William H. Frist

I do not, but we will be able to decide shortly after talking among everyone when that vote will be. For sure we will have these cloture votes tomorrow morning. We need to make sure all Members are back for the postcloture votes with…

Tomorrow we expect to have the remaining conference reports from the House of Representatives. Much of the activity tonight and all of the activity over the course of the day has been the generation of those conference reports. Since…

Through the Chair, I know it has not passed the House yet. I will have to check and see what the current status is on the Department of Defense authorization. I will have to check and see what the current status of that is. It was my…

I think that is a perfect goal and that we mutually share that, that we could start voting as early as Monday morning. Since we will be in tomorrow, if we can update that because most of our--many of our Senators are out around the…

Defense appropriations will likely be tomorrow. There are several items that remain to be wrapped up. Most of the meetings over the course of last night and today have been with the objective of having that wrapped up as soon as possible…

That particular bill, the Coast Guard Hurricane Relief Act of 2005, again gives me the opportunity to comment and really praise the tremendous work that was carried out by our Coast Guard in the recent hurricanes. Many of us had the…

We will be finishing tonight. I say that because we will be leaving the floor tonight, but there is a lot of work going on here in the Nation's Capital as we try to bring to closure the Nation's business for this first session. So a lot of…

The PATRIOT Act remains on the floor. I switched my vote in order to recommit. So in essence, it is 53 to 47. I simply ask that debate continue. Let everybody look at what is in the bill. We have had excellent debate the last couple of…

The Bahrain free-trade agreement is a very important agreement that reflects in this post-9/11 environment the recommendation that had been made in terms of facilitating trade to nations such as Bahrain. I am delighted we were able to both…

Today, after a period of morning business, the Senate will debate the Bahrain Free Trade Agreement under a 60- minute time agreement reached last night. Later today, we will also begin debate on the motions to instruct conferees with…

To put threats of filibuster aside before we have even had the hearings. I am not bringing up filibuster.

Once again I thank my distinguished colleague from West Virginia for his insightful comments. I do want to keep the focus at this point--I have a feeling he is going to want to say something after I close, but I think it is time to put…

The Senator cited Paez. He got an up-or-down vote on the floor of the Senate. All I am arguing for is an up-or-down vote. It is simple. Vote for or against them, and they win or they lose, and you start over or not.

I will not reclaim the floor. But what happened to those judges? Not with my principle as an up-or-down vote, but I ask my distinguished colleague what happened. Ultimately, they got an up-or-down vote on the floor of the Senate. That is…

Yes. Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I have listened with great interest to the exchange on the television monitor back in my office and thought I might come down and join you both. Let me suggest that it could be argued that you are both…

It doesn't say in the Constitution that you can vote; it says you can give advice and consent and that the Senate makes the rules as to whether you vote or not. We just disagree. Obviously, this goes back to the whole filibuster argument…

Let me yield to my distinguished colleague, and then I will be happy to yield to the Senator from West Virginia.

It is not in the Constitution that a Senator specifically has the right for an up-or-down vote. I am saying the dignity of the institution to give advice and consent deserves an up-or-down vote on the floor of the Senate. What the…

And I think advice and consent for somebody who has gone through the nomination process, the recommendations, through the Judiciary Committee, hearings, recommended to this floor, I would argue, not written in the Constitution, but under…

I would argue that the dignity of this institution has worked for 214 years. So why deny it? Especially why deny it with a qualified nominee like Alito.

The final words: He is the consummate professional. I think all these attacks that are going on, since that really is the issue at hand, we need to put aside all of these partisan attacks, all of these unfair attacks by either extremist…

In closing our comments on this bill, I also thank my staff who have been shepherding this for me for the last 3 years, Liz Hall, Jennifer Romans, and many others. The real significance is that patient care will be improved. It will get…

I think it is a reasonable request by the Democratic leader so we can get on with this vote and go to our caucuses. The reason there was an initial objection to it was because Senator Shelby, chairman of the committee, had something he had…

I greatly appreciate the Senator's commitment to this issue. It is imperative that this Congress exercise fiscal discipline and I concur that an important step must be to control spending, while securing our Nation's defense. Next week…

Tomorrow the Senate will continue consideration of the Labor-HHS appropriations bill. There will be a cloture vote on the bill at 10 a.m. I encourage Members to invoke cloture so that we can expedite passage of this final appropriations…