[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 20]
[Senate]
[Page 28698]
[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 for 60 minutes, with the first half of the time 
under the control of the Republicans and the second half controlled by 
the majority.


                           Order of Procedure

  In the time that we have, I ask unanimous consent that Senator 
Kennedy have 20 minutes.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. REID. Following morning business, the Senate will resume 
consideration of the Amtrak legislation.
  Yesterday, in a short period of time, the Senate considered and 
adopted nine amendments to the legislation. A number of other 
amendments remain to be considered. I believe the managers share my 
view that action on this bill can, hopefully, be concluded during 
today's session. Therefore, it is estimated that the number of votes 
with respect to amendments and the pending cloture motion could occur 
prior to the Senate recessing for the caucus meetings. Members have 
until 12 noon to file germane second-degree amendments to the bill.
  Last evening, I had a conversation with my counterpart, the 
distinguished Senator from Kentucky, Mr. McConnell, and indicated to 
him that we are going to move to and complete SCHIP this week in some 
form or fashion. That may require some time into the weekend. We can 
change everything by unanimous consent. We will see what the mood of 
the Senate is. Everybody should be alerted that unless Senator 
McConnell and I and the other 98 Members can work something out, we may 
have to be here this weekend.
  We have been very fortunate that we have not had to have many weekend 
sessions this year. That is really good. If we can get our work done, 
that is fine.
  I have an obligation to move to the farm bill. Every 5 years, we have 
to complete that, and we are going to do our very best to do it in a 
way that makes a lot of sense. In the next 2 weeks, after this week, 
there are other things we have to do. We have to send an appropriations 
bill to the President and get that conference started. Some say no 
matter what we send him, he will veto it. That may be the case, but at 
least we will get the process going to see if we can work out something 
rather than a number of short-term CRs to complete the funding of the 
Government. I hope we can do that.
  We also have other things we need to work on that are extremely 
important to do. Some of that must be done before we leave on November 
16. We have a lot of work to do. I have had both Democrats and 
Republicans talk to me, saying: My legislation is important, let's get 
it done.
  Mr. President, it is difficult to do. The rules have developed in the 
Senate over 230 years, and I think they have served the country well, 
as you look back. When you are right in the trenches trying to work 
through this, sometimes it is very difficult. We will try to be as fair 
and inclusive to everybody as we can during the next 2\1/2\ weeks.

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