[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 20222-20223]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  ORDERS FOR WEDNESDAY, JULY 25, 2007

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate 
completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 9:30 a.m., 
Wednesday, July 25; that on Wednesday, following the prayer and pledge, 
the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be 
deemed expired and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their 
use later in the day; that there then be a period of morning business 
for 60 minutes, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 
minutes, with the time equally divided and controlled between the two 
leaders or their designees, with the Republicans controlling the first 
half and the majority controlling the second half; that at the close of 
morning business, the Senate resume consideration of H.R. 2638.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I turn to my distinguished colleague, the 
Republican leader, and ask if he has any statements.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I have nothing to add. I look forward 
to making progress on the bill tomorrow.
  Mr. REID. I say that the Republican leader wasn't on the floor, but I 
will repeat for his benefit what I said a little while ago. I spoke to 
Josh Bolton earlier today about the appropriations bills. Of course, it 
would be great if we could have an overall scheme as to how we can 
complete them. In the meantime, if we can get them done, we should 
proceed through these bills one at a time and recognize that the power 
of the White House, whether it is a Democratic President, a Republican 
President in the appropriations process, comes during the conferences, 
anyway. The House can move things very quickly. So all these are ready 
to go to conference. I hope we can move through these individual 
appropriations bills and hopefully have some recognition of what we are 
going to try to accomplish in conference before we go to conference and 
work some of these out.
  The first test will be this bill we are working on now. There has 
been some moving on it today. Senator Cochran is the one who suggested 
to me if there is no progress tomorrow, that we

[[Page 20223]]

should move to third reading. When I say ``no progress,'' people just 
waiting around, not offering any amendments. So that is where we are. I 
hope we can finish this soon, do what we need to do on SCHIP, and do 
the 9/11 conference report, which I understand is almost finished. When 
I say almost, 100 percent of it needs to be done, and 99 percent of 
that has been done.
  We have taken out the language the Republicans did not want, 
especially the President, dealing with the union situation. Even though 
it was hard for us to swallow, we took that out to make it more 
palatable to my friends on the other side. We will come back in 
September rested and invigorated and ready to do some other things for 
the country.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I would add with regard to the 
appropriations bills, as the majority leader knows, I have said both 
publicly and to him privately, it is my preference to pass each of the 
bills. We are running considerably behind the House. We have got a long 
way to go, but I think there will be a lot of cooperation on our side 
in trying to get the appropriations bills signed and get them down to 
the President. We have a recent history of malfunction on both sides. 
Last year when the majority was in my party, we failed to pass 11 out 
of 13 appropriations bills. In 2002, when the Democrats were in the 
majority, they did the same thing. So there is ample opportunity to 
point fingers at both sides for not completing the appropriations 
process as we should. But I would predict to the majority leader there 
will be a great deal of cooperation on our side in getting through 
that, moving as rapidly as possible so we can function as we should.

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