Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid , D-Nev., warned his colleagues Friday to expect long days and important votes before the start of the Thanksgiving break two weeks from now.

He said he had a “very, very long meeting” Thursday night with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., and other House Democrats that made it “very clear” the next two weeks will require floor votes on a number of major bills, especially fiscal 2008 spending measures.

“I’m going to leave here and go call our presidentials, let them know they’d better look at their schedules, because these are not votes you can miss,” Reid said, referring to the four senators running for the Democratic presidential nomination — Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Barack Obama of Illinois, Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut and Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware.

Reid said that Congress must clear several fiscal 2008 appropriations bills before departing Nov. 16 for two weeks, starting with a package combining funds for health, education and labor with money for military construction and veterans. That will go to the White House next week, he said, but President Bush has threatened to veto the package because he objects to the Labor-HHS-Education funding levels.

Reid said the fiscal 2008 Defense appropriations bill is “something we have to consider getting to the president as soon as possible.” And he said there is “some thought of doing a bridge fund for Iraq,” emergency spending that would fund war operations for only weeks or months. He said appropriators could draft such supplemental spending for the war in a week or ten days.

Bush has requested $196.4 billion for the war in the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. Congress provided a small down payment of roughly $9 billion in the continuing resolution (CR) enacted at the end of September, along with $5.2 billion for mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

Now lawmakers will have to complete another CR to replace the stopgap funding measure that expires Nov. 16.