[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Page 243]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            WEEKEND SESSION

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, we are going to be in a weekend session. All 
Democratic Senators have been told this, and Republican Senators have 
been notified. We earlier anticipated that the vote would be early 
Sunday, but I have worked with the Senate staff and we are going to be 
protected with postcloture time by having that vote at 2 p.m. So what 
we will do is come in Sunday at 1 p.m. and have a vote at 2 p.m.
  There are a few procedural games people can play, if they desire, and 
I am confident they won't, but if they do, we are protected, and we 
will have that vote so that the 30 hours expires during the next day, 
which would be Monday. We are working toward not being in session on 
Saturday. We think we can do that because some people have issues that 
they want to be protected, and I think we can do that. But at least for 
now--not for now; period--we are going to vote at 2 p.m. on Sunday, and 
everyone should know that. I know there are a lot of people who have 
plans, but there has been adequate notice.
  I mentioned here this morning, and I repeat, that President-elect 
Obama has said that there are people out there who would love to be 
able to work on a Sunday but they do not have a job, and this is the 
least we can do. The reason we are doing it is we have to move this 
large number of issues as quickly as we can.
  This one matter we will finish early next week will be the result of 
164 bills that have been held up. We are going to move then to Lilly 
Ledbetter, an important piece of legislation. When we finish that, we 
are going to do the children's health initiative, which doesn't take 
care of all the health care problems in this country, but it does solve 
the problem for millions of our children. Then we are going to move to 
the economic recovery plan, and there may be other things we have to 
do. For example, if President Bush sends us the TARP--that is the 
matter dealing with the financial bailout--we will have to deal with 
that. So we have a lot to do, and I hope everyone is understanding of 
the fact we have to vote on Sunday.

                          ____________________