the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: i ask unanimous consent that the call of the quorum be terminated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reid: mr. president, i would read a statement that was issued by speaker boehner and myself just a few minutes ago. this is the statement: we ve agreed to a historic amount of cuts for the remainder of this fiscal year as well as a short-term bridge that will give us time to avoid a shortdown. we will cut $78.5 billion and we ve reached an agreement on the policy riders. in the mean time, we ll pass a short-term resolution to keep the government running through thursday. that short-term bridge will cut the first $2 billion of the total savings. mr. president, i first of all want to express my appreciation to the speaker and his office. it s been a grueling process. we didn t do it at this late hour for drama. we did it because it has been hard to arrive at this point. i want to express my appreciation t