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“ORDER OF BUSINESS” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Energy was published in the Senate section on pages S7462-S7463 on July 24, 2000.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
ORDER OF BUSINESS
Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I realize there are some 6 minutes left under the time agreement for the Democratic leadership to be able to have comments during the first hour; and then we will have an hour under the control of Senator Thomas. But I will use my leader time now so we will not take the remaining 6 minutes of the Democratic time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is recognized.
Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, with regard to the week's schedule, we had hoped we would be making progress now on the energy and water appropriations bill. But a disagreement developed on Friday afternoon, and we are continuing to see if we can work through that. I have spoken to Senator Domenici, the chairman of the energy and water appropriations subcommittee, about trying to find a way to proceed.
It is very important legislation for our country. It does involve appropriations for the Energy Department, the very important nuclear weapons labs, as well as water projects all over this country in which Members and States and various groups are very interested. So I hope we can find a way to proceed on that.
It has been held up, basically, by a disagreement over how to handle the water levels on the Missouri River, affecting the States of North Dakota, South Dakota, Missouri, and perhaps others downstream. It is not easy to reconcile or to come to an agreement because there are very strong feelings about it, and it is very important to local areas. I know Senator Domenici is ready to proceed. He will be over later to make some comments about the importance of this legislation.
We also hope to take up the Treasury-Postal Service appropriations bill this week. It should not be that controversial. I understand there may be some amendments to it; It may take some time, but that is understandable. That is fine. We could do that and still conclude that legislation probably in a day or so.
We had hoped that during the pendency of the week we could also go to the Commerce-State-Justice appropriations bill. We had hoped to do all three of them, or at least two of the three, and make some progress on Commerce-State-Justice.
We also would like to proceed to the intelligence authorization bill. As is always the case, after the Armed Services Defense authorization bill for the year is done, we, in relatively short order, then go to the intelligence authorization. I do not need to talk about the importance of the intelligence authorization bill and what it means to the security of our country, but we have not been able to work out exactly how to proceed on that either.
Then on Wednesday, we had indicated we would go to the China PNTR issue. Indications had been that there would be resistance to moving forward on the motion to proceed, and I would have to file cloture on that, with that cloture motion then ripening on Friday. So we would go ahead and go to that and get over the first hurdle in being able to complete the China trade legislation when we come back in September.
We had hoped to go to the Executive Calendar and get some nominations completed this week and also consider some additional judges that might be reported from the Judiciary Committee during the week.
All of that right now is in abeyance. We have not been able to get an agreement on how to proceed at this time. I think that is unfortunate because we do have 4, 4\1/2\ days this week in which we need to make real progress on appropriations bills and other issues, as well as the China trade legislation.
If we cannot get an agreement here in the next couple of hours or so, then I will have to try to proceed to one of the appropriations bills and the intelligence authorization bill, and perhaps even file cloture on them. Both of those will then ripen on Wednesday. Of course, if cloture is obtained, then we will be on those bills, which will then get tangled up in the China permanent normal trade relations issue. So this is not a good way to proceed, but that may be our only alternative.
But I have talked to Senator Daschle this morning. I have talked to Senator Hatch. We will continue to work with Senators on both sides of the aisle to see if we can find a way to make some good progress this week, because this is the last week before the August recess, and it will have an effect on what we are able to do in September.
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