[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 64 (Monday, May 16, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H3293-H3294]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             THE FILIBUSTER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, this week the Senate has 
returned, and I believe America's eyes will focus on whether or not 
this Congress has the integrity and respect for the institution to be 
reminded of the principles of democracy, which is that where there is a 
majority and a minority, a democratic nation respects the power, or at 
least the rights, of the minority.
  We have heard this discussion about nonnuclear and nuclear and 
filibuster center around some suggestion that those who are opposing 
the elimination of such would, frankly, be considered antireligious, 
antipatriotic, and antidemocratic, as I listened to my good friend on 
the other side of the aisle even cite the Constitution to suggest that 
the Constitution provides the right of an up-or-down vote on 
Presidential judicial nominees.
  The Constitution is large and small. Small in words, but large in its 
power. And it does say that the Senate gives

[[Page H3294]]

the advice and consent on the Supreme Court judges. It does not extend 
it to what we call Article III judges; but by inference, we would 
imagine that the Senate gives the advice and consent to the President 
on nominations, which includes the Supreme Court and made by inference 
these nominations.
  But this question of filibuster is not issue oriented. It is not 
about judges being confirmed or wars being fought. It is about 
protecting the minority.
  I might suggest to my good friends that I wish that we had 
participated in a filibuster in the fall of 2002 when this 
administration came to this Congress and argued that Saddam Hussein had 
weapons of mass destruction and that those weapons were pointed at the 
very heart and soul and minds of Americans and we were under immediate 
danger. It was a very difficult time. So many of us questioned the 
intelligence of the evidence, asked whether or not there were other 
alternatives or other options, asked the administration to go to the 
United Nations, and there was a lukewarm response.
  Based upon the loss of life that we have experienced over the last 3 
years, the amputees, the young men and women who have come home 
traumatized, needing mental health services, those who committed 
suicide, the families who buried their loved ones, I wish that the 
rights of the minority had been protected. But, more importantly, I 
wish that those who had the privilege of filibuster had stood on the 
floor of the House and filibustered this decision to go to war.
  So there is value to that. There is value to the idea of protecting 
the rights of the minority. And that value, Mr. Speaker, is that this 
is a democracy. So I am saddened that the leader of the other body 
would even think that because they have not been able to get their way, 
the majority, that the rights of the minority should be extinguished or 
denied.
  Let me say again this is not a question of a pointed rejection of the 
President's right to nominate. This is the sanctity and integrity of a 
procedure that allows the minority to be heard in opposition to the 
decisions being made by the majority.
  I want to remind my colleagues that I stand here as an African 
American who lived for a very long time as a second class citizen in 
the United States of America. No, not me personally in terms of age, 
but the history of African Americans first came as two thirds of a 
person. The laws were against us. So in the early 1960s after Rosa 
Parks and Martin Luther King, President Lyndon Baines Johnson brought 
to this Congress the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voter Rights 
Act. And, Mr. Speaker, what were called the Dixiecrats and others took 
to the floor of the Senate and filibustered those bills, and they 
talked and they talked and they talked and they talked. If there ever 
was a time for us to begin to look at why that procedure should be 
eliminated, that was the time.
  But those of us, young as we might have been, our advocates, our 
lawyers, our organizations from SCLC to the Urban League to APRI to the 
NAACP, organizations that had marched with Martin Luther King, never 
for once stood up and said get rid of the filibuster which protects the 
rights of minorities. It is not time at this time to do that, Mr. 
Speaker. If the judges cannot pass muster, protect the rights of the 
minority, it is not an issue of the judges and an issue of the war. It 
is a right of the minority to be protected, and the filibuster does 
that. And I ask the Senate to step away from any nuclear option and 
respect the integrity of this place.

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