[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Page 1304]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        MAINTAINING THE SCHEDULE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, we have made good progress on this 
legislation today, the Ledbetter legislation. I am not filing cloture 
tonight. I am very confident we will be able to finish this bill 
tomorrow. If we do not, I will file cloture on it for a weekend cloture 
vote because we have to finish this bill this week. If people need more 
time, they want to have some more debate and amendments on Friday, that 
is fine with me too.
  I think this legislation sets a good tone that we can legislate here, 
people can offer amendments, with no restrictions on the amendments. I 
think this is the way we need to move forward.
  The simple fact that we have 58, 59 Senators should not in any way 
give us any idea that we can move through here without bipartisan 
support. So I hope we can do that. But we still have a schedule to 
maintain. If that cannot be done, we will do some things over the 
weekend.
  Progress is being made with the nominations. I hope once we get some 
more reported out of the committees, we can move some of them out of 
here quickly.
  We have so much work to do in just a short period of time. Four 
weeks, basically, is all we have left of this work period, and we are 
going to finish a number of items. I have announced what they would be. 
We are going to do that or we are not going to have our Presidents Day 
recess.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont is recognized.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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