William H. Frist: “to clarify the comments that were going back and forth between the Senate Democratic leader and myself, we will finish…”

“to clarify the comments that were going back and forth between the Senate Democratic leader and myself, we will finish the bill this week. We pay our respects to the Senator from New Mexico by saying he has been more than willing to be here to receive amendments. The fact that there were not a lot of people either on Thursday or today rushing to the floor to offer the amendments actually leads me to be very hopeful that we will complete this bill Thursday, although I know in all likelihood it is going to be Friday. We are down to just very few amendments. We recognize that some people will not be here over the course of even today, voting tonight, tomorrow, and the next day. That is not going to slow us down at all in our obligation to address the Nation's business. When there are amendments, we will take them to the Senate floor to debate them. I think we are discouraged a little by the fact that people are not rushing down to offer amendments. On the other hand, it kind of gives me a little bit of encouragement. It means we are going to finish this bill. We are going to file cloture Tuesday in order to finish it, in all likelihood, unless we come to some agreement by both the managers. I congratulate them for where we are today. We intend on finishing the bill with certainty this week. The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The minority leader.”