[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Page 22808]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                PROGRAM

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, the Senate overwhelmingly confirmed Robert 
Gates as Secretary of Defense today. I thank Chairman Warner, once 
again, and Senator Levin for their tremendous work in expediting this 
nomination through the committee.
  Tomorrow, the Senate will have a cloture vote on the nomination of 
the FDA Commissioner. I previously pointed out how important it is that 
we have a confirmed Commissioner there and thus I did file cloture to 
ensure that we did have before the end of this year. Senators can 
expect that vote somewhere around 10:30 to 10:45 tomorrow morning. If 
cloture is invoked, which I expect it to be, it is my hope that we will 
be able to get an agreement on scheduling a vote on confirmation at a 
reasonable hour.
  We have several outstanding legislative and executive items to 
complete before we close out this Congress, so Senators should be 
prepared to be here until we get our work done.

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