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Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate turn to the conference report to accompany the intelligence authorization bill, and the conference report be considered read, and under the following time restraints: Twenty minutes equally divided between the chairman and ranking minority member; 10 minutes under the control of Senator Torricelli.

I further ask that following the conclusion or yielding back of time, the conference report be agreed to, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?

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Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, and I shall not object, I would like to inquire of the majority leader his intention with respect to the pending business, which prior to this unanimous-consent request was the fast-track legislation. I understand that the conference report is privileged and you are seeking a unanimous-consent request with respect to a time agreement. I shall not object to that. But I want to inquire about the intentions of the majority leader with respect to the fast-track legislation--when we might expect to get to amendments on that.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, if I could respond, we have some business we need to go through here with regard to some nominations, also another piece of legislation, the PUHCA legislation, some statements that will be made.

As I mentioned, we are trying to work out something to where we can move to the D.C. bill and Amtrak. It is our intent to return to fast track, so that there will be time for further debate and, I presume, amendments, as we go on into the afternoon and into the night and tomorrow. We are trying to get some of these other bills agreed to and moved today. We will try to do it before we get back into the debate.

We, of course, ask for your cooperation as we try to get consent to move some of these bills.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, further reserving the right to object, the majority certainly will have my cooperation. I share his interest in moving these----

The PRESIDING OFFICER. If the Senator will withhold. The Senate is not in order.

The Senator from North Dakota.

Mr. DORGAN. The majority leader certainly will have my cooperation. I share his interest in making progress on a number of the items he has just mentioned.

I am concerned, however, that we not get into a corner of the legislative time period and discover that some say there is not time to offer amendments on the fast-track legislation. A number of us have amendments that would require some debate, and we want very much to be assured by the majority leader that we will not be precluded from offering those amendments. So as we proceed, I want to have some assurance that that will be the case.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, before I respond, can I inquire, are these germane amendments the Senator is entertaining to the fast track?

Mr. DORGAN. Some are germane, some are nongermane. They all relate to fast track and to trade. We are not under a cloture motion, so all the amendments would be in order.

Mr. LOTT. Let me just say that there are Members on both sides of the aisle that have amendments. I know they want an opportunity to offer them. We will return to that bill. There will be an opportunity to offer amendments. But I can't say exactly what time it will be at this point. It very well could be tonight. We will need to work with the Democratic leader and talk about the time and how we are going to handle that.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I shall not object to the request made by the majority leader. I will seek further inquiry upon request later in the day because we do want to find time for those amendments.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the majority leader's request?

Without objection, it is so ordered.

The clerk will state the conference report.

The legislative clerk read as follows:

The committee on conference on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses on the amendment of the House to the bill (S. 858) to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 1998 for intelligence and intelligence-related activities of the United States Government, the Community Management Account, and the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement and Disability System, and for other purposes, having met, after full and free conference, have agreed to recommend and do recommend to their respective Houses this report, signed by a majority of the conferees.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the Senate will proceed to the consideration of the conference report.

(The conference report is printed in the House proceedings of the Record of September 16, 1997.)

END