Arlen Specter: “the schedule, as agreed to, will call for continued debate. The majority leader, Senator Frist, will have an amendment…”

“the schedule, as agreed to, will call for continued debate. The majority leader, Senator Frist, will have an amendment to offer involving the subject of deaths at the border. It is anticipated that there will be a 3 o'clock vote on the Frist amendment and that there will be an allocation and scheduling of time for debate until 5 o'clock. Yesterday I urged Senators to file their amendments, to make them known to the ranking member, Senator Leahy, and myself, so we could schedule debate. We have a prodigious task ahead of us. We are scheduled for a 2-week recess beginning at the close of business a week from tomorrow. It is going to be a daunting task to finish this bill on that schedule, but we have undertaken daunting tasks before and succeeded. That can be done only if we have cooperation from Members. I ask Members who have amendments to consider at the outset time agreements so we can move ahead. I give notice to my colleagues that in order to complete this business, we are going to have to hold the voting time to 15 minutes, plus the 5-minute leeway, but we are not going to allow the votes to run 25 minutes, 30 minutes, 21 minutes. We are going to move ahead under the rules of the Senate. As I say, it is a prodigious job to get finished by next Thursday night or on Friday.…”