critically important to our economy, to equity, and to 
security and fairness. They are all vital to this country. The 
leadership has encouraged those who want to participate in a 
comprehensive debate on immigration to postpone consideration of their 
amendments from this standpoint because this is an emergency 
supplemental spending bill to support our troops in Iraq and 
Afghanistan and to have appropriate funding for tsunami relief.
  There will be a time later, before the end of the year, when we will 
address immigration in a comprehensive way. In spite of that, we have 
respected the rights of individual Senators who feel they absolutely 
must address specific issues, but I continue to encourage those who 
want to address immigration in a comprehensive way to do so at a more 
appropriate time.
  I know we can work out a process to keep moving forward on the 
emergency supplemental bill, but we have to address specifically the 
range of immigration issues that have been brought forth to the 
managers.
  The managers will continue to consider the amendments that are 
brought forward. Amendments that are brought forward, I encourage they 
relate to the supplemental emergency spending bill as much as possible. 
We expect votes over the course of today, and we will have, I expect, a 
very busy schedule over the course of the day.
  Mr. President, I have a few other remarks to make, but I will be 
happy to turn to the Democratic leader.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I thank the leader. I say through the Chair 
to the majority leader, we have worked--even started working last 
week--on the immigration amendments. We have a finite list now. We have 
12 amendments. I think that can be whittled down, for lack of a better 
word, to even less than that, considerably less than that.
  What we should do is lock in these amendments as a finite list. 
Within a very short period of time, we can find out how many really 
have to be offered.
  The pending amendment, the one Senator Mikulski offered, will have 
nearly--in fact, it may have--60 votes. So that will be adopted with 
ease.
  I hope we do not have to file cloture on this bill. I acknowledge 
this is important legislation. The money for the funding of the troops 
is absolutely necessary. All one has to do is read the paper every 
morning to understand how badly our troops need it. I was just there, 
and they need all the resources they can get. We want to make sure they 
do not have to wait a second for what they need.
  I will work with the leader through the morning and early afternoon, 
and see if we can get this number whittled down. Also, the majority 
leader has a few on his side.
  I hope we can limit the immigration amendments to very few--I would 
say, at the most, three on each side, or four at most, and have the 
others set aside until a time the majority leader has indicated he will 
give, sometime before we finish work this year, so there can be a full 
debate on those immigration matters.
  As the leader knows, the problem--and he had nothing to do with it--
is in this bill. There is immigration material in this bill. They have 
so-called REAL ID which came about as a result of our trying to get 
other legislation done last year. An arrangement was made by the House 
leadership that they would allow, on the first moving vehicle to come 
along, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee to put his legislation 
in the bill. It is in this bill. That is the problem we have.
  The Republican leader did not want it in this bill, I did not want it 
in this bill, but it is in the bill. As a result, we do not have the 
normal objection that is available when we legislate on an 
appropriations bill.
  I will work with the leader. We will get staff working on this, as 
they have, to see if we can narrow this considerably. The amendments 
that deal with the subject matter at hand, the funding of this bill, 
are just a few in number. We dealt with some of the most important ones 
yesterday.
  I hope we can finish this bill in a reasonably good period of time, 
and maybe, if we are fortunate, we can get something such as the 
highway bill or something such as that before we finish our work 
period--maybe the TANF bill, whatever is out there for us to do.
  I understand the problems the leader has, and I will be happy to work 
with him to alleviate his load as much as possible.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I have a few other comments.

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