[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Page 15673]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                PROGRAM

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock, we will be 
voting on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to the 
Gulf of Mexico energy security bill. As has been pointed out over the 
course of the day, this bill is a very important issue which will open 
up to deep sea exploration over a billion barrels of oil and over 5 
trillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough energy to supply 6 million 
homes for 15 years--a very important bill. It is bipartisan. We will be 
voting tomorrow morning on this motion to proceed. I do hope that 
cloture will be invoked and that we are then able to reach an agreement 
on when to start debate on the substance of that bill.
  I remind Senators that after that 10 a.m. cloture vote, we will 
proceed to the Hall of the House of Representatives to hear the remarks 
of Prime Minister Maliki of Iraq.
  Before we close, I again thank Senator Ensign for his tremendous 
leadership and work on this child custody protection bill. I thank all 
of our colleagues for working together in a bipartisan way to reach an 
agreement which allowed us to finish this bill in short order, in an 
organized way.
  As my colleagues just heard, we feel strongly that we should proceed 
tonight in the usual fashion to go to conference. This bill passed by 
65 to 34 tonight. We are expressing the strong support of this Senate.
  The House, as I mentioned earlier, passed their child custody 
protection bill on April 27, 2005, and as is customary and is routine, 
we would go to conference. The Democrats have objected to going to 
conference. We will continue to try to go to conference over the next 
several days. I am deeply disappointed by that. I hope, as I said 
earlier, that this is not a sign that they are going to obstruct this 
bill at this point, at the level of conference, after this Senate has 
spoken overwhelmingly in support of this bill.

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