[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Page 24070]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     TRANSPORTATION APPROPRIATIONS

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, we haven't made as much progress on the 
Transportation bill as I had wished, but we are making progress. This 
is what happens with these complicated bills on occasion. Tomorrow 
night people should expect votes into the night. It will not be an 
early evening tomorrow. We have a lot to do on this bill. I have spoken 
to the distinguished Republican leader. Senator McConnell said they 
will have an alternative to the Mexican truck measure offered by 
Senator Dorgan. Hopefully, sometime in the morning we can get those 
teed up for a vote. We also have been told by Senator Coburn that he 
has a number of amendments he wishes to offer. He said he would be here 
at 10:30 in the morning to begin offering those amendments. I have 
found Senator Coburn in the past doesn't need to talk very long, 
doesn't want to talk very long. I am sure that will be the case with 
this bill. I am glad he is coming over in the morning at 10:30. If 
others have amendments to offer, they should do so. It is my 
understanding Senator Coburn has a number of amendments. If that is the 
case and we can't stack these votes, what we will do is, the first vote 
could come as early as 11 o'clock or thereabouts tomorrow.
  We have a lot to do. The fiscal year is coming to a close, and we 
have a number of must-do issues. We will work on those. I have spoken 
today, as I indicated, to the distinguished Republican leader about how 
we would proceed next week on Iraq matters. I think we are making 
progress on how we should proceed. These are very hotly contested 
issues, very important. We want to make sure people have the 
opportunity to speak on this without delaying things for an extended 
period of time.
  Tomorrow morning I am going to ask consent to go to conference on 
H.R. 1538, which is the Wounded Warrior/military pay raise bill. There 
was a Republican objection to that request the last time. I hope this 
time the result will be different so we can send this important bill, 
which means so much to our men in uniform, to conference. We need to 
send that to conference. So we will proceed to that unanimous consent 
request tomorrow morning. I will not do that tonight.

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