The last day of the session is oftentimes spent in recess or sitting on the chamber floor as final issues are worked out.

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As to real business on the floor of the chamber this week, on Wednesday we had the formal approval of the local government settlement.

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Book doesn't expect a farm bill to make it to reach the floor of either Chamber until at least 2008, a national election year.

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The Senate's Democratic leadership believes it now has enough Republican support to thwart a conservative attempt to stop the bill even being considered on the floor of the chamber.

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But Daschle held firm, telling reporters in a hastily convened news conference afterward that the bill does not have enough votes in the upper chamber, and he had little intention of bringing it to the floor.

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The tablet never fell to the floor, though the company did perform a separate drop test inside a controlled chamber, in which the Surface continued to record video even after plummeting three feet.

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The negotiators also have pledged to move the bill through the Judiciary Committee and onto the floor for debate by the full Senate according to what's known in chamber jargon as "regular order, " trying to head off complaints from conservatives that the legislation is being rammed through.

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For the next nine hours, the chamber became the stage of a theatrical whose ending, like almost everything that happens on the Senate floor, was known in advance to all.

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