William H. Frist

We will be having a vote in 30 minutes. In all likelihood, that will be the last vote of the day. ____________________

That will be fine. The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered. ____________________

Today the Senate passed the PATRIOT Act amendments bill, and we are now considering the PATRIOT Act conference report. Early today, by a vote of 84 to 15, the Senate overwhelmingly invoked cloture on the conference report. Under an…

Tomorrow--to explain what we did--following morning business, the Senate will resume debate on the motion to proceed to the PATRIOT Act amendments act. The cloture vote on that motion to proceed will occur at 10:30 in the morning. Under…

Again, the motion is pending, and if the Senators desire to debate the motion they should be prepared to do so. The Chair is obligated to put the question. I put Members on notice that they should remain on the floor if they feel the need…

To clarify, given my math being incorrect, that vote would be a little bit after 6 o'clock tonight on the motion to waive the point of order.

I modify my unanimous consent request, that there now be 3 hours minus 20 minutes--2 hours 40 minutes--for debate with the times as designated.

When we return to the asbestos bill later today, we have the motion to waive pending, and we will be talking to the two managers this morning to determine the best time for that vote to occur today. Having said that, we are going to have a…

If this is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in adjournment under the previous order. There being no objection, the Senate, at 9:58 p.m., adjourned until Tuesday, February 14…

Through the Chair in response, it really depends on how many of these motions we have. They are coming from the Democratic side of the aisle, and although a list has been provided, how many actually will require a vote--I would think we…

This afternoon we have scheduled a period of morning business. I mentioned at the close of business last week that it had been my intention to begin consideration today of the bipartisan asbestos legislation. Unfortunately, we are unable…

It has been a very long day, but a very productive day with the ultimate passage of the Tax Relief Act by a vote of 66 to 31. In addition, just a short time ago, we passed the temporary extension of a very important bill, the PATRIOT Act…

All right. Mr. President, we will work out on filing the motion to proceed here, and I will have an announcement. We will have no votes tomorrow. By the end of tonight, we will have Tuesday worked out. We will be debating the asbestos bill…

Reserving the right, the recognition prior to Senator Durbin would be to Senator Bond?

To reiterate, today we filed a cloture motion on the nomination of Judge Alito. The cloture vote will be 4:30 on Monday. We will have some more debate time on Monday. I believe we have provided plenty of time for debate on the nomination…

This is the NASA authorization bill. I congratulate Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison for this particular piece of legislation, because as we look to the future, science and the technology, and the importance and significance of this…

There are several nominations that had been cleared for some length of time on our side of the aisle, and I was disappointed we were not able to clear them on the other side. The Intelligence Committee reported the General Counsel of the…

Real quickly, this means that we will have 30 minutes of total debate followed by the concurrent resolution, followed immediately by Defense appropriations, followed by the authorization by voice. That is my understanding.

I will make a final statement on the deficit reduction act. The Democratic leader also will, and then there will be 10 minutes after that before we begin to vote. ____________________

I will return later tonight to make further announcements about the schedule for tomorrow. I wish to emphasize what the distinguished minority leader has said. There will be a lot of votes tomorrow. We will begin voting around 10 minutes…

My goal would be to be out, for sure, tomorrow. I think we can work on that. I appreciate the appeal from that side of aisle to be out tomorrow. We can't have obstruction. Getting the votes done and finishing everything tomorrow would be a…

Indeed, he is going to do his very best. Votes tomorrow, where the other side of the aisle causes us to have rollcall votes on motions to proceed and then cause us to file cloture, make it difficult. I was ready to get out 2 days ago. If…

And with regard to that, we have a number of nominations, we have a number of judges, as well, we very much would like to be able to address. There are other issues with regard to the PATRIOT Act, Labor-HHS. We have a lot to do, all of…

Let me make a statement now. I ask unanimous consent my statement be made on our time on the reconciliation. The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered. ____________________

A couple of things. First, we do not want to delay any votes that will delay when we finally are able to depart. Within the next 48 hours we will have a number of votes. We will work on scheduling so we can let people know with certainty…