[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Page 19356]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, the scheduled termination date of this 
Congress is a week this coming Friday--a week after the day after 
tomorrow. We have a lot to do. We are going to finish, sometime today, 
the Defense authorization bill. I am in conference with Senator Levin 
to see if there is something we can work out. If not, this matter will 
be completed, no matter what anyone does, at 9:30 tonight. The vote 
tonight is on passage of the bill. It is not 60 votes. We just have to 
get a simple majority.
  I will file cloture on the Coburn package, which has scores of bills 
in it that have been held up. I had a very good conversation with him 
yesterday. I will meet with him later today to see if we can work 
something out and move forward on that without a cloture vote. I hope 
that can be done. Senator Coburn said he thought it could be. I hope 
that is, in fact, the case. I will be as reasonable as I can be, and I 
am hopeful and confident that he will be.
  After that--whatever is determined on that--we are going to move to 
the tax extenders. We need a vehicle to do that. Any of the 99 Senators 
can object to having a vehicle to do that. We, of course, procedurally, 
could move to something, but it could take a couple extra days. Of 
course, everyone should understand that we may have to be working the 
next week or so with no time off. If we have people who are trying to 
slow things up, stall things, then we are going to have to use the time 
that we have to use, procedurally, to get to an instrument. Once we get 
to that, Senator McConnell and I have an agreement that we are going to 
try to effectuate where we would vote on paying for all the tax 
extenders as it relates to renewables. Then we would have a vote on 
whether we are going to pay for AMT, and then a vote on the package and 
send that to the House.
  Of course, after that, there are other things we need to do. We have 
an economic recovery package. The House will be sending us that. We 
have a CR that we have to complete to fund the Government. There is one 
thing I didn't mention by oversight.
  When we finish the tax extenders, we have to do the rest of our 
energy legislation. That is the bill the House passed last night. We 
can use that for a vehicle. Everybody is expecting--rightfully so--that 
there would be a vote on Senator Bingaman's alternative, there would be 
a vote on the Republican alternative, and there would be a vote--if, in 
fact, they decide to move forward on it--on the Gang of 10's so-called 
bipartisan legislation. So there is the House-passed bill, the Bingaman 
bill, the Republican alternative, and the bipartisan bill. All of them 
include drilling. So people can vote their hearts out on drilling. 
Someone could actually vote for all four of those.
  As I indicated, we have the CR. There are a lot of other things the 
CR may take care of that we have not finished, including MilCon, VA, 
and Homeland Security appropriations; and there are people out there 
who are concerned about things we should do before we leave here, such 
as LIHEAP. Hopefully, that could be included in either the stimulus 
package or the CR. Oil prices are not as high as they have been, but 
fuel oil in the Northeast is expected to be high this winter. We hope 
to work something out on mental health parity, the Ledbetter issue. We 
could have another vote on that, if I decide that. We have a lot to do.
  This morning, we are going to have a period for morning business for 
up to 1 hour, as soon as I complete my statement. The majority will 
control the first 30 minutes. My understanding is that Senator Dorgan 
is here and available, and he will speak for about 15 minutes. The 
Republicans will control the last 30 minutes.
  Following that, we will resume consideration of S. 3001, the Defense 
authorization. Yesterday, cloture was invoked on the Defense bill, and 
I announced at that time I was appreciative of the help we got from the 
Republicans. All postcloture debate time will expire about 9:30 
tonight.

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