Congressional Record, Volume 156 Issue 52 (Wednesday, April 14, 2010)

[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 52 (Wednesday, April 14, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2269-S2274]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

JUDICIAL NOMINEES

Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I appreciate the opportunity to get back
into morning business. A number of my freshman and sophomore colleagues
and I have come to the floor to discuss an important issue. We also
came to the floor during the final throes of the health care debate. We
are here to raise the issue that, while we are enormously proud to be
Members of the Senate and respect the traditions of the Senate,
something seems a little strange when 15 months into this President's
administration, we still have approaching 100 nominees who have not
been voted up or down so that they can serve in these most important
positions to make sure we get our country back on the right path.
We are going to reiterate these issues, and we will come back to try
to urge Senators who have concerns about nominees to come to the floor
and make their case against the nominees. They ought to be voted up or
down, and if they are not approved, the administration can move on to
someone else. But 15 months is a long time. As a former CEO in business
and a former Governor, I think this President ought to have his team in
place.
First, this is an issue that a number of us have raised over a period
of time. We all have previous experience before coming on this body. I
call on my colleague, the Senator from Minnesota, Senator Klobuchar, to
make a few comments.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Virginia.
As a member of the Judiciary Committee, I have seen what is going on
here. We get these nominations through our committee, and then they
vanish into thin air. You can look at the numbers with what is going on
here. You have a situation where President Bush had 100 circuit and
district court confirmations during the first 2 years of his
Presidency. To date, President Obama has only 18. There are literally
dozens of nominees waiting.
Why does this matter? We can spend the whole morning spouting numbers

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and talking about the times and differences between the months. Why
does it matter? This is about a drug dealer who doesn't get prosecuted,
someone who is running a drug ring, because there is not a judge to
bring the case in front of. I was a prosecutor running an office of 400
people, and I saw what would happen if we didn't have judges. It is
also about a felon in possession of a gun, and they can't bring up his
case because they have a heavy docket of criminal, civil, and corporate
cases, and because of this you cannot get criminals off the street. Or
this is about complicated white-collar crimes such as the one with
Bernie Madoff. In a recent case in Minnesota, there was a lengthy trial
involving a guy who got a 50-year sentence. If we don't have the judges
to handle these things, criminals will be out there committing crimes.
That is what this is about.
I will say this before I turn it over to my colleague, the Senator
from New Hampshire. President Bush had 100 circuit and district court
confirmations during the first 2 years of his Presidency. Today,
President Obama has 18. If we are going to hit this hundred number and
get 82 more judges confirmed, we are going to have to do nearly 3 per
week.
The new Members of the Senate are here to say let's get this done
because justice delayed is justice denied.
I turn this over to Senator Shaheen.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Mrs. SHAHEEN. Madam President, I am here to join my colleagues to
raise our concerns about what is undoubtedly a deliberate attempt to
keep President Obama's nominees from getting through the Senate and
taking over their jobs, regardless of whether it is a court justice or
whether it is the Director of the Office of Violence Against Women. I
was on the floor a couple months ago because the Director of the Office
of Violence Against Women, from New Hampshire, had been held up 2
months after unanimously being approved in the committee. She was held
up not because it had anything to do with her qualifications but
because somebody objected to something else--who knows what. The person
who objected never had to tell why they were objecting.
That is the situation we are in now. We have 94 nominees being held
up by the other side of the aisle, and they are not telling us why they
are holding up these nominees. They have to come forward and allow a
vote. It is time for us to move forward on the judiciary nominees--on
all of those 94 nominees--and get a vote and keep government moving.
Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I thank the Senator. She realizes the
importance of getting a team in place, whether it is judicial or
administrative.
Somebody who feels very passionate about this and a lot of other
issues is the Senator from Vermont. He wishes to speak.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont is recognized.
Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I think most Americans understand that
in the Senate, and in government in general, honest people will have
honest differences of opinion. They debate issues, represent
constituencies, and vote. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. I
think there is a growing anger and frustration when a lot of what takes
place on the floor has nothing to do with an honest debate on the
issues but simply obstructionism, obstructionism, obstructionism.
The American people have a hard time understanding when you have
well-qualified nominees for the judicial positions, when some of these
nominees have gotten out of committee with unanimous or almost support,
it takes months and months to get these nominees approved so they can
do their job.
As the Senator from Minnesota said a moment ago, the issue is that
justice delayed is justice denied. We have some dangerous people out
there who should be tried and found guilty and sent to jail. We have
ordinary citizens who have claims before courts and they want their day
in court. Right now, they cannot get that day because the courts are
backed up because we don't have enough judges. So I hope very much that
we can get moving and do what has to be done, and that is to appoint
these judges. I hope we can get an up-or-down vote on them.
I yield the floor.
Mr. WARNER. Madam President, again, there are judicial nominees and
there are administrative nominees. I ask my friend, the newest Member
of the Senate, who comes from a different business than I--I came from
the telecom business and he comes from a different business.
Mr. FRANKEN. I kind of came from telecom.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota is recognized.
Mr. FRANKEN. Madam President, I am going to tie together judicial
nominees and administrative nominees. You heard from my colleague,
Senator Klobuchar from Minnesota. She talked about how President Bush
had, during his first two years in office, about 100 judicial nominees
confirmed, and it is 18 judges so far for President Obama. The district
court nominees who have been reported out of committee are waiting
almost twice as long to be confirmed as during the Bush administration,
and circuit court nominees are waiting five times longer. I have heard
my colleagues from the other side say, well, the President isn't
nominating judges as fast as President Bush did. First, you would think
if that were the case, they would have to wait less time because there
are fewer of them. The reason he has been nominating fewer is because
they are holding up Christopher Schroeder, from the Office of Legal
Policy at DOJ. He is the guy who vets nominees for judgeships. He was
reported out of the Judiciary Committee in July of 2009. We could not
get him a vote on the floor. Then he wasn't carried over. The
Republicans objected, so now he has been renominated earlier this year
and reported out again. We cannot get a vote on him. He is the guy who
helps the President vet the people for the judgeships.
I don't want to hear complaints from my friends on the other side
about the pace of the judgeships being nominated, when they are holding
up the guy who helps the President vet the judgeships.
This is a perversion of the filibuster. The whole point of the
filibuster was that our Founders said the Senate was the saucer to cool
the passions of the House of Representatives, right? We wanted to
prevent the tyranny of the majority. This isn't about that--not when
you are holding somebody up, and then when you have the vote, it is 99
to 0. That has nothing to do with what the purpose of the filibuster
is. Do you know what this is? This is running out the clock. This is
used to stop business before the Senate.
The American people ought to be incensed about this, because what
this is doing is slowing down anything from getting done on jobs, on
Wall Street reform, and on energy. That is what this is about. This is
about not letting this President and this Congress achieve anything.
This is about obstructionism.
I yield back to the Senator from Virginia.
Mr. WARNER. I thank my colleague from Minnesota. In his case in
point, we had a judicial nominee endorsed by a Republican Governor,
reported out unanimously, filibustered, and then she was confirmed 99
to 0.
I respect the traditions of the Senate, but something is broken. I
now ask the Senator from Colorado to speak. He is actively talking with
the people of Colorado who hired him for this position. He hears the
frustration they express about why can't you get things done.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
Mr. BENNET. Madam President, there is not a person in this Chamber, I
guarantee you, who does not go home at the end of the week and hear
from people of their State--Democrats, Republicans, or unaffiliated
voters--``what in the world are you guys doing back there? What's with
all the political games being played? Why can't people act in a
bipartisan way?''
I think it is important to say that we are talking about a bunch of
nominations that actually have broad bipartisan support. Most of them
passed out of committee by voice vote--certainly on a bipartisan basis.
As the Senator from Virginia was saying, there is instance after
instance where there has been delay, delay, delay, only to see somebody
pass 97 to 0 or 98 to 0. That is not about partisanship or about
Republican versus Democrat. To me, that is about Washington

[[Page S2271]]

being completely out of touch with the real world. The real world
doesn't act this way. They don't use rules to make excuses for not
getting their work done. The real world doesn't say we are frightened
to debate these issues. The real world doesn't take people who are
qualified for their jobs and prepared to serve this country at an
enormously difficult time in our history and say: Let's put it off
until next week or the week after that or the week after that. Nobody
here is saying we should not have a vote. Nobody here is saying we
should not have a debate. We are saying that the American people
deserve better than that. By the way, people may not know this. In this
institution, it is actually possible to put a hold on somebody and not
say who you are.
I say to the Senator from Virginia, as the Governor of the
Commonwealth of Virginia, how could you ever have gotten anything done
if that were the case?
It is possible to put a hold on somebody in this institution and
never explain why you did it. You do not know what the issue is. That
is why we need to have this debate and move forward.
Everybody in this Chamber has an obligation, whether they are
Democrat or Republican, to look at the merits of the nominees and to
vote their conscience on those nominees. But the American people are
enormously frustrated with the current state of affairs. They want an
open and sensible conversation about the policy choices we face as a
country, and I think they want an end to the political games.
It is important we are all here today. I hope there are others who
will join us in the days ahead. I thank the Senator from Virginia for
organizing this discussion.
Mr. WARNER. Madam President, again, this should not fall on partisan
lines. We welcome those Senators on the other side of the aisle who are
frustrated by this process and want to bring, while respecting the
traditions of the Senate, rationality back to the process.
My good friend from Delaware, while he is a freshman Senator, has
served in this institution longer than most of us and has watched the
transformation of this institution. I would love to have Senator
Kaufman's comments on this issue.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
Mr. KAUFMAN. Madam President, some things have changed. I came here
in 1973 working for now-Vice President Biden. Back then, if you asked
the American people what they most disliked about Washington, they
would say partisan bickering, the back-and-forth. That is what they
really do not like about what goes on.
My basic reaction is, and I have said to people that today what looks
like a lot of partisanship--basically, Senators like each other. This
is not about people not liking each other. There is not a Senator on
the Republican side of the aisle whom I do not have a positive
relationship with and feel good about. You can say that about the
issues. What I say is there is a difference on the issues. Basically,
we disagree about the issues. But I do have a hard time, when it comes
to judicial nominations especially, on the rationale for the argument
because it is not a matter of issues.
We have differences about some judges, but the vast majority of
judges still being held are judges we all agree are competent judges.
So why is it they are not being confirmed, especially when we talk
about the two areas about which most Americans are so concerned? One is
crime, that we deal with crime and deal with it in a quick manner; that
people are given a fair trial, but then if they are guilty, they are
put in jail. All Americans agree to that. To do that, one of the key
chokepoints for us is the judges. We need the judges to be confirmed in
order to deal with crime.
The other area, as I know my friend from Virginia is so aware, is the
business side. If you are a businessperson, you need certainty. You
need the ability to know, if you have a dispute, that you can get it
handled in a court and that you get prompt action. That is what
everyone wants. With many of these things, it isn't as important that
you win as it is that you get an answer. When we have vacancies in
district and circuit courts, that holds up everything.
The final point is, there were always differences of opinion, but
starting about the 1980s, the judges became a football. They just
became a football. When I hear about the old wars--it is like the
Hatfields and McCoys. Who was the first Senator to hold up the most
number of judges and when did it happen? Our judge did this. You did
this. We did that. It really sounds like the Hatfields and McCoys on
the floor sometimes.
I am saying it is time to put that behind us. It is time to put that
behind us, especially when it comes to these judges whom we know are
competent; where there is agreement, there is no disagreement. I defend
the right of the minority to hold up judges they think are not
competent. We had three judges in a row who were confirmed by unanimous
votes of the Senate.
What I am saying is it is time to put that behind us. The American
people are looking to us to behave in a bipartisan manner. Again, we
are going to have partisan differences on some judges, but when we have
judges where there is bipartisan agreement, the American people are
stymied to understand why in Washington we are behaving this way. I
call on my colleagues to work together and see if we cannot get these
judges confirmed.
I thank the distinguished Senator.
Mr. WARNER. I thank the Senator from Delaware for his comments and
perspective.
Again, while many of my colleagues talk about this related to judges,
we have, as the Senator from Minnesota said, members of the DOJ who are
held up. We have a very qualified and talented individual up for
Treasury Under Secretary for International Affairs. They are enormously
important positions.
I know my friend and colleague, the Senator from Maryland, wishes to
speak on this subject matter.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Udall of Colorado). The Senator from
Maryland.
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Warner for taking this
time to bring to the attention of our colleagues a very serious
problem.
One of the most fundamental responsibilities for a Member of the
Senate is to advise and consent on the President's nominations. There
are literally hundreds of appointments that are going to require our
confirmation--more than that; thousands, actually, that we have to
confirm. Our responsibility is to take the appointments the President
has given us, to evaluate them, and then to act, either to confirm or
not confirm.
The American people depend on these individuals being in office to
perform the services they need, whether it is services that come
forward in the Department of the Treasury in dealing with the economic
issues of this Nation, the regulatory functions that are important to
protect consumers in America, to be able to give those who have been
wronged an opportunity in our judicial system to have courts that can
handle their dockets in a timely way. All that is dependent upon the
Senate carrying out its responsibility to advise and consent to take up
the nominations of the President.
Look at what has happened in this Congress. Let me point out the
district court judges. District court judges are the judges who hear
the overwhelming number of cases. If you have a problem and you go to
Federal court, you go to district courts. That is where 99 percent of
the cases are going to be heard.
In 2002, when George Bush became President, 35 of his district court
appointments were confirmed. They waited on average 13 days after being
reported by the Judiciary Committee for confirmation votes on the floor
of the Senate. On this date, there were no further pending district
court appointments that required the confirmation of the Senate. We had
acted on every one of them.
Now let's take a look at the current situation. This Senate has only
confirmed 11 of President Obama's district court nominations, and they
waited on average 43 days. There are 17 district court nominations that
have been reported out by the Judiciary Committee. Most have been
reported by voice vote, by unanimous vote, no controversy at all with
most of these nominations, and they have been pending on average 46
days.
This is an intentional action by the Republicans to block the ability
of

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President Obama to place his appointees either in the courts or in his
administration. That is just wrong. If you have a disagreement, let's
debate it. If there is a legitimate concern, let's talk about it. But
that is not what is happening here.
The people of Maryland, the people around this Nation are being
denied essential services because of a partisan strategy to block this
body from timely considering the appointments by the President. That is
just wrong. It is time we bring an end to it. It is time the Democrats
and Republicans work together in the best interests of the American
people.
I yield my time to the Senator from Virginia.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Maryland for his
comments. Again, we want to be respectful of Senate traditions, but it
just seems at this moment in time, with so many issues our country is
confronting, we need a rational process. We need to be able to explain,
as the Senator from Colorado said, to the American folks why we are not
getting business done. Part of the reason we are not getting business
done is the President does not have his team in place, judges are not
in place, and a lot of time is wasted on the Senate floor with needless
filibusters.
There is another freshman Senator with whom I have had a number of
conversations, my good friend from North Carolina. This is a little
different from the way she operated as State senator in Raleigh, NC. I
would love to hear her comments.
Mrs. HAGAN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Virginia for
helping us come together to talk about this issue because it is of
critical importance.
In North Carolina, we have two justices for the Fourth Circuit Court
coming before this body. They were heard in the Judiciary Committee
back in January. They are ready to go. However, once again, the
individual who is to vet justices has not been heard, Chris Schroeder.
We need to bring him up. Although both of these individuals, Judge Wynn
and Judge Diaz, have come out of the Judiciary Committee, they are
waiting to come up for a vote. They are behind in the queue from all
the other district court judges who have not come forward. I will say
that my colleague, Republican Senator Burr, is in total agreement with
both of these nominees. We need to bring them forward for a vote. The
interesting fact is that one of these positions has been open since
1994. Talk about justice delayed is justice denied. It is high time
this body had an opportunity to vote to put forward Judge Diaz and
Judge Wynn to represent our State on the Fourth Circuit Court of
Appeals.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for her comments,
again recognizing that some of the judges she is talking about have had
bipartisan support. If this was a question of qualifications, it ought
to be legitimately questioned and debated.
I know there are other colleagues showing a little bit of the radical
transformation we are making. Having freshmen Senators speak is part of
that.
I now call on my good friend from Pennsylvania to add his comments. I
believe the Senator from Pennsylvania has judges in Pennsylvania and
other appointees who have been pending.
Mr. CASEY. I thank the Senator from Virginia for getting us together
to talk about something that is fundamental. Basically, we are talking
about our system of justice. We heard the number of days, when we
compare this administration to the prior administration, it takes to
confirm a judge on the appellate court or on the district court.
It is important for people to realize that we are not talking about
saying they on the other side should be voting for all of our judges or
they should be endorsing them, even though when they come to the
Judiciary Committee we have had tremendous bipartisan votes on a lot of
these judges.
Here is a lot of what the American people do not understand. They can
understand that when Senators are making their minds up about how to
vote on a particular nominee to be on a district court or on an appeals
court, we might have a difference of opinion as it relates to judicial
philosophy, for example, or the experience of this particular
individual or their character, their ability to serve with integrity.
All of those basic considerations we have to weigh and I think by
extension the American people weigh when they are deciding whether or
not someone is fit to serve on a district court or appellate court. All
of those considerations are considerations Democrats and Republicans
will weigh, but we cannot do that unless we can get a vote, unless we
can put a nominee in front of the Senate for an up-or-down vote based
upon their record, based upon their views and philosophy. But this idea
of obstructing purely for political reasons, sometimes to slow down the
President's agenda for no good reason, sometimes to bottle up things in
the Senate, makes no sense as all. Why don't our colleagues want these
nominees for various positions in our system of justice to go before
the Senate to have an up-or-down vote, and then we can have a debate as
part of that about their qualifications or about their educational
background or their ability. We can certainly do that. This idea of
obstructing for political and partisan reasons makes no sense to us,
and I am sure it makes no sense to the American people.
I yield the floor.
Mr. WARNER. What we have heard in the case of Pennsylvania, as we
heard from all of us, is frustration. As the Senator from Colorado
said, folks who have legitimate complaints about an individual, whether
they are a judge or a Presidential appointee, ought to bring them to
the floor and debate them. While we want to be respectful of Senate
traditions, I think allowing the process to go along without using the
existing rules to try to force us to confront these issues does not
make any sense when our country faces many enormous challenges.
I call on my good friend from Colorado who, while he served in the
other body, has obviously had a longtime family tradition of public
service. I am sure the folks in Colorado are scratching their heads
about the rules under which we operate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Hagan). The Senator from Colorado.
Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Madam President, I thank Senator Warner.
I did want to touch on the concerns of the people of Colorado with
respect to the discussion we are having today. I want to start by
saying that one of the fundamental roles of the Senate is to advise and
consent the President of the United States. We do not even have a
chance to advise the President, much less consent, because of the
anonymous holds and the slowdown tactics that have been utilized when
it comes to all these important nominees.
We ought to have a chance to debate on the floor of the Senate, which
is the advisory role, and we may find some judges do not pass muster,
but they deserve an up-or-down vote on the floor of the greatest
deliberative body in the world, the U.S. Senate. That is not happening.
I note that some of my colleagues pointed out two cases where Judge
Thompson from Rhode Island for months was stalled on the Executive
Calendar. There was no reason given. When she was finally brought to
the floor, there was a 98-to-0 vote, a unanimous vote. What was the
problem? Why couldn't she be confirmed earlier?
With Judge Keene from the State of the Senator from Virginia, we had
to have a cloture vote to bring her to the floor--4 months. She was
approved 99 to 0. There was no objection expressed to her sitting on
the circuit court. This is senseless. This is absurd.
In Colorado, we have had two vacancies on our district court for many
months, going on years now. That bench is undermanned right now. Those
judges are appealing to Senator Bennet and me to get two more judges
for reinforcements so that docket can be reconsidered. Those district
court judges are not being moved on the floor of the Senate so that we
can advise and then, hopefully, consent.

We have a Federal attorney whom we need to see confirmed. There has
been no movement there as well. So for me, the Senate is not keeping
faith with the people of our respective States and not keeping faith
with the people of the United States.
I know we can do better. I know the American people, when they look
here to Washington right now, wonder why we are behaving like children.
Children

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have an excuse, don't they, Senator? They are children. We are not. We
have greater responsibilities. I hope we can set aside our differences,
bring these nominees to the floor, across the board, and have an up-or-
down vote.
I would suggest that perhaps we ought to bring a block of nominees to
the floor under a unanimous consent request. They have all been vetted.
The President needs to have a full complement of people in his
administration to do the work of the American people.
Again, I thank Senator Warner. We will continue to beat these drums
until these nominees have had a chance to be voted upon. This is
crucial to me and to the challenges our country faces here today.
Mr. WARNER. I thank the Senator from Colorado for his comments and
his great perspective on this issue, and again, part of what he is
raising is that we want to consider the rules and traditions. Today, we
have all these freshmen and sophomore Members coming to the floor and
saying the process seems to be broken. We want to urge our colleagues
on the other side to allow the process to move forward and to suggest
that we are not going to let business as usual continue to go on. We
want to give them appropriate notice. There is no attempt to ambush on
process here, but we are saying enough is enough. We owe it to this
body and we owe it to the folks across the country.
Madam President, someone who comes to this floor regularly to talk
about health care and a series of other issues has these same issues
facing him in his great State of Ohio, and he wishes to make some
comments on this as well.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I appreciate the work Senator Warner is doing,
along with Senator Hagan and Senator Udall. I came to the Senate 3\1/2\
years ago. I am personally not a lawyer, and I have, obviously, never
sat as a judge, but I understand the custom here is that, typically, if
there is a Senator from a State with the same party affiliation as the
President, that Senator makes a recommendation to the President for a
Federal judgeship or a district Federal judgeship, and normally the
President will accept that. My senior Senator, my colleague from Ohio,
is a Republican. So rather than block him out of the appointment
process, the confirmation process, I asked him to join with me and we
put together a committee for the northern district in Ohio for a judge
vacancy. Actually, there were two, one in the northern district and we
did one in the southern district. We had a panel of, I believe 17
people. The northern district panel was actually majority Republican. I
am a Democrat; the President is obviously a Democrat. The southern
district was a majority Democrat, barely. The panel did lengthy
interviews of about 20 potential judges each--Federal judges--for the
one vacancy in the northern district and the one in the southern
district. In these interviews were people who were active in their
communities, who donated their time and spent 2 or 3 full days.
The panel then submitted to me the top three candidates in both the
northern and southern districts, and I interviewed each of the three
and chose who I thought would be the best Federal district judges. I
then spoke with Senator Voinovich and he signed off on them. Both of
these candidates were then submitted to the President, who in turn
submitted them to the Senate and the Judiciary Committee. The Judiciary
Committee voted overwhelmingly for each of them. Yet they still haven't
come to a vote on the Senate floor.
I couldn't have done this in a more bipartisan and fair way to make
it happen, and I know Senator Voinovich wishes to move on these judges.
He signed off on them, and on the day we announced them we put out a
joint statement where we said these were important judgeships and that
we had selected the right people.
As Senator Cardin said, this is wrong. There are backlogs in these
courts and, as Senator Hagan of North Carolina said, we need to fill
these positions. As has been said, justice delayed is justice denied.
There are backlogs both in the northern and southern district and we
have these two ready to be voted on. We could do it today. It could be
done by unanimous consent request, as Senator Udall of Colorado
suggested. We could do that.
There are now two new vacancies in Ohio, and so we will start that
process. But it doesn't make sense that President Obama's district
court nominees have waited twice as long after being favorably reported
by the Judiciary Committee to be voted upon. So in addition to the
other judges who have been vetted by a whole process--from the State
senator to the FBI, to the President, to the Senate Judiciary
Committee--it is time now for a vote. And most of these will be
unanimous or close to it.
I think there will be overwhelming support for Judge Pearson in the
northern district and Judge Black in the southern district. They have
proven they are ready to go and they would be good judges. Both are
U.S. magistrates now, so they have gone through other vetting processes
for those jobs. I hope my colleagues will decide to accept these and
move on, because we have so many other things to do. This delay and
obstructionism on judges is wrong and we need to move on.
Madam President, I thank Senator Warner for his leadership on this
issue.
Mr. WARNER. I thank the Senator from Ohio. A lot of my colleagues and
I talk about judges, but this goes way beyond judges. As a matter of
fact, a Senator who has been a leader on this issue, my friend, the
Senator from Montana, has come to this floor on other occasions by
himself to talk about certain other nominees the President has put
forward, and my understanding is that some of these nominees were held
up because of totally unrelated issues.
I don't know about the folks in Montana, but the folks in Virginia
are scratching their head and saying: What do Canadian tobacco laws
have to do with a Presidential nominee for a totally different type of
job that has nothing to do with Canada or tobacco? So I would like my
good friend, Senator Tester, to speak to these issues.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
Mr. TESTER. Madam President, I thank my colleague for the recognition
and for his leadership and his ability to see through the fog that has
been created here in the Senate.
You know I am a farmer. Most folks in this body know I am a farmer
and I have been my entire life. One of the things farmers can't deal
with is idle hands. When there is work to be done, you roll up your
sleeves and you get out there and you get the work done. In Montana,
right now it is planting season, and the folks there who are in
agriculture--as with small businesses and working families, but in
agriculture particularly--are looking at either getting their fields
ready or they are in the field putting seeds in the ground because the
work is there and it has to be done. You have an opportunity to do it,
and you do it.
Well, it is planting season in the Senate all the time. Whether it is
creating jobs or turning the economy around or fixing health care or
whatever it may be, we have important work to do. The folks on the
other side of the aisle, I guess, are watching the clouds roll by,
because the fact is, it is time to go to work. Obstructionism is not
something that takes a lot of skill, but getting things done requires
hard work, and it is time to get things done.
These judicial appointments we have to do right now in the Senate are
critically important. They are critically important for this country
and for the process to work, and yet they are being held up for
literally no reason whatsoever or just because they can be held up.

Let me give a quick statistic, because we always compare what goes on
in past administrations. I can tell you that in the first 2 years of
the Bush Presidency he had 100 circuit and district court nominations
confirmed. To date, President Obama has had 18 over 2 years in. This is
idle work. Idle hands get nothing done. It is time to go to work in the
Senate, it is time to do away with the obstructionism, and it is time
to put the Senate back on the side of the people.
Mr. WARNER. I thank the Senator for those comments, and in the
interest of full disclosure, I might try to use that line about idle
hands--as a matter of fact, in a speech later this afternoon.
I know we have been joined by one more of our freshman colleagues who

[[Page S2274]]

may not have grown up as a farmer but who understands equally as well
the importance of this body getting its work done, and that is my
friend, the Senator from Illinois, Senator Burris.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
Mr. BURRIS. I thank my colleague from Virginia, Senator Warner, who
has taken a leadership role on this important and crucial issue in the
Senate.
At a time when we are looking at trying to move all this major
legislation and solve problems for the people of America, we find
ourselves stymied with regard to our third branch of government. The
upcoming vacancy on the Supreme Court has already started a lot of talk
across the Nation, despite the fact that we don't even have a nominee
as yet. But let's forget about that. We must still focus on a number of
immediate judicial nominations.
My Republican friends continue to delay and obstruct, and for what
reason, I have no idea. Take, for example, my home State of Illinois.
There are currently five judicial vacancies, two in the central part of
the State and three in the northern part, which is, of course, where we
have Chicago. The caseload is tremendous on those current judges and so
there are all these delays. If you want to know why it takes so long to
bring someone to trial, that is because the judges there are overworked
and the numbers there need to be brought up to par with what the
requirements call for.
Illinois is not alone. This is happening all over the country. So the
numbers are such that we have all of these nominees who have been
nominated, and some have been cleared by the committee unanimously. On
some of the other judges, whom we did get confirmed, we had to go
through cloture. They cleared the committees, they were blocked, but
then, when we got to vote on them, the result was 99 to 0. That is
uncalled for. So we must do what we can in order to make sure that the
judicial process is not being delayed. That is, after all, our third
branch of government. That is where justice is rendered for individuals
who have violated any of the Federal laws.
My Republican friends are holding these up. They are blocking these
important nominations and stopping the Senate from performing its
constitutional duty to advise and consent. We cannot consent because of
the delay tactics they are using. As a former attorney general of my
State, I have a deep understanding of how this obstructionism brings
our justice system to a standstill, and justice delayed, of course, is
justice denied. It is simply inexcusable.
I urge my Republican colleagues to stop blocking these qualified
nominees, stop playing political games at the expense of our court
system--the third branch of our government--and let's bring all of
those nominees to a vote.
I thank the Senator, and I yield to him.
Mr. WARNER. I thank the Senator from Illinois.
Madam President, I think we have had more than a dozen Senators speak
this afternoon. I appreciate all of them coming out on relatively short
notice.
We raised these issues before we went on recess, because we want to
be respectful not only of traditions but to our colleagues on the other
side. We recognize, as the Senator from Colorado has said, that there
are rules that allow us to ask unanimous consent to bring these folks
up, and in future days and weeks we will use those rules to try to urge
a full-fledged debate, and not just on judicial nominees. As the former
CEO of a business, and the former CEO of a State, I know there are a
whole host of administrative nominees which are part of the
administration that this President needs to get in place.
I thank the Presiding Officer for the time we have had to share our
concerns about this process. Again, I encourage my colleagues and
friends on the other side to allow us to get this fixed, to get back to
the substantive debates that are so important--financial reregulation,
energy, and jobs--and that the American people deserve and demand.
With that, Madam President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the
absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BURRIS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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