[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Page 1152]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, we were able late last night to work out 
something on FISA, a 15-day extension. There is a path forward. We are 
going to try very quickly to get an agreement so that we can move 
forward. I had a meeting in my office at 6 o'clock last night. 
Following that meeting, I called the Republican leader, and I think we 
have a way of moving forward on this legislation, one that would be 
agreed upon by Senators Bond, Rockefeller, Leahy, and Specter, so that 
we can complete that legislation. I think it will probably take a good 
long day to do that, but I think that would be all it would take.
  I hope we can get that done very soon. I do not want to wait. 
Whatever we do, whether we do something or nothing, I do not want to 
wait until the last minute. This is something we need to do. I think it 
would be in everyone's interests to get it to the House as quickly as 
we can so that we can move forward on a conference to send something to 
the President that he can review.
  Again, we have the stimulus package that we have to deal with, and we 
are going to do that. That is why I made the announcement last night 
that we are going to have to do some work on Monday. We are going to 
have votes on Monday. They won't be early in the day, but we will have 
votes on Monday. Whatever we are working on, we will try to work Monday 
so that we can have some votes Monday night, so there will likely be 
more than one vote Monday night.
  Tuesday, we are going to have to work. We really do need to complete 
this work on the foreign intelligence legislation quickly. Whatever we 
do on the stimulus, we also need to do that quickly. Again, whether we 
come up with our own package here in the Senate, whether we accept what 
the House has done, or do nothing, it is not fair to the American 
people, the other body, and the President not to take action that would 
be fairly quick, and we are going to attempt to do that, both dealing 
with the FISA legislation and the stimulus package.

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