[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Page 10818]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, following leader remarks, the Senate will 
proceed to executive session to consider the nomination of Kathleen 
Sebelius to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. There will be up 
to 8 hours for debate prior to a vote, with a 60-vote affirmation 
required for confirmation. That is by agreement.
  I would indicate we have a few speakers on our side but not 4 hours 
worth. In fact, if we get up to an hour, it will be a surprise to me. 
So we will yield back a lot of that time.
  At 12 noon we will vote on passage of the Fraud Enforcement and 
Recovery Act.
  The Senate will recess from 12:30 until 2:15 today for our weekly 
caucus luncheons. Following the caucus recess, the Senate will resume 
debate on the Sebelius nomination, with the vote expected sometime 
later in the afternoon or evening.
  Last night, the budget conferees filed a conference report 
accompanying the budget resolution. We expect to consider the 
conference report sometime tomorrow.
  Finally, I expect the Senate to begin consideration of housing 
legislation this week. We have not finalized that with the 
distinguished Republican leader and members of his caucus, but I think 
we are getting very close. What we anticipate--I have filed, under rule 
XIV, the House-passed bill minus the bankruptcy provision. It is 
contemplated that the first amendment will be offered by Senator 
Durbin, to put the bankruptcy provision back in the bill. Then after 
that, we would take a look at the bill to see if anything else needed 
to be done. But the Durbin amendment would include just the bankruptcy 
language. There are issues in this dealing with FDIC and other things 
we are told the banking community and financial world needs, and we 
will take a look at that. That is how we will get to that legislation. 
We hope to do that within the next 24 hours or something like that.
  I have indicated to the Republican leader that the next nomination we 
are concerned about is Tom Strickland, the Chief of Staff of the 
Secretary of Interior. I had good conversations with Senator Bunning 
last week. He has some questions he wants answered. He put that in 
writing to the Secretary. That has been all taken care of. Senator 
Bunning said he was not worried about delaying the vote but he wants an 
opportunity to be able to speak in regard to him, and I think there are 
other Senators who feel the same way, so hopefully we can work that 
out.
  Then we are going to the credit card legislation, which was reported 
out of the Banking Committee. That is something that will not be real 
easy to do, but polling numbers indicate that almost 90 percent of the 
American people want us to do something with credit cards so it is 
something we have to do. I have talked with the Republican leader about 
other things we wish to try to accomplish before we leave here during 
this spring period.

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