[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 18983-18984]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. REID. Today, when we finish morning business, the Senate will 
resume consideration of the Department of Defense authorization bill. 
As we announced, there will be no rollcall votes tonight. This is the 
only Monday or Friday during this work period there will be no rollcall 
votes, unless we are able to get work done that we do not expect to get 
done that soon.
  The amount of work we have to do this work period is significant. As 
I have indicated, we want to do what we can to finish this Defense 
authorization bill. We want to do the Homeland Security appropriations 
bill. We want to be able to complete reconciliation, which is for 
higher education. We have SCHIP, for which there is a bipartisan 
agreement that will be reported out of the committee, I understand, 
tomorrow, which has been worked on for weeks and weeks by Senators 
Baucus, Grassley, Rockefeller, and Hatch. They have agreed on a 
bipartisan arrangement. In fact, it may have been--I do not know if it 
was reported out last week, but I do know there is good bipartisan 
support on that legislation. Some people believe it is not enough 
money, the $35 billion, some think it is too much, but it is 
bipartisan, and Senator Hatch has contacted the President, that the 
President would reconsider his threat to veto that bill.
  We also have to do the 9/11 Commission recommendations conference 
report. It is my understanding the House is going to appoint conferees 
on that today. There has been a lot of work done preconference on that 
with Democrats and Republicans working together. I think that will work 
out very well.
  We still have the holdup with the ethics and lobbying reform. I do 
hope we can get that done. We will get it done. It may take a number of 
cloture votes, but we are going to finish that before the August 
recess. It would be to the advantage of everyone here to get that done. 
The staff of Senator McConnell and my staff have worked very hard to 
see what they can do to help the various committees that are involved 
in this issue. It is now being held up. I hope this can be worked out. 
I have reached out to Senator DeMint, who is the person at this stage 
holding it up on behalf of the Republicans. He, at this stage, has not 
been willing to change his position, which is very unfortunate because 
it is important we work out the earmarking provisions in this bill in 
conference. We cannot jam something into the process here, where you 
have the House with one rule, the Senate with another rule, and you go 
to conference and you wind up in no-man's land. We have to work out 
something.
  Everyone acknowledges we need earmark reform, and the Appropriations 
Committee has been following that this year. Senators Byrd and Cochran 
have made that direction, even though the legislation has not been 
completed. But in the meantime, we do not have lobbying and ethics 
reform, which is long

[[Page 18984]]

past due. So I hope we can work together to complete our work in a 
timely fashion; otherwise, it will be finished in an untimely fashion 
because we are going to finish all this work before we have our August 
recess.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I withhold that suggestion.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader is recognized.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I have been reminded by staff that of our 30 
minutes the Democrats are allotted of the 60 minutes, 30 minutes of our 
time--in fact, all of it--be given to Senator Feinstein.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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