[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Pages 13975-13976]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, following leader remarks, the Senate will 
resume consideration of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, 
FISA.
  Earlier this week, we were able to work out an agreement to consider 
two district court judges today. The Judiciary Committee is going to 
meet today to consider other judges, but we now have two we are going 
to approve sometime today, and they are William T. Lawrence of Indiana 
and G. Murray Snow of Arizona. When the Senate considers the 
nominations, there will be an hour for debate, equally divided and 
controlled, prior to the votes on confirmation of the nominations. 
These votes will occur sometime during the day. The second vote will be 
10 minutes in duration.
  Mr. President, I guess we have to learn from our experiences in life, 
and I try to do that. I was thinking, coming to work here today, what 
have I had that is comparable to what we have been doing here this 
week? And the best I could come up with is, when I was a boy, I would 
go with my dad and my family to gather wood. We would go up these 
washes, desert washes, and in these washes grows what we call cat's 
claw mesquite. That is the only place it grows, in these washes, the 
reason being that the seeds only germinate when they are pulverized, 
pounded down these washes. So we would go down there in a pickup--four-
wheel drives did not exist or rarely existed at the time--and 
invariably we would get stuck in the sand. Those back tires would 
spin--one of them especially--and sometimes it would take a long time. 
Those tires would spin. That vehicle was going a thousand miles an hour 
but moving nowhere. But as the day and time progressed, we would put 
brush under the tires and the rocks, and we would get out eventually.
  Well, that is kind of where we are today in the Senate. All week 
long, we have been stuck in the sand, spinning our wheels. This is 
Thursday, and Thursday can be a magical day in the Senate, but it is 
not automatic. It is not automatically a magical day. We have many 
things to do to, in effect, stop spinning our wheels. We have four 
major pieces of legislation that need to be considered before we can 
leave for the Fourth of July recess.
  FISA. I received a call this morning from the majority leader in the 
House, Leader Hoyer, and he--a lot of people are responsible for 
getting this bill to this point, but I think all would acknowledge that 
his work on this was instrumental--and he, of course, would like us to 
finish this as quickly as possible. We are currently considering the 
motion to proceed to FISA. That is the legislative matter now before 
this body. I hope and I am convinced that we will be able to work out 
an agreement to move action on this bill.
  Housing. Yesterday, the Senate overwhelmingly voted for the Dodd-
Shelby bipartisan agreement. So it is not a matter of whether but when 
the housing legislation will pass the Senate. I hope we can reach an 
agreement before the end of the day as to how this bill is going to be 
finished. If we don't, I will just have to look for another opportunity 
to file cloture and this bill will be completed. As I have indicated to 
a number of Senators, both Democrats and Republicans, as we proved 
yesterday, when we have an opportunity, we can move legislation. There 
was agreement made on amendments, there was compromise on those 
amendments, and that is what will happen as we proceed down the road. I 
know there is an issue dealing with whether one Senator can offer an 
amendment to have the extenders not paid for. That won't happen on this 
bill. Those who want to do that can do it on some other vehicle, but 
that won't happen on the housing legislation.
  The supplemental. I hope we can reach agreement today to complete 
action on this bill that was passed by the House overwhelmingly--the 
House got 355 on that piece of legislation, with just a handful of 
votes against it. It was truly a piece of legislation that was 
important to be done. I am sorry, that was not the number on that, Mr. 
President, but it was passed overwhelmingly, the supplemental, and we 
need to do it here.
  This bill includes the GI Bill of Rights, and it includes an 
unemployment insurance extension, which people are waiting for us to do 
today and the President to sign the bill. There are, of course, other 
domestic priorities, not the least of which is on the Medicaid 
regulations. Every Senator has received calls from their Governor about 
the importance of these Medicaid regulations. Passage of this bill will 
be a victory for the American people, and it is one of those rare 
instances where we have, as I have said on the floor in recent days, 
worked with the President, and he has worked with us, and we have a 
bill he is going to sign without any question.
  Medicare. That is the bill that passed by a vote of 355 to 59 in the 
House. It is an extremely important piece of legislation. We have to 
complete that before we leave here. If we don't do it before July 1, 
everyone knows--well,

[[Page 13976]]

when I walked out of my office, the head of the American Medical 
Association was there saying: Pass the bill the House passed. She is 
over there. She is a physician from Buffalo, NY, and she said it is one 
of the most important things we could do to help the health care 
delivery system in this country. The AARP yesterday came out for this 
legislation.
  It is an extremely important piece of legislation. The bill is 
similar to the one drafted by Senators Baucus and Grassley earlier this 
month that every Senate Democrat and nine Senate Republicans voted for. 
It represents the only chance this body has to head off cuts to doctors 
before they take effect at the end of this month. So we either will get 
an agreement today to pass the Medicare doctors fix or, when I have an 
opportunity, which will probably be after midnight tonight, to file 
cloture on that. If that is the case--and I can't do that before 
midnight--then that will mean a weekend cloture vote. So we have to do 
that. We have no alternative. Everyone wants to go everyplace because 
the Fourth of July break is coming, but we can't do that until we 
complete that. I hope that can be worked out as soon as possible.
  I am optimistic that this is going to be a productive day in the 
Senate, but I am also realistic that it may not be. Magic can happen, 
as I have indicated, when we work together here in the Senate. On 
Thursdays, a lot of that magic occurs, but it does not mean it is going 
to happen automatically. I hope it is not a continuation of being stuck 
in the sand and those wheels are spinning and spinning. I hope we can 
get something done for the American people today.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Republican leader is 
recognized.

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