[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 40 (Tuesday, March 11, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1504-S1506]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           McHUGH NOMINATION

  Mr. HATCH. I express my strong support for the nomination of Carolyn 
B. McHugh to the Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. Judge McHugh 
received her undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Utah. 
She is exactly the kind of outstanding nominee of varied legal 
experience that I set out to find to fill this vacancy.
  She has both practiced and taught law. She has practiced in both 
State and Federal court. She has extensive experience both before and 
behind the bench. She has served the county and State bars, as well the 
State judiciary on committees and on commissions. She has been widely 
recognized and awarded for her distinguished legal career.
  Somehow, along the way, Judge McHugh has found time to serve her 
community with groups such as Big Brothers Big Sisters, Voices for Utah 
Children, and Catholic Community Services of Utah.
  Judge McHugh's 22 years of litigation experience were almost evenly 
split between State and Federal court. In nearly a decade on the Utah 
Court of Appeals, currently as the presiding judge, she has heard more 
than 1,100 appellate civil and criminal cases that ultimately reached 
judgment.
  When she is confirmed to the 10th Circuit, I think Judge McHugh may 
have one of the shortest learning curves on record of any judge in any 
circuit court of appeals to this country.
  When we have a judicial vacancy in Utah, I spend a lot of time 
talking to lawyers and judges throughout our State's legal community, 
and so does Senator Lee. We both work together on these nominations, 
and I appreciate the input that he has and what a great deal of legal 
expertise and understanding he brings to these matters.
  Judge McHugh received much praise, but perhaps the most common 
description was simply that she works harder than anyone else. Her 
former law partner said it, judges said it. Over and over the same 
comment came up: She works incredibly hard.
  I have been doing this a long time and have participated in the 
nomination or confirmation of more than half of the judges who have 
ever served on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. I know a first-rate 
nominee when I see one.
  Judge McHugh's varied experience, her personal character, 
intelligence, and her work ethic make her one of the best. The 
Judiciary Committee approved her nomination without opposition, and I 
expect the same result in the Senate.
  I do have to say that this nomination could have been confirmed 
months ago. Despite some controversy over a few nominees, the 
confirmation process was working well. In his first 5 years, President 
Obama appointed 24.6 percent of the Federal judiciary, compared to 25.8 
percent in President George W. Bush's first 5 years.
  The Congressional Research Service says the Senate confirmed a higher 
percentage of President Obama's appeals court nominees than it did so 
for President Clinton and did so faster than it did for President Bush.
  In President Bush's first 5 years, Democrats conducted 20 filibusters 
of appeals court nominations, compared to only seven in President 
Obama's first 5 years. Filibusters were much

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less of a factor in the confirmation process under President Obama than 
they had been in the past, but that was not good enough. Last November, 
Democrats abolished nomination filibusters altogether.
  For more than 200 years the minority in the Senate, no matter what 
their political party, had a real role in the confirmation process. The 
possibility of a filibuster had two effects. First, it suggested to the 
President that he might want to send more moderate nominees to the 
Senate. Second, it prompted the minority to cooperate with the majority 
in confirming noncontroversial nominees.
  The new confirmation process that Democrats created has no real role 
for the minority. As a result, neither of those positive effects exists 
anymore. The President has no incentive to choose more moderate 
nominees to consult with home State Senators or to look for a 
consensus, and the minority in the Senate no incentive to waive rules 
or to agree to shortcuts.
  There used to be balance in this process. The minority could 
filibuster a few of the more extreme nominees and so the minority 
helped process the large majority of noncontroversial nominees. That 
balanced approach was apparently unacceptable to the current majority. 
Democrats took that approach away, leaving a process--it can be called 
that--that only the majority controls.
  Democrats did not want the minority's cooperation. They did not want 
a process that has some give-and-take in it. Democrats wanted a process 
that is all take and no give, and so here we are.
  Part of the process we used to have would have been confirming 
additional nominations before adjourning the first session of the 
Congress. The nomination before us would have been confirmed that way 
months ago--as well as a whole raft of other judges that we are now 
voting on ad seriatim. Instead, we are forced to do things in this new 
way.
  Judge McHugh is the same highly qualified, noncontroversial nominee. 
There is no good reason why the majority will want to take months 
longer to confirm a nomination such as this. But this is the 
confirmation process the Democrats created. They got the control they 
wanted, and I believe this distortion of the process harms the Senate 
as an institution. By creating unnecessary controversy and delay, this 
new process also harms the other branches to which nominations have 
been made. It did not have to be this way. It should not have been this 
way.
  I might add that I wrote a Law Review article a number of years ago 
that I did not believe we should filibuster judicial nominations at 
all. That is why I voted ``present'' on so many of the President's 
judges, but there is no reason for me to do that anymore because the 
Democrats have changed the rules. They have broken the rules to change 
the rules, and so I might as well vote no along with the rest of the 
Republicans on some of these nominees--just as an expression that we 
don't like the way the Democrats are handling this matter. I have been, 
in the last few days, changing from ``present'' to no or yes depending 
upon the person.


                             Climate Change

  I will take a few minutes to talk about the Senate Democrats' latest 
effort to grab headlines and energize their base.
  Although the business on the floor has officially been nominations, 
my friends on the other side of the aisle came in overnight to talk 
about climate change and the supposed need to change the way we produce 
and consume energy in this country.
  We have heard a lot of talk about science and its supposed refusal on 
the part of Republicans to acknowledge the ``truth.'' What we haven't 
heard is a plan for lowering energy costs or for putting Americans back 
to work.

  The fact is, when the Democrats talk about climate change, more often 
than not they are advocating policies that would do exactly the 
opposite. The funny thing is they have to know it by now. They have to 
know that is what they are doing. They are talking about proposals that 
would increase energy costs for American families and businesses. They 
have to know that, and they are pushing policies that will put even 
greater stress on our economy and make it more difficult for our 
citizens to find and even keep a job. That is why we have an 
underemployment rate of over 12 percent.
  For example, last year, the President announced his Climate Action 
Plan, which directs the EPA to implement and impose new oppressive 
regulations on the energy industry that will have a significant impact 
on jobs and the pocketbooks of the American people. Increasing the cost 
of energy, which this plan would surely do, will not only make our 
struggling manufacturing sector less globally competitive, it will 
impose costs directly onto the American people in the form of higher 
prices on electricity and other costs as well.
  Put simply, in order to create jobs and improve our global 
competitiveness, we need to find ways to help businesses reduce the 
amount of money they spend on energy. Unfortunately, this President is 
trying to do the exact opposite. At the same time, we should be 
exploring ways to make raising a family more affordable.
  Unfortunately, the President's plan would increase the cost of living 
for every household in America. Talk about inequality. I was very 
interested that one of the leading unions--one of the first to support 
the President--said that he has caused more inequality than anybody. 
When I say ``he,'' they mean the President. Unfortunately, the 
President's plan would increase the cost of living for every household 
in America. This is the height of irresponsibility.
  At a time when so many people are still feeling the impact of the 
great recession, the administration, not to mention its allies in 
Congress, wants to put in place regulations and mandates that will 
cripple American businesses and cause direct harm to American families 
trying to make ends meet.
  I find it striking that throughout all the lectures we have seen on 
climate change science on the floor over the past 2 days, none of my 
colleagues appear to be willing to acknowledge the very real impact of 
their preferred policies. Thousands of communities across the country 
depend on the responsible development of our Nation's natural resources 
for a living. Access to abundant and affordable energy is attractive to 
domestic investment and provides high-paying jobs in our local 
economies. We can develop these resources in an environmentally 
friendly way. But my colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't 
appear to be willing to have that conversation. Instead, they want to 
demagogue the use of fossil fuels and impose costly mandates and 
regulations on the harvesting of our resources and on the production of 
our energy. What is interesting is they are doing it to a lot of the 
people in a lot of the States that used to support them.
  We need to be pushing an ``all of the above'' inclusive approach to 
the development of energy if we are going to improve our energy 
security and become a global leader in energy production. It is not the 
job of the government to pick winners and losers. Yet with all their 
talk about climate change and the need for Republicans to ``wake up,'' 
that is precisely what my friends in the other party want to do.
  I would hope, given all the challenges facing our Nation--from 
sluggish economic growth to lackluster jobs creation, to jobs providing 
less than 30-hour work weeks and on and on and on--my colleagues would 
devote more of their time trying to find real solutions for the 
American people instead of trying to please their liberal base with 
alarmist rhetoric about climate change and false promises about the 
future of energy production in this country.
  We all know that some of their preferred production of energy is not 
producing. We all know it never will produce enough to solve our 
problems. We all know people have lost jobs time and time again in this 
country because of the lack of energy. We all know it has made us a 
weaker country. Yet we have this blind faith that they are right and 
everybody else is wrong.
  I think jobs are the conversation the American people want us to talk 
about. Yes, we would like to keep things clean and good and orderly. On 
the other hand, you can't do that without jobs. You can't do that 
without people being able to earn a living. You can't run our inner 
cities and towns without energy. We are giving in to some of the most 
radical theories I have ever seen in the whole time I have been here.

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  We ought to get rid of these false promises and we ought to do the 
very best we can to clean up our environment in every possible way we 
can without destroying the energy and the energy capacities we know we 
have and loosen all the jobs that would come with that. That is the 
conversation the American people want to hear, and I hope eventually 
that is a conversation we can have in the Senate.
  This is an issue where my colleagues are very sincere. I don't want 
to disparage any of them. On the other hand, in many respects they are 
sincerely wrong and they are costing America its greatness.
  One of the problems I have with our current President is that I don't 
believe he believes in American exceptionalism, and he is doing so many 
things that are destroying our exceptionalism. The rest of the world 
knows it, but our folks here in America are having a rough time 
grasping it. I think it is a desire to always treat everybody well, to 
try to support our Presidents, which certainly we ought to try to do, 
but there is a reason we are starting to slip.
  There is a reason the average wage in this country has gone down 
$4,000 to $5,000. There is a reason why, according to the Joint 
Committee on Taxation of just a few years ago, 51 percent of the 
American people are not in the process of paying one dime of income 
taxes. I am the last one to want them to pay income taxes, those who 
shouldn't, but, my gosh, you can't run a country this way. We are going 
to have to start facing the music that the greatest country in the 
world is losing its nerve, it is losing its verve, and there is no 
excuse for it. No other country in the world can even compare with us. 
So why are we doing things that are making us less and less and less 
and less?
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. VITTER. 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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