[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Page 1306]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, the issue before the Senate today is what we 
do with Mother Nature. Mother Nature has been very difficult to deal 
with. The Presiding Officer, being from the State of Alaska, is used to 
this kind of weather, but most of us are not. We have one snowstorm and 
that is usually it for the year, but we have had a series of them this 
year. Maybe it is a result of the Senator from Alaska bringing the 
weather with him.
  What we are trying to do--we don't have it worked out yet--we may be 
able to get consent to start the judge vote pretty soon and have that 
run for a reasonable period of time and then have the second vote be 
open for some considerable period of time so that people, if they are 
here, could vote on both and then go home if they are Washington 
residents or some people who are having trouble getting here could be 
here on time to vote on that. We are close to being able to work that 
out.
  I would also say we are contemplating, if we can work out the 
procedural difficulties, not being in session tomorrow. We have some 
things we have to work out prior to that time because, as most everyone 
knows, we have been working on a bill to end this work period. It is 
really a nice piece of legislation. It started with a bipartisan jobs 
tax credit with Hatch and Schumer; we have a section 171 small business 
tax issue that small businesses are really looking for; we have a 
highway bill extension; and we also have Build America Bonds.
  We also, prior to the end of this month, have to do some things that 
are extremely important to the country. We have to extend the PATRIOT 
Act. We have a number of other things we have to extend. We have only 
been able to get agreement to extend those for short periods of time, 
but they need to be done--some tax extenders. We have to do a number of 
those things. We hope we can merge the two. We will make that 
determination, how we are going to do that, in the next few hours. We 
have a message that we can use from the House, so we do not need 
permission to move to that.
  The issue before the Senate and the decision I have to make after 
speaking to the Republican leader is what we do when we come back here 
on Thursday. We will have an intervening day. I would rather not be in 
session tomorrow if, in fact, we have to file cloture on that package I 
just talked about. I have told everyone what I think would be the 
appropriate way to do it is to get on that bill and to have some 
amendments on both sides. I hope we can do that. We really need to 
finish the bill this week. I hope we can do that in a reasonable time.
  It appears from what I have been able to determine that the storm 
will end sometime early tomorrow evening. The problem is, the streets 
in the DC area are pretty difficult, so we would have to make sure 
everyone has time Thursday to get here. There are some people who live 
in the suburbs when they are in Washington, so we have to make sure 
they have time to get here.
  Anyway, we are working on these issues. We have the Presidents Day 
recess. I hope we do not have to work into the weekend to complete 
that. It is really difficult to put all this stuff over. People's lives 
are really on the line with our being able to create some jobs. The 
four things I have been talking about we have been told by the 
Congressional Budget Office would create jobs immediately--not next 
year but now.
  So I hope we can work through this. I have had one discussion already 
with the Republican leader today, and I will have some more before the 
day is out. That is about the best information I can give Senators for 
the time being.

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