[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Page 9297]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, following leader remarks the Senate will be 
in a period of morning business for an hour. The Republicans will 
control the first half, and the majority will control the final half. 
Following that morning business the Senate will resume consideration of 
the immigration bill.
  The Senate will recess from 12:30 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. for our weekly 
caucus meetings. At 3 o'clock there will be four rollcall votes in 
relation to amendments to the immigration bill.
  Mr. President, I would simply add on that, I have had a number of 
calls already this morning saying: You cannot have the votes then. I 
have this. We have meetings. We would like to have the votes at 4 
o'clock.
  This bill, we have to move forward on it. I was very happy we were 
able to get consent to have these four votes starting at 3 o'clock 
today. Time is of the essence on this legislation. I have been patient. 
We have all been patient waiting to see what amendments people want to 
offer. I want to make sure that on some of these major issues people 
have had the time to work through them. We know some of the issues are 
difficult. I have been told Senator Hoeven and Senator Corker are 
trying to work with the eight bipartisan Senators to come up with 
something they believe is important for them to vote on. I have no 
problem with that, but I am just telling everybody, as I have now for 
quite a long time, that we are going to either file cloture on this on 
Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. We have to move forward on this 
legislation.
  So I urge people to work together to come up with whatever amendments 
they believe are important. Of course, we are all looking at this major 
issue. I have talked to the Republicans' Gang of 8 and the Democrats' 
Gang of 8. They are working on something dealing with border security. 
I am not telling anyone what to do other than to do it as quickly as 
you can.
  The time has come to make decisions on this important piece of 
legislation. We say we have been on it 2 weeks. We have really been on 
it longer than that. That first week after the break there were 
meetings going on all over this Capitol on what we should do with 
immigration.
  So I would hope people understand that this may not be one of our 
normal weekends where we shoot out of town to go back to wherever we 
come from. We have to move forward on this legislation.

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