Republicans push key bills through Congress as they exit power

Описание: (9 Dec 2006)
1. Wide of House of Representatives floor
2. Mid of House official calling motion to adjourn session
3. Mid of Speaker Dennis Hastert banging gavel to adjourn the House, zoom out
4. Slate showing the House of Representatives has adjourned
5. Senate floor
6. SOUNDBITE: (English) Senator Bill Frist, Outgoing Senate Majority Leader:
"People always laugh when I say that being Senate majority leader is like doing heart transplants. But times like this make it all very clear that they're very very similar, because at about 4:30am in the morning we'd be putting the last few stitches in the transplanted heart and, as you do that, you just begin to feel that anticipation of that heart all of a sudden start beating again, becoming alive, which gives new life and rebirth to an individual who'd otherwise die. And I say that because that's what I would be doing if I weren't here and I was doing it 12 or 13 years ago, may well be doing it next year. But that sort of change is good and change can be, as I said yesterday, constructive. It can be re-birth and it can give real hope."
7. Senate floor
8. Frist calling for adjournment of Senate
9. Adjourning of Senate
10. Senators applauding
11. Slate showing Senate stands adjourned
STORYLINE:
The House of Representatives and the Senate both ended the 109th Congress early on Saturday after a last minute flurry of votes to wrap up some loose ends.
The Republicans are leaving a lot of unfinished business for the Democrats, including most of this year's spending bills.
The Democrats, who won control in the November elections, will take over in January.
Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist signalled the end with some farewell comments in which he likened the late-night session to his old days in the operating room as a heart surgeon.
Republicans dumped an unfinished budget on the Democrats about to take power, with the Senate barely meeting a midnight deadline to pass a stopgap spending bill putting the government on autopilot until Feb. 15.
In its last hours of control by Republicans, Congress passed a raft of bills including an agreement to allow U.S. shipments of civilian nuclear fuel to India, a sweeping bill reviving expired tax breaks, extending trade benefits for developing countries and protecting doctors from a big cut in Medicare payments.
Final adjournment followed after the House and Senate cleared away a bevy of other legislation, including bills re-authorising health research programmes at the National Institutes of Health and an overhaul of fisheries management.

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