Thomas Daschle: “this is the end of the week. I thank my colleagues for the effort that has been made to get as much accomplished as we…”

“this is the end of the week. I thank my colleagues for the effort that has been made to get as much accomplished as we were able to achieve. We passed the energy and water appropriations bill. We passed the legislative branch appropriations bill. We just now passed the supplemental appropriations conference report. We appointed conferees to the bankruptcy reform legislation. We confirmed 23 nominations, including 3 judicial nominees this week. And we began consideration of the Transportation appropriations bill. While I wish we could have gone further with regard to our work on the Transportation bill, I am pleased that as a result of a bipartisan effort to achieve this success at the end of the week I think we have accomplished a good deal. I thank the distinguished Republican leader for his efforts in allowing this kind of accomplishment to be noted. I appreciate very much the hard work of the Appropriations Committee and the appropriations subcommittees that were very involved in the work of this week; that of Senator Domenici, the ranking member of the energy and water appropriations subcommittee, and Senator Reid in particular for his outstanding leadership in bringing about the successful conclusion of his bill. Senator Durbin has done an outstanding job with his legislative branch appropriations bill.”