[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 2]
[SENA]
[Pages 2924-2925]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, this morning the Senate will be in a period 
of morning business until 11:45 a.m. The first 30 minutes will be 
controlled by the Republicans, and the next 30 minutes will be 
controlled by the majority. There is additional time for Members to 
speak in morning business until the hour of 11:45, if they wish. At 
that time, the Senate will proceed into executive session to consider 
three judicial nominations. The debate time on the three nominations is 
limited to 10 minutes; therefore, Members can expect rollcall votes as 
early as 11:55 this morning.
  The distinguished Republican leader and I have had a number of 
conversations about judicial nominations, which, in the past, have been 
a real dustup. We are going to try to avoid that this year. We hope to 
have the first circuit court nomination approved before the Presidents 
Day recess and will continue to work on district court trial judges and 
circuit court judges as soon as we can.
  I personally want the record to reflect that I appreciate the 
President not sending back four names that were really controversial, 
and I think it is better for the body that the President did not send 
up those names. I think we have to reciprocate in a way that is 
appropriate, and we are going to try to do that by looking at these 
nominations as quickly as we can. We are hopeful and somewhat confident 
the President will send us some good circuit court nominees.
  Once we have disposed of the nominations, we will resume debate, 
postcloture, on H.R. 2, the minimum wage bill. A vote on this matter 
should occur this afternoon. I will discuss that with the Republican 
leader so that Members will have notice as to when that vote will 
occur.
  After we complete action on the minimum wage bill, there will be an 
immediate cloture vote on the motion to proceed to S. Con. Res. 2, the 
bipartisan Iraq resolution. Last night, I asked consent that we vitiate 
that cloture vote. We are still working on that to see if we can work 
something out with the Republicans as to whether we have that vote. 
Most Democrats will vote against going forward on that since there is 
now another matter that will come before the Senate, at the latest on 
Monday. But we are working on that. I acknowledged last night, as did 
the Republican leader, that the final language of the new matter, which 
Senator Levin introduced last night, was just finalized at 8:30 p.m., 9 
p.m. last night, so I understand why we can't get anything definitely 
from the minority leader at this time.
  I would also say that we have now in the Senate a continuing 
resolution which passed the House by approximately 290 votes. We are 
ready to move forward on that. We have to complete that legislation by 
February 15, the Presidents Day recess, or the Federal Government is 
closed, and no one wants that to happen. So we are going to move 
forward on that. What we would like to do is move forward on it by 
unanimous consent. I understand that is not something that is going to 
happen, or at least at this stage, but at least we are ready to move 
forward as quickly as possible. The more quickly we dispose of that, 
the more time we can spend on Iraq, if, in fact, we want to spend more 
time on Iraq. At the least, next week is set aside so that we can 
debate Iraq. What we hope is that we can have a number of competing 
resolutions, whether it is two, three, four, whatever it is, and to get 
consent that we would use these vehicles for debate.

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