William H. Frist: “this morning, we will have 60 minutes of debate prior to the cloture vote on the nomination of Thomas Dorr to be Under…”

“this morning, we will have 60 minutes of debate prior to the cloture vote on the nomination of Thomas Dorr to be Under Secretary of Agriculture for Rural Development. This is a nomination we have tried to clear for quite some time but were unable to do so because of an objection on the other side of the aisle. On Tuesday, I filed a cloture motion so we could bring this nomination to a vote. I do hope we can invoke cloture and subsequently vote affirmatively, with an up-or-down vote, on the President's nomination. Once cloture is invoked and we are able to vote on the Dorr nomination--once we complete that--we will resume debate on the Defense authorization bill. Chairman Warner and Senator Levin were on the Senate floor yesterday to consider amendments. There is one amendment pending at this point in time. I understand the other side is looking at that amendment. It is an amendment relating to armored personnel carriers. We will schedule that for a vote sometime early today, I hope. We will be considering additional amendments over the course of today. We, of course, will be voting over the course of the afternoon on the Department of Defense authorization bill. We do need to make substantial progress on the bill this week. Therefore, we do ask Senators to come forward with their amendments. ____________________”