[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Page 18907]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, following my remarks, the Senate will 
proceed to executive session to debate the Murthy, Santos, Rose, 
Saldana, and Blinken nominations.


                           Blinken Nomination

  I am not going to speak extensively on any of these. I will just say 
now, Tony Blinken I have known for many years. He was integral to the 
success of Joe Biden, as U.S. Senator, and has been with him as Vice 
President. Now he is going to be the second in command at the State 
Department.
  When we have our briefings in the classified room, there is no one 
who is more articulate and can answer the questions any better than 
Tony Blinken. I have great admiration for him. I think we as a country 
are so fortunate he is going to be in the position he is in.
  At 5:30 today there will be four rollcall votes. Those votes will be 
as follows: cloture on Murthy to be Surgeon General of the United 
States, confirmation of the Murthy nomination, cloture on the Santos 
nomination to be a member of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety 
Board, and cloture on Executive Calendar No. 635, Frank Rose to be an 
Assistant Secretary of State.
  This man has been waiting 513 days, an extremely important job: 
verification of plants, nuclear. I don't think the Republicans dislike 
him. They don't like the job he is going to have. They have left it 
basically empty for all this time.
  So we have some important stuff to do. We can complete everything we 
wanted to today--today. Everything that is scheduled now for the week, 
we can finish today. I hope everyone understands we can move forward, 
but we are going to have to be here until we finish our work, whether 
that is Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or Saturday. So everyone 
should understand they can't be leaving.
  I know we all have things to do. I haven't been home in such a long 
time and I want to go home. I bought a new home there. As everyone 
knows, I sold my place in Searchlight and bought a home in the Greater 
Las Vegas area. I would like to be able to see the home. I have not 
slept in it. We bought it in May and I have not been there. My wife is 
there waiting, getting ready for the move in, which is now taking 
place. So we have a lot of work to do. We have to work together to get 
it done as quickly as possible.

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