[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 865-866]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      UNANIMOUS-CONSENT AGREEMENT

  Mr. REID. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that at a time to 
be determined by the majority leader, after consultation with the 
Republican leader, the Senate proceed to the consideration of the 
following resolutions en bloc:
  A Wyden-Grassley-McCaskill resolution relative to secret holds, which 
is at the desk; a Udall of Colorado resolution regarding waiving the 
reading of an amendment, which is at the desk; S. Res. 8, Senator 
Harkin; S. Res. 10, Senator Udall of New Mexico with a substitute 
amendment, which is at the desk; and S. Res. 21, Senator Merkley, with 
a substitute amendment, which is at the desk; that there be up to 8 
hours of debate, equally divided between the two leaders or their 
designees, for the purpose of debating these resolutions concurrently; 
that upon the use or yielding back of time, the substitute amendment to 
S. Res. 10 be agreed to and the substitute amendment to S. Res. 21 be 
agreed to; the Senate then proceed to vote in relation to the 
resolutions in the order listed above with no intervening action or 
debate; that the following resolutions be subject to a 60-vote 
threshold for adoption: Wyden-Grassley-McCaskill resolution and Udall 
of Colorado resolution; that the following remaining resolutions be 
subject to a threshold of two-thirds of those voting for adoption: S. 
Res. 8; S. Res. 10, as amended; and S. Res. 21, as amended; that there 
be no amendments, motions or points of order in order to any of these 
resolutions prior to the vote in relation to the resolution, except for 
the substitute amendments to S. Res. 10 and S. Res. 21 listed above; 
further, that if a resolution fails to achieve the listed threshold for 
adoption, it be returned to its previous status.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, I have had a number of conversations this 
evening with my counterpart, the Republican leader. We on this side 
have a caucus scheduled for tomorrow at 12:30 and so do the 
Republicans. These votes are all going to occur after we finish our 
caucuses anyway, so there are going to be no votes in the morning. The 
debate will start in the morning. We are going to come in at 10 
o'clock. There will be no morning business. It has been suggested we 
come in at 10:30 because of the inclement weather, and that is fine. 
There will be no morning business in the morning, and then we will vote 
immediately on these matters set forth in this agreement.
  The weather reports are that the Sun is going to be shining. Tomorrow 
it will be cold, and we know the streets are bad. But as I have 
indicated, we are not going to have the votes until tomorrow afternoon, 
so we hope it will all work out. Senator McConnell and I will visit 
this issue again if anything untoward happens. We know it would be 
better if we didn't have this bad weather, but we are not all fortunate 
enough to live in southern Nevada. Sometimes bad weather does come. 
That being the case, we have been out of session now for several weeks. 
We have this organizational stuff that we have to get out of the way so 
we can start having matters referred out of the committees. So as 
inconvenient as it is for everyone, we need to move forward.

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