William H. Frist: “today, we return to the consideration of the Foreign Operations appropriations bill. We began that bill last Friday with…”

“today, we return to the consideration of the Foreign Operations appropriations bill. We began that bill last Friday with opening statements. Senators McConnell and Leahy are ready for Members to offer their amendments during today's session. They are not encouraging amendments, but if Senators do want to offer amendments, we do ask they come forward as soon as possible. I am very hopeful we can complete this bill tomorrow. I think it is likely we can do that if Senators will come forward today and offer amendments, if they have any. We will be voting this afternoon at about 5:30, and we will be announcing a little bit later today what the nature of that vote will be. Senators will be notified once we lock in the time. It will be around 5:30 today. As a reminder, tomorrow, at 10 o'clock in the morning, there will be a joint meeting with the House of Representatives. The Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh, will be speaking to both Houses of Congress at that joint meeting. We have 2 weeks remaining before our next recess. We have a lot of business over the next 2 weeks to conduct. The Democratic leader and I were just talking, going through our objectives, and will be sharing that and consulting with our colleagues as to how these next 2 weeks will play out. The floor schedule is going to be very busy. It will take precedence over other schedules, so we do ask Senators to keep their schedules flexible so we can accomplish the many tasks before us.…”