Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2006--Continued

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2006--Continued

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, there are discussions going on concerning the future of this bill and what time we may be able to vote and dispose of the bill. I did try to go to third reading to make sure we would not have amendments coming in here at the last minute that would require Members to come back into the Senate to vote at this time.

I want to state that I do not have any problem with the exchange between the Senators from Louisiana. They do have a very difficult proposition. I am not going to get into that at this time. But I will say this: The arrangement that the junior Senator has made is much better than we got after the great earthquake in Alaska in 1964. I think people ought to realize that while the numbers of people involved in this great disaster from Katrina and the disaster of Rita--we have had massive disasters such as our earthquake and our great flood and the typhoons in Hawaii. This is not something that is new. The number of people may be greater, but the type of disaster is not any greater.

I would hope we would have a chance to finish the conversations that the leadership is having and we can find some way to deal with this situation and let people know what time, and if, we are going to be allowed to vote on this very important bill that should go to conference before we go home.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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