[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 25]
[Senate]
[Pages 34400-34401]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, we are going to do the farm bill today. I 
have gotten a number of inquiries about why did we stop the farm bill 
from going forward when we did. At the time that occurred, we had 26 
pending amendments. Christmas is 1 week from Tuesday. We have to finish 
our work. We have, even today, a heavy burden having to short circuit 
this a little bit.
  We have the Defense authorization bill; that is something that is 
essential. In that Defense authorization bill are many things, not the 
least of which is the wounded warrior aspect of it that Patty Murray 
worked so hard on.
  We have the pay raise for the troops. The troops cannot get the pay 
raise until we do the Defense authorization bill, even though we have 
sent to the President and he has signed the Defense appropriations 
bill.
  We are going to come in probably at 11 o'clock on Monday. There will 
be a cloture vote an hour after that on FISA. People have said: Well, 
why did you not move? I have gotten some inquiries, especially from 
some of the blogs saying: Why did you not rule XIV it or something that 
would make it easier and allow people who do not like the bill to make 
their position known?
  I have stated on the floor--this is the third time--the reason we are 
going to cloture is because Senators Feingold and Dodd want a 60-vote 
margin on proceeding to the bill.
  One of the things I have worked very hard to do in the 3 years I have 
been Democratic leader, the 1 year I have been the majority leader, is 
to make sure the committee structure of the Senate is sound and the 
committee chairs and the committees do their work.
  It brings stability to this body. Now, I think what we have to do in 
regular order, unless I try to short circuit this in some way--and I 
think it would be not looked upon favorably by the Senate and, frankly, 
by the American people if I tried to short circuit this. We have a 
procedure--it does not happen very often--where you have a joint 
referral. In this instance, on the FISA bill, the controversial but 
important FISA bill, there are two committees that have jurisdiction, 
the Intelligence Committee, and after that it is referred to the 
Judiciary Committee.
  They both have done their work and they have done good work. But what 
some wanted me to do is take the best out of one and the best out of 
the other and bring it to the floor. I cannot do that unless I trample 
the system.
  Under regular order, I will bring the Intelligence bill to the floor. 
The first operative action after that is the Judiciary Committee. 
Senator Leahy is an experienced, veteran legislator. He has been here 
longer than I have been here. He certainly knows what to do. The Senate 
will work its will as to what needs to be done with FISA.
  I will guarantee you right now one thing that is going to occur: not 
everyone will be happy. But people have the obligation to do what they 
think is right, and I have an obligation to move the bill to the floor. 
It is important we have a debate, and that debate will start on Monday.
  I also am concerned that not everyone is happy they did not have the 
opportunity to offer their farm bill amendments. That is always a 
problem, and certainly there were no individual Senators in mind, 
Democrats or Republicans, who did not have the opportunity to offer 
their amendments.
  But the culminating factor is when we had an objection to the 
managers' amendment, with the 26 amendments we had to start dealing 
with at 8:30 last night, we could not get from here to there.
  So I think we are doing the right thing this morning, moving forward 
to completing FHA today, the farm bill, and Defense authorization; 
starting on the important FISA bill on Monday and then doing everything 
within our power to fund the Government for the next year. And we are 
going to have a debate on war funding. That will take place next week.
  So we have our hands full. But I wanted to lay out everything this

[[Page 34401]]

morning, where we are headed and why we are in the position we are in 
now.

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