[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Page 17093]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         SPIRIT OF COOPERATION

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, last week something wonderful and unusual 
happened here in the Senate: We passed a worthy piece of legislation 
with a nearly unanimous vote. On the eve of Veterans Day, we honored 
this Nation's service men and women by passing bipartisan legislation 
to spur hiring of this country's nearly 900,000 out-of-work veterans. 
Two hundred fifty thousand of these unemployed veterans became members 
of the Armed Services because of the global fight on terror basically 
in the last 10 years. I trust our action last week meant as much, or 
more, than our words of thanks and praise for these dedicated men and 
women who serve us so well. But the Senate has much more work to do 
this work period, this week and into next week, if necessary. I hope 
that same spirit of cooperation will hold during this next few days. 
The Senate has much more work to be done, as I have indicated, because 
we have work that is essential to the functioning of our government.
  As we continue to focus on the efforts to create jobs and get our 
economy moving again, we must also pass appropriations bills, which is 
part of our yearly responsibility. This week, we will consider an 
appropriations package that includes Energy and Water, Financial 
Services, and State and Foreign Operations. We need cooperation to move 
this important piece of legislation. The legislative tree will not be 
filled, but we need to agree on the way forward. We need to have some 
responsible way to move forward on these amendments. We are not going 
to have another situation such as we had a few weeks ago, where we 
worked until early in the morning--not that the long hours hurt, but we 
had hundreds of amendments and we had no way of moving through those 
without having a lot of votes, some of which were totally unnecessary.
  We have the continuing resolution we must do before the end of this 
work period. Although I know there will be some strident debate over 
amendments to both the appropriations bill and the Defense 
authorization bill we have to do, we have to work together if we are 
going to move forward on the Nation's business.
  Last month, the Senate passed a bipartisan minibus that included 
Agriculture, Commerce-State-Justice, Transportation, and Housing and 
Urban Development. Those appropriations bills were essential, and we 
were able to complete that. That experience proved that, with 
cooperation, the Senate can work through the normal appropriations 
process, but it does take cooperation.
  The Senate will consider the conference report on that minibus this 
week. That conference report will include another short-term continuing 
resolution that will take us through December 16, which will give 
Congress the time it needs to complete important work--passing 
appropriations bills.
  This week we will also confirm a number of judges who are crucial to 
help ease the backlog in our Nation's jam-packed courts. We have the 
supercommittee which is functioning. All 12 members are trying to come 
up with some reasonable way forward to do something about the debt.
  So we have the supercommittee, we have the Defense authorization 
bill, we have the appropriations bill, we have a conference report, and 
we have the deadline that is facing us. We have to get all this work 
done by this weekend. If not, then we get it done before Thanksgiving, 
which is a week from Thursday. So as you can see, the Senate has a 
substantial amount of work to complete in the 10 days before 
Thanksgiving. I want to be clear that we are going to work up until the 
last moment before the holiday, if that is what it takes, to get these 
important tasks done. With cooperation, we can get it all done this 
week. But we have a lot to do, and I understand that, but I do hope we 
can work together to complete this country's necessary work.
  Would the Chair announce the business of the day.

                          ____________________