William H. Frist: “we will have a very short colloquy here as to what to expect over the next several days. It will take 3 or 4 minutes.…”

“we will have a very short colloquy here as to what to expect over the next several days. It will take 3 or 4 minutes. Mr. President, Senators have been asking about the schedule for the afternoon, tomorrow, and Monday. First of all, let me congratulate the chairman and ranking member. We are making good progress. The fact that we do not have a lot of amendments flowing out tonight or a lot of requests even for tomorrow or Monday is a good sign. That, coupled with the fact we made substantial progress, leaves me very optimistic. We dealt with ethanol and oil consumption. So we are making progress. I will come back to what we are going to have to do next week. We will remain in session this afternoon for Members to offer additional energy-related amendments. However, if the amendment requires a rollcall vote, we would order that for next week because of the schedule of tomorrow. We will have no further rollcall votes today. After our business today, we will return to the bill on Monday. I do want to continue to rely on the continued efforts of our colleagues to come forward and offer amendments now. They have the opportunity this afternoon, early into the evening, and throughout Monday. I do want to put our colleagues on notice that if it looks as though there is any question about finishing this bill Thursday or Friday of next week--I have told Senators on our side of the aisle to expect votes on Friday, but we are going to complete this bill next week.…”