[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 28 (Tuesday, February 23, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S927-S928]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   FILLING THE SUPREME COURT VACANCY

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I know the Republican leader is doing his 
best to try to make a good picture here as to why he has made the 
decision that the Senate is not going to confirm any Supreme Court 
nominee the President puts forward. I heard one statement by the former 
chair of the Judiciary Committee this morning saying it doesn't matter 
whom he puts up, we are not going to vote for him or her, whatever the 
case may be. But the facts my friend provides are absolutely 
distracting and they are wrong. He can read all the statements he wants 
from the senior Senator from New York and the Vice President, but never 
were any nominees held up.
  In fact, we don't have to go back to Grover, as he indicated, to find 
a similar situation. Let's talk about Ronald, a more recent President. 
In 1988, in the last year of his Presidency, President Reagan put 
forward the nomination of Anthony Kennedy to be a Supreme Court 
Justice. That was in the last year of his term. And what did we do? We 
took it up, and he was confirmed.
  There is a lot of time to do things. Vice President Biden's statement 
was made in the middle of the summer of the year he spoke, but there is 
so much time left. We have 333 days left in President Obama's term of 
office, so there is plenty of time to get the work done. The average 
number of days to confirm Justices is 67 days, so I think we should be 
able to squeeze 67 days out of 333 days.
  I don't want to burden everyone with facts, but sometimes they can 
get in the way of some of these ridiculous diversions from what our job 
should be. When Senator Biden was chairman of the Judiciary Committee 
in 1991 and 1992 during George W. Bush's term, we confirmed 120 judges. 
Certainly that hasn't been the case in the last few years because 
Republicans basically have opposed all judges. And now this new 
direction toward making sure there is no confirmation of a Supreme 
Court Justice is obstruction on steroids.
  This is really a pivotal moment for the Republican Party and this 
Republican Senate. The Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore 
Roosevelt is transforming before our eyes, abandoning its last vestiges 
of decency and rationality and unconditionally surrendering its moral 
compass to Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Gone are the days of 
levelheadedness and compromise. The radicals in the Republican Party 
have turned ``bipartisanship'' into a dirty word. Behind closed doors, 
my Republican colleagues like to express disappointment at the 
direction the party is taking, but never, never will they say anything 
publicly because the extreme elements in their party who seem to be 
running the party will criticize them.
  Republicans should think long and hard about this simple fact: If 
they follow the course set by the Republican leader, every one of them 
will be as responsible as Trump and Cruz in the debasement of the 
Republican Party. He will join them in what they have done to the 
party. It will be a new and much worse Republican Party.
  Clearly, Senator McConnell is absolutely following the lead of 
extremists Trump and Cruz. There is no clearer example of this than the 
Republican leader's response to the Supreme Court vacancy. In the 
aftermath of Justice Scalia's passing, the senior Senator from Kentucky 
could have announced his intent to fulfill the Senate's constitutional 
responsibility and invited the President to send a well-qualified 
candidate to the Senate for confirmation. But that is not what he did 
because that is not the party of Trump. Instead, the Republican leader 
announced that he will deny President Obama his constitutional right to 
appoint nominees to the Supreme Court, defying all precedent that has 
been set, and by so doing, he will leave the Supreme Court in a state 
of uncertainty.
  Senator McConnell is leading a charge to obstruct and cheapen the 
Presidency at all costs, regardless of the damage it does to our 
democracy. Doesn't that sound familiar? Sounds like something Donald 
Trump would do. That is because it is exactly what Donald Trump urged 
Senator McConnell to do. At a Republican Presidential debate in South 
Carolina 10 days ago, Mr. Trump said of the Supreme Court vacancy:

       I think it's up to Mitch McConnell and everybody else to 
     stop [the nomination]. It's called delay, delay, delay.

  That is from Donald Trump, and that is exactly what the Republican 
leader is doing--delay, delay, delay.
  I believe 333 days is enough to do the work we ordinarily do in 67 
days.
  It is disappointing that the Senator from Kentucky takes his marching 
orders from extremists such as Donald Trump. It is a pretty stark 
change from what Senator McConnell used to believe. He used to loathe 
this radical tea party faction of the Republican Party. According to an 
account in the New York Times, the Republican leader once referred to 
the tea party Republicans as ``those idiots, those people come up here 
and have never been in office and know nothing about being in office.'' 
Yet, today, he is meeting with those same Republicans. He is meeting 
with the House Freedom Caucus--the same Republicans who worked with Ted 
Cruz to shut down the government. And they did shut it down. It seems 
as though the Republican leader now subscribes to this new, radical 
Republicanism.
  Even though this extremist brand of politics may sell in Republican 
Presidential primaries, mainstream Americans categorically reject it. 
Yesterday, Public Policy Polling released a survey of Independent 
voters in Pennsylvania and Ohio--not Democrats, not Republicans, but a 
large swath of Americans who are now Independents. These numbers should 
serve as a wake-up call to the Republican leader's party: 70 percent of 
Independent voters in Ohio believe a new Supreme Court Justice should 
be named this year. More than 60 percent of Independent voters in 
Pennsylvania believe a new Supreme Court Justice should be named this 
year.
  The American people are telling Republicans in the Senate that they 
reject this obstruction of a Supreme Court nominee. Unfortunately, the 
Republican leader is listening to Donald Trump and the junior Senator 
from Texas. He is not listening to mainstream America. He is not 
listening to the few voices of reason coming from his own party, even 
from his own Senators.
  Yesterday the senior Senator from Maine, a Republican, told CNN:

       For my part, it's clear the President can send up a 
     nominee--regardless of where he is before he leaves office. 
     It is the duty of the Senate, under the Constitution, to give 
     our advice and consent or withhold our consent. I believe we 
     should follow the regular order and give careful 
     consideration to any nominee that the President may send to 
     the Senate.

  There is precedent in this body. Even in the Judiciary Committee, if 
there is a hearing held and the person is not reported out with a 
majority vote, it comes to the floor anyway. Senator Leahy--longtime 
chair of the Judiciary Committee, the President pro tempore of the 
Senate, and now ranking member of the Judiciary Committee--

[[Page S928]]

will come and talk about that this morning.
  I just read a quote from Senator Collins, but she is not alone in 
urging the Republican leader to follow regular order. Other sitting 
Senators are saying the same thing. I will not read what all of them 
say, but there is a small nucleus of Republican Senators who believe 
strongly that what Senator McConnell is doing is wrong.
  The Republican Senator from Indiana, Senator Coats, was quoted in one 
interview as saying:

       If the President nominates someone, which is his choice, I 
     think that person would deserve a hearing if that person is 
     not someone that is just obviously nominated for political 
     purposes.

  Even the Republican leader's former colleagues agree that the 
President's nominee deserves a fair shake. The former Senator from 
Indiana, Dick Lugar, is urging Senate Republicans to do the right thing 
and honor their constitutional duty. He served here for more than three 
decades. Here is what he said yesterday:

       I can't understand their reluctance given the controversy 
     that surrounds all of the debate that has already occurred. 
     But that is not sufficient reason to forgo your duty.

  But perhaps the former Republican Senator from Maine, Olympia Snowe, 
said it best:

       I believe that the process should go forward and be given a 
     good-faith effort.

  ``A good-faith effort''--it is a phrase we hear often, but it is 
absolutely crucial to American democracy. Our Constitution is 
constructed with the expectation that elected leaders would act in good 
faith. That is how our government operates. It should. Under the 
Republican obstruction, that has not been the case.
  I ask my Republican colleagues, whose side do you want to be on? 
Whose voice are you listening to? These voices of moderation and reason 
coming from within your own party or the shrill voices--the shrill, 
shrill voices--of Trump and Cruz? There isn't time to vacillate. Right 
now, before our eyes, the Republican leader is leading this conference 
straight to the side of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.
  It is not too late to change course. Reject the extremist approach 
being propagated by the likes of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. It will 
only hurt our country. Put aside this unprecedented obstruction and 
work with President Obama to fill this crucial vacancy on the Supreme 
Court. Do your job. All we are saying is: Do your job. Do your job. Do 
your job.
  Will the Chair announce the schedule for the rest of the day.

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