Trent Lott: “we are working with the managers of various pieces of legislation to determine the best way to proceed. Senator Daschle…”

“we are working with the managers of various pieces of legislation to determine the best way to proceed. Senator Daschle and I have been discussing how to proceed. We have had a very busy time over the past 8 days. We have had a lot of votes. We have completed a lot of work: The Department of Defense authorization bill-- actually, we completed that with debate at night--the Interior appropriations bill today, the death tax elimination legislation last Friday, and the marriage tax penalty today. The question is how to proceed at this point. We hope we can complete action on the foreign operations appropriations bill so it can go to conference, as we did yesterday on the legislative appropriations bill. Our colleagues will recall, we did take that up but didn't complete it. We need to get that done so that can go to conference and the House and Senate conferees can begin working with the administration to get that important legislation passed. I know they have interest in it. We do, too. We are also committed to getting four appropriations bills done before we go out for the August recess: Agriculture, which is, I believe, ready to proceed. The managers are in the area. Senator Cochran and Senator Kohl are in the area; The energy and water appropriations bill is ready to go when we complete Agriculture; Treasury-Postal Service will be ready next week, and Commerce-State- Justice. That would be 11 appropriations bills.”