Providing for a joint session of Congress to receive a message from the President.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate recess until 8:30 p.m. tonight and proceed as a body at 8:40 p.m. to the Hall of the House of Representatives for the joint session of Congress provided under the provisions of H. Con. Res. 96; that upon the dissolution of the joint session, the Senate adjourn until 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, January 26, 2012; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that following leader remarks, the Senate begin consideration of the motion to proceed to H.J. Res. 98 under the previous order.

Madam President, before we move on that, the reason we are not going to be in session tomorrow is the Republicans are having a retreat. These are normally done at the beginning of every Congress. We are going to do ours in the next week or so--the next week or 2 weeks, I should say--and we will be out of session that day also. So this is why we are not working tomorrow.

We have work that we are going to complete Thursday, and the next week we have some fairly heavy legislation we are going to start. The reason we have not been working real hard this week is the IP bill, which we expected to work on this week and next week, things came up and we were unable to do that.

So I ask the Chair to rule on my request.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of H. Con. Res. 96, which was received from the House and is at the desk; that the concurrent resolution be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

Madam Speaker, I send to the desk a privileged concurrent resolution and ask for its immediate consideration.