[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Page 10361]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, following leader time, the Senate will 
resume consideration of the House message to accompany H.R. 2642, the 
supplemental appropriations bill. There will be 2 hours of debate prior 
to a series of up to four rollcall votes in relation to motions to 
concur in House amendments.
  It is my understanding the 2-hour time is equally divided between the 
parties. Is that true?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, under the direction of Senator Byrd, Senator 
Murray will allocate the time on this side. I would further tell all 
Senators, because of the procedural glitch we had with the farm bill, 
we have not totally worked out what we are going to do on the farm bill 
yet. I had a conversation with the Speaker. I have spoken to both 
Parliamentarians--the House and Senate Parliamentarians. I think what 
we are going to do, as the House has done--I think at this time it is 
our intention to override the veto of the President. He vetoed 14 of 
the 15 sections of the farm bill. Through a clerical error, section 3 
was left out. As a result of that, section 3 will be sent to us from 
the House later today, having been passed, and we will see if we can 
pass that here later today. But we have a good legal precedent going 
back to a case, I understand, in 1892, when something like this 
happened before. It is totally constitutional to do what we are 
planning to do. So no one should be concerned about that.
  Also, after we finish the work on the supplemental, we are going to 
go to, hopefully, the farm bill and the budget and complete all that.
  As all Senators know, for a number of personal reasons, not the least 
of which is the wedding of Senator Dan Inouye on Saturday in Los 
Angeles, and his best man is Senator Stevens, they are not going to be 
here tomorrow. So as a result of that and other things, we are going to 
do our very best to complete work on what we have today, and we should 
be able to do that.

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