Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2004 - Continued

DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2004—CONTINUED

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, we will engage in a colloquy now to explain a little bit about what has been going on today and yesterday and outline what the plans will be for tonight and tomorrow. It will be myself and Senator Daschle and the
managers of the bill, to clarify our general understanding.

First of all, last week tremendous progress was made on the bill. The managers have done a superb job in taking what we all know is a large, very important bill, a complicated bill, and systematically addressing the amendments that Senators have brought to the floor. A particular amendment, the Harkin amendment, has been the amendment talked about today and over the last 3 days. And it is an amendment that people feel very strongly about on both sides of the aisle.

In addition, both sides have looked at a whole range of amendments. And the managers have been made aware of those amendments.

As is always the case, the list is very long. But after discussion with the managers, it is clear that we have a manageable number of amendments that can be addressed if we started right now, tonight, in which case we would have to go very late tonight, tomorrow, and tomorrow night and complete action on the bill.

What it would mean is going back, in essence, to regular order in the sense of going back and voting shortly on four amendments, starting in a few minutes, after which the general understanding is that we would debate about six amendments tonight. Again, these are amendments which have been presented. They have been talked about and discussed. They would be debated tonight with the expectation that tomorrow morning we would vote on those amendments that require a vote and that we would vote on the Harkin amendment in the morning.

All of this is with the understanding that we would complete the bill tomorrow night and that we would stay and complete the appropriations bill as long as it takes tomorrow night, understanding that it is going to be challenging, that we are going to have to stay right on the bill and the amendments under discussion and stay focused in order to complete that bill tomorrow night.

If that could be done—and it will be done, based on the agreement—then it would be possible for us not to have rollcall votes on Thursday or Friday. We have September 11 on Thursday. We will have services here at the Capitol, and most of us will be participating in services either in our districts or here. So it is a challenging day. But I also think it is important for us to continue the normal business of the Senate on September 11 around those services. We would have a legislative day on Friday. In fact, we would be able to move to other business on Thursday and on Friday. But when we finish the bill tomorrow night, it would be with the understanding that we would address the amendments that I mentioned tonight, the specifics of which we will talk about shortly, and that we would finish the bill tomorrow night; that we would not leave until we finish the bill.