[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 56 (Tuesday, April 20, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2439-S2440]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         NOMINATIONS AND HOLDS

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I wish to talk for a minute about 
nominations and holds. The Senate's Executive Calendar contains the 
names of those individuals whom President Obama has nominated to serve 
in his administration, and those positions require Senate confirmation. 
The Executive Calendar also contains the names of those the President 
has nominated to be Federal judges--it is called the Executive 
Calendar, but judicial offices are on it as well--at the district court 
level and the appellate level.
  Since President Obama took office, this Senate has voted on 44 
nominees. Some others have been approved by unanimous consent, but we 
have had 44 votes on nominations. Of those 44 votes, 31 of them--that 
is 70 percent of the nominees we have confirmed--have been held over, 
filibustered, and delayed by days, weeks, and months. The average 
length of time these nominations have languished in the Senate has been 
over 106 days. That is 15 weeks--3\1/2\ months--from the time they were 
nominated to the time they were confirmed. That is just the average 
delay. Some have spent 1 full year in Senate limbo as a result of holds 
by our colleagues.
  If it has taken this long to confirm them, these must have been 
controversial nominees, and these must have been tough votes and close 
votes for the Senate, one would think. Well, let's take a look--bearing 
in mind that it takes 51 votes to be confirmed by the Senate.

[[Page S2440]]

  Sixteen of these nominees who have been held over, filibustered, or 
delayed were subsequently approved when they came to a vote by more 
than 90 votes in the Senate. Again, sixteen of the filibustered 
nominees passed the Senate with votes of more than 90. Another 10 have 
been approved with more than 80 votes--bear in mind that it only takes 
51 to get confirmed--and 3 more with more than 70 votes. That is 29 out 
of those 31 nominees who, when they finally came to their vote, were 
approved overwhelmingly, by enormous bipartisan majorities, in the 
Senate. They have spent 106.6 days, on average, waiting to be confirmed 
by those vast majorities--waiting to be confirmed overwhelmingly.
  The only conclusion that a rational mind can draw from this is that 
this is not about controversial nominees; this is about politics, plain 
and simple--the bare knuckles politics of obstruction, the kind of 
politics that says I don't care if you are qualified for the job for 
which you were nominated. I don't care that the Department of State or 
the Department of Homeland Security needs you for a critical job. I 
don't care. You are going to sit on the Senate calendar for months and 
months and months so that I can score political points against the 
President, so that I can inhibit the deployment of this elected 
President's administration into the office of the government.
  Well, that is wrong and it needs to stop.
  As of Monday, the Executive Calendar contained the names of 101 
nominees--101 individuals for critical jobs in agencies all across the 
government that are now sitting on the Senate's Executive Calendar 
waiting and waiting. I want to address some of the judges who have been 
waiting for a long time, and I will ask that their nominations be 
called up and approved.
  Mr. President, I will start with Judge Albert Diaz and Judge James 
Wynn, a pair of judges who are Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals 
nominees. So I will call up Executive Calendar Nos. 656 and 657, the 
nominations of Judges Albert Diaz and James Wynn, nominees to the U.S. 
Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
  Let me tell you who they are. Judge Diaz currently serves on North 
Carolina's Special Superior Court for Complex Business Cases. He was 
reported out of the Judiciary Committee on January 28, 2010, by a vote 
of 19 to 0. He has served in the Marine Corps and has 9 years of State 
court judicial experience.
  Judge James Wynn was reported out of the Judiciary Committee the same 
day, January 28, 2010, by a vote of 18 to 1. He currently sits on the 
North Carolina Court of Appeals, the State's intermediate appellate 
court. He is a certified military trial judge and a captain in the U.S. 
Navy Reserve.

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