[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Page 12698]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, this morning we will resume consideration 
of the Energy bill. We will be spending all of this week and, in all 
likelihood, all of next week on the bill. We plan on completing the 
bill by the end of next week. Yesterday, the chairman offered a first-
degree amendment relating to ethanol. Last night, we were able to 
consider and table a second-degree amendment relating to safe harbor. 
Today, we will be considering another second-degree amendment which was 
offered by Senator Schumer. It is our expectation to have a vote in 
relation to that amendment very shortly this morning, hopefully within 
the next 30 minutes. Senators, therefore, should be on notice and their 
offices should notify them that we might be voting around 10 o'clock, 
or shortly thereafter. If we are able to table that amendment, we would 
like to vote on the underlying first-degree amendment as well.
  We expect to make further progress on the bill following those votes. 
So it will be a very busy day. We may go into the early evening 
tonight. I know there are a number of events planned tonight. I say 
that only to encourage people to come and offer their amendments and 
debate their amendments over the course of the day.
  We will be finishing the bill by the end of next week. The Democratic 
leader and I have been consistent with that regard. So we want people 
to come to the floor and offer those amendments.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Democratic leader.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, we made a lot of progress yesterday. It may 
not seem that way because all we did was ethanol. There were a lot of 
activities going on behind the scenes to move this legislation forward. 
Senator Cantwell will offer her amendment this morning. I do not know 
how long that will take. The unfortunate death of Jim Exon, I hope, 
will not cause us to hold things up. I hope the two managers of the 
bill can have a number of amendments offered and stack those 
amendments, with the permission of the majority leader, and probably 
vote on those, we hope, in the morning sometime.
  The big issues left are a renewable standard for electricity, we have 
a number of global warming issues, and there are other issues. If we 
get the Cantwell amendment decided and we do the global warming 
amendments and electricity standards, I think we are down the road on 
this important piece of legislation. We need cooperation from both 
sides.
  It is an important piece of legislation. I know the President gave a 
speech yesterday wanting us to move forward. We want to move forward on 
it. Senators Domenici and Bingaman have done a very good job of getting 
us to where we are.

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