Pete Domenici: “while we are now on this energy-water appropriations bill, let me first thank my friend, Senator Harry Reid from Nevada…”

“while we are now on this energy-water appropriations bill, let me first thank my friend, Senator Harry Reid from Nevada, as the ranking member of this subcommittee, for the hard work he and his staff put into this bill. We have a great bill. The Senate will find that out in the next 2 or 3 days. I am hopeful there will only be a few amendments. We kind of know what they are. We do not intend to discuss them until those proponents come to the floor and offer them, but we know about them and we think we can have a serious debate Monday. I understand maybe we can't vote on Monday. If we can, we will, and dispose of that serious nuclear amendment--antinuclear development amendment. If not, we would do it on Tuesday. But I hope nobody intends to use this bill as a Christmas tree for authorizations. I can assure them they will meet great resistance from this Senator. This is not an authorization bill for electricity. That is somewhere else, another bill. It is in the conference. We have already voted. We will not consider that, and if we do, it will not matter because I will not bring back from conference any energy amendments that belong on the authorization bill, creating the policy for the energy future of our country.”