[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 42 (Wednesday, March 14, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1643-S1645]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          JUDICIAL NOMINATIONS

  Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, I was listening with interest to my good 
friend from Alabama, a man I work with very closely on a number of 
issues. But on this one, we see the world a little differently. He has 
made his point that Democrats held up a lot of judges and so on. I 
understand that. But there is no comparison. Facts are stubborn things. 
We need to look at the facts when it comes to voting on judges.
  I just wanted to share, before I talk about the highway bill, this 
one chart: ``Judicial Nominee Wait Times.'' These are the facts. This 
is not made up. These are the facts. With President Clinton, we see the 
wait time. With Bush, we see the wait time. Obama, we see the wait 
time--way over 100 days. So we are going from 10 to 20, to over 100 
days.
  This tells the story. If people want to know why our majority leader 
has decided to bring up all these judges today, it is because of this. 
We have emergencies in some of our courts where they do not have the 
judges. These judges are so well qualified. We have one amazing judge 
awaiting to be confirmed from our Central District. I think he is about 
third on the list. He received a great vote out of the committee. These 
nominees have put their lives on hold.
  This may sound odd, but my favorite part of the Constitution is the 
preamble. I read it a lot. When I go into

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the schools, I talk about it to the children. We discuss what it means. 
When it says, ``We the People of the United States, in Order to form a 
more perfect Union, establish Justice . . .'' that is the first reason. 
We want to form a more perfect Union, and the first way to do it is to 
establish justice.
  How can we have justice if it is so delayed? How can we have justice 
when it is politicized? I think this says it all. So as we go from a 
bipartisan bill into this, unfortunately, the partisan waters, I think 
it is important to the people of the country to understand, we do not 
want to pick a fight at all. We want to get things done around here. 
Democrats want to get things done. We have proven it by reaching out to 
our Republican friends on the highway bill and many other things--
payroll tax. On the judicial nominees, we want to do the same.
  I wished to just make that simple point before I get back to the 
reason I am on the floor; that is, to complete work on the 
Transportation bill.


                             Transportation

  The Chair is a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee. 
She has been instrumental in getting this bill to the floor. People 
asked me yesterday--some of the press people--what it has been like to 
get this bill to the state it is in now, passing the Senate. I say: 
People like to say, watching a bill become law is watching someone 
making sausage. I said: It is a lot messier than that. It truly is. 
This bill was almost derailed because someone wanted to talk about 
contraception. Then we had issues that had nothing to do with the bill, 
dealing with offshore oil drilling and issues dealing with pipelines 
and issues dealing with extraneous matters.
  But we got through it all. We got through it all for one main reason; 
that is, the desire of the vast majority of Senators, certainly not 
all--there are some on the fringes who do not want to do this bill--but 
the vast majority of Senators want to get this bill done. Why is that?
  It is because this is a bipartisan program that has been in place 
since Dwight Eisenhower was President, a Republican President, who 
clearly stated--because he was an expert on logistics as a general--
that we have to move people and we have to move goods efficiently in a 
first-rate economy.
  So I think everyone--not even most people--sees that. Yes, we have a 
few colleagues in the far corner of the right who want to do away with 
the highway program. But thank goodness they did not succeed on their 
vote. They got too many votes for my liking, but that is where it is. 
But we were able to say strongly, no.
  This is a program the Federal Government should play a role in 
because this is one Nation under God. If one has great roads in their 
State and the next-door neighbor has not paved any roads, they are kind 
of stuck. That is why we have a national highway program.
  One more reason we got where we are, which is very close to being 
done with this bill, successfully done, is that we had more than 1,000 
groups behind us--way more than 1,000--and they represented Americana. 
They represented everyone one from the construction workers who are 
struggling and suffering with a very high unemployment rate to the 
businesses that employ them, that want to be able to provide the work 
and want to be able to do what they do best, which is building 
things. So for all those reasons, we have gotten to where we are. There 
is one more reason.

  I wanted to take my last few minutes to talk about those Members who 
worked together on this bill, the various chairmen. This is an unusual 
bill. It is a jobs bill, a huge jobs bill, and 2.8 million jobs hang in 
the balance. We have had to deal with four different committees 
together. We have Senator Inhofe, my ranking member, who was 
extraordinary. He is a hero when it comes to this bill--talking to 
people on the floor yesterday, from the heart, with the facts, urging 
them to help us pass this bill. My hat is off to my ranking member 
Senator Inhofe.
  Interestingly, we are on opposite sides on the environmental issues. 
We really are. We have some very tough arguments and very tough 
debates. I just see a clean and healthy environment as something we 
need to do to protect our people. He sees it as a bureaucratic regime 
to stop business. Through it all, we have never lost respect for one 
another. We have come together on this issue. There is very little 
distance, if any, between us. I thank Senator Inhofe.
  Senator Baucus is chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure 
Subcommittee of EPW, and, of course, the very strong chairman of the 
Finance Committee. I can't thank him enough. He had the tough job of 
filling the gap we had in terms of money for the highway trust fund. 
This was not easy. He had to find ways to do it that everybody 
supported--not everybody but most people--and he was able to get the 
job done.
  With many colleagues on both sides of the aisle, I particularly give 
a shout out to Senator Thune, whom I believed was extremely helpful in 
all of this.
  I also wish to thank Senator Vitter, who was the ranking member of 
the Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee of EPW, for his 
assistance.
  On the other key committees, Senator Tim Johnson, chairman of the 
Banking Committee, and Senator Richard Shelby, ranking member of the 
Banking Committee, could not have been nicer. I called their staffs 
very often to make sure they would move forward, and they did.
  By the way, the EPW Committee was able to vote out a bill 
unanimously. Everybody supported it, and so did the Banking Committee. 
I am grateful to them.
  I thank Senator Rockefeller and Senator Hutchison, chair and ranking 
member of Commerce, from the bottom of my heart. They had some 
difficult bumps in the road. When the bill came out of committee, there 
was controversy. Working with Senator Cantwell, we figured out how to 
get a vote on something she cared a lot about. We were able to smooth 
out that bump in the road. Frankly, they came together like true 
champions and were able to get over the partisan differences and come 
up with a bipartisan bill. So we married together four committees' 
work--that was amazing--into this Transportation bill. It was 
bipartisan from day one to this day.
  That reminds me of how long we have been on this bill on the Senate 
floor. It has been 5 weeks, and today I believe we are going to see 
victory.
  In terms of Senators, I have to thank our leader Senator Reid from 
the bottom of my heart. When you are the majority leader--and there 
have been books written about this--you have to keep the train moving. 
You have to keep moving with legislation, moving forward. Everything 
has a deadline and a date. Every committee chair wants their bill on 
the Senate floor. I know what it is because I have the good fortune of 
being on the leadership team. He could have easily said: Senator Boxer, 
Senator Inhofe, I have given you 3 weeks, and we are still not off 
this. But he stuck with it. I am so appreciative, and so are all the 
working people and the businesses that rely on this bill.
  Our whip, Senator Durbin, worked so hard, along with his staff. We 
love his staff. Day in and day out they would let us know what the 
votes would be like on the amendments. I appreciate it.
  Senator Schumer and Senator Murray in the leadership were pushing 
this forward.
  I also thank Senator McConnell for working with us to get this done.
  I also must thank staff by name. I hope I don't leave anybody out. I 
want them to know somebody asked me what it was like, and I said there 
is a song called--don't worry, I am not going to sing it--``The Long 
and Winding Road.'' It was ``the long and winding road'' to navigate 
this bill. It was very difficult.
  I have a chief of staff, chief counsel of the committee, who is 
beyond extraordinary, and that is Bettina Poirier. I think she deserves 
an enormous amount of credit. She was able to work with all the staff 
to bring them along so that their concerns were heard from day one to 
this day. I thank her. Her counterpart on Senator Inhofe's staff Ruth 
VanMark is an extraordinary person who has been with the Senator for 
way more than 20 years. She is a tower of strength and has great 
respect from the colleagues on her side of the aisle, working with them 
to make sure they knew what was going on.
  This bill is a reform bill. It takes 90 titles down to 30. It is a 
strong bill and a fair bill, and it is paid for.

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  David Napoliello, there is so much I can say about him and what that 
man has brought to our committee. This bill is a testimony to his 
skill. And James O'Keeffe, who works for Senator Inhofe, is David's 
counterpart. They have all become very good friends. Bettina, Ruth, 
David, and James have become almost like family working on this bill.
  I am holding a list of the incredible people who work for me and 
worked with Bettina. I will go through the names: Andrew Dohrmann, 
Murphie Barrett, Tyler Rushforth, Kyle Miller, Grant Cope, Mike Burke, 
and Tom Lynch.
  I know Mike works with Senator Cardin and the committee, and Tom 
Lynch works with our committee through Senator Baucus. Also, there is 
Mark Hybner, Charles Brittingham, Alex Renjel, and Dimitri Karakitsos, 
who were all just amazing.
  Lastly, I thank the leadership staff. This became a bill that was so 
big and involved so many committees. We could not do it without a 
leadership team working, of course, with the leadership and with the 
Senators I mentioned, Senator Reid and Senator Durbin. I mentioned 
before who did the whip count. So I thank the leadership staff, 
particularly Bill Dauster, Reema Dodin, and Bob Herbert. I thank the 
staff directors of the key committees who worked on this, including 
Ellen Doneski, Dwight Fettig, and Russ Sullivan.
  Madam President, that was a long list of people, but I felt compelled 
to come down and do that. The staff--and the occupant of the chair 
knows this, as she has achieved some amazing things. I am so proud of 
the occupant of the chair. She knows that having the staff behind us to 
make sure that every ``i'' is dotted and every ``t'' is crossed and 
every followup is done and every problem a Senator's staff might have 
is addressed is very important. Nobody really knows about this, so once 
in a while we need to do this. I wanted to do it before we get into the 
bill.

  I ask the Chair, what time do we go back to the bill?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. In 2\1/2\ minutes.
  Mrs. BOXER. I will then speak more about the bill because we have 
some amendments.
  Can the Chair advise me what the order of votes are on this 
Transportation bill?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The first amendment in order is No. 
1810. Next is Carper No. 1870, Hutchison No. 1568, McCain No. 1669, 
Alexander No. 1779, Boxer No. 1816, Paul No. 1556, and Shaheen No. 
1678.
  Mrs. BOXER. I thank the Chair. I wanted Members to know about the 
order. It is likely that several of these will not require votes. I 
think we will expect at least between, I would say, three and five 
votes. I think that is a fair indication of where we are going. I will 
be back to discuss those amendments at the proper time.
  I yield the floor.

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