[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 17 (Wednesday, February 1, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S557-S561]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                       Nomination of Neil Gorsuch

  Mr. GARDNER. Mr. President, as I stated repeatedly before the 
Presidential election of this past year, we stood, and continue to 
stand, at a very pivotal time in our Nation's history.
  After 8 years of using the judicial and regulatory systems to push 
through its legislative agenda, the balance of power had shifted from 
what our Founders intended. Our Founders intended the Congress to make 
the laws and write the laws, the executive branch to implement the 
laws, and the judiciary to be guardians of the Constitution, not to 
make the laws.
  That is why we said that the next President of the United States, 
whether they be Democrat or Republican, would have the opportunity to 
fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court, following the Biden rule--the 
edict that there wouldn't be a confirmation hearing for a Supreme Court 
nominee until after that year's Presidential election--to allow the 
American people to make their decision, giving the American people a 
say in the direction of this country for years to come. In return, they 
have given us this nominee.
  It is with great pride that I rise today to talk about the nominee 
today--a fellow Coloradan, Judge Neil Gorsuch, President Trump's 
nominee to the Supreme Court. Judge Gorsuch comes to the Court with 
that unique western perspective that the Presiding Officer and I share. 
Our States of Utah and Colorado obviously like to see that western 
perspective shared at the Tenth Circuit Court, where it is housed in 
the West, but at every level of our courts and to the Supreme Court--
adding to Justice Kennedy's background and to others who share that 
same perspective and history in the Supreme Court.
  Born in Denver, Judge Gorsuch is a fourth-generation Coloradan, 
coming from a long line of individuals who have dedicated their life to 
service not only to the State of Colorado but to the Nation. His 
mother, Ann Gorsuch, served in the Colorado House of Representatives 
and, during the Reagan administration, she was the first female 
Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. His grandfather, 
John Gorsuch, founded one of Denver's largest law firms, Gorsuch 
Kirgis, where both he and Neil's father, Dave, practiced throughout the 
firm's successful 60-year-old history. His stepfather, Robert Buford, 
was a former speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives who went 
on to become the head of the Bureau of Land Management.
  Judge Gorsuch is also one of our country's brightest legal minds, 
with a sterling reputation, and significant experience as a Federal 
judge and a private litigator. He has impeccable academic credentials 
and is a widely respected legal scholar. He received his bachelor's 
degree from Columbia University, graduated from Harvard Law School, and 
was a Marshall scholar at Oxford University, where he obtained a 
doctorate in legal philosophy.
  Of course, I cannot forget the summer he spent at the University of 
Colorado as well. Judge Gorsuch clerked for two Supreme Court 
justices--Byron White, a Colorado native as well. In fact, in his 
comments last night after the announcement of his nomination, Judge 
Gorsuch mentioned that he worked for the only Coloradan to serve on the 
Supreme Court and also the only leading rusher in the NFL to ever serve 
on the Supreme Court.
  He also clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy, as well as for Judge 
David Sentelle on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. 
Following his clerkships, Judge Gorsuch went into private

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practice, eventually rising to the rank of partner in the elite 
litigation law firm of Kellogg Huber, leaving practice in 2005 to serve 
as a high-ranking official in the Bush administration Justice 
Department. A year later, President George W. Bush nominated Gorsuch to 
serve on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, a position for which he 
was confirmed by a unanimous vote. I think it is very telling that not 
only was he confirmed by a unanimous vote, but roughly 11 or 12 members 
of the Democratic conference were there to vote for Judge Gorsuch. 
There are people serving today who voted for Judge Gorsuch. I believe 
SCOTUSblog recently reported that when Judge Gorsuch was nominated to 
the Tenth Circuit Court, then, Neil Gorsuch's confirmation hearing was 
sparsely attended. I believe it mentioned that only a few people 
attended. I think Senator Lindsey Graham, our colleague from South 
Carolina, was one of the Senators to attend his confirmation hearing. I 
believe Senator Leahy, our colleague from Vermont, submitted questions 
for the record. But as SCOTUSblog cited, very few people attended his 
confirmation hearing because of the high caliber and high quality of 
the nomination. He was introduced by my predecessor from Colorado, Ken 
Salazar, and was praised from Senator Salazar's perspective for being 
impartial, fair, and the having the kind of temperament that we need in 
the circuit court.
  Judge Gorsuch is an ardent faithful defender of the Constitution and 
has the appropriate temperament, as then-Senator Salazar noted, to 
serve on the Nation's highest Court. Of course, he was then talking 
about the Tenth Circuit Court. Judge Gorsuch recognizes that the 
judiciary isn't the place for social or constitutional experimentation, 
and efforts to engage in such experimentation delegitimizes the Court. 
He has said:

       This overweening addiction to the courtroom as the place to 
     debate social policy is bad for the country and bad for the 
     judiciary. . . . As a society, we lose the benefit of the 
     give-and-take of the political process and the flexibility of 
     social experimentation that only the elected branches can 
     provide.

  Here we see his understanding that certain debates are to take place 
where debate is held by those elected directly by the people--in the 
Congress.
  Judge Gorsuch believes in the separation of powers as established by 
our Founding Fathers in the Constitution. As he rightly stated, ``a 
firm and independent judiciary is critical to a well-functioning 
democracy,'' understanding the value of three branches of government, 
the value of an independent judiciary, understanding that there are 
certain things dedicated exclusively to the judiciary, to the 
legislative branch, and to the executive.
  Judge Gorsuch is not an ideologue. He is a mainstream jurist who 
follows the law as written and doesn't try to supplant it with his 
personal policy preferences. He said: ``Personal politics or policy 
preferences have no useful role in judging; regular and healthy doses 
of self-skepticism and humility about one's own abilities and 
conclusions always do.''
  Judge Gorsuch understands the advantage of democratic institutions 
and the special authority and legitimacy that come from the consent of 
the government. He said: ``Judges must allow the elected branches of 
government to flourish and citizens, through their elected 
representatives, to make laws appropriate to the facts and 
circumstances of the day.''
  Judge Gorsuch appreciates the rule of law and respects the considered 
judgment of those who came before him. He said:

       Precedent is to be respected and honored. It is not 
     something to be diminished or demeaned.

  This morning, I had the opportunity to meet with Judge Gorsuch--of 
course, knowing him from Colorado and the town of Boulder, where he 
lives today, and also where I received my law degree. We spent a lot of 
time talking about our favorite passions in Colorado, whether it is 
fly-fishing, whether it is paddle-boarding. Of course, he spends a lot 
of time out on the Boulder Reservoir, enjoying recreation--just like 
every other person in Boulder does and every other person in Colorado 
does--as somebody who understands the great outdoors. We talked about 
the rule of law. We talked about the separation of powers, his concern 
over originalism and textualism, and following in the footsteps of 
other great Justices on the Supreme Court.
  We talked about something he said last night when his name was put 
forward for nomination by President Trump. We talked about a statement 
he made to this effect: If a judge likes every opinion that they have 
written, every decision that they have reached, they are probably a bad 
judge. I think this goes to his insistence that, as a judge, you must 
put your personal beliefs, your personal policies aside to rule as the 
rule of law requires and to rule as the Constitution and the statutes 
require.
  We discussed in our meeting decisions he made of which he didn't like 
the outcome but believed that the rule of law required a certain 
outcome--whether it was a felon who possessed a handgun or whether the 
Federal Government had misspoken to the accused and he believed that 
the government had done the accused wrong.
  While Judge Gorsuch personally believed that perhaps he would have 
liked to have found a guilty decision or agreed with a guilty decision, 
he couldn't do it because of the standards that were applied in the 
case--the grammatical gravity that had to be ignored in order to reach 
the conclusion the lower court had reached.
  His ability to put personal opinions aside, I think, is what makes 
him an ideal candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court. Over the coming days 
and months, we are going to have many opportunities to talk about the 
qualities of Judge Gorsuch, but we have already heard many people 
complain that perhaps they didn't pay enough attention to Judge Gorsuch 
10 years ago. They talked about their concern, this newfound concern 
that was not available--that apparently wasn't there 10 years ago when 
this Senate unanimously supported Judge Gorsuch.
  I have even heard complaints that they didn't like the way that his 
nomination was announced--a complaint about how the President announced 
the nomination. Those are the kinds of concerns we are hearing about 
Judge Gorsuch today because they didn't like the way he was announced.
  We are going to have a lot of opportunity to talk about his 
temperament, those things he believes are important as a judge, those 
things he believes are important to make decisions. I look forward to 
having a conversation about what I believe is a brilliant legal mind--
someone of a brilliant legal mind, someone with a sterling reputation, 
someone who has been known as a feeder judge of clerks to the highest 
Court in the land, someone who rules on the law and not on his personal 
beliefs, someone who believes in the Constitution and not in the role 
of legislator from the bench.
  I am grateful I had this opportunity to support a Coloradan, a man of 
the West, to Nation's highest Court, and I look forward to working to 
place Judge Gorsuch as Associate Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court.
  Mr. President, I yield back my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, we are in the second week of the Trump 
Presidency, and it is pretty clear that something is happening in our 
country. All across the Nation, Americans in quiet towns and boisterous 
cities are taking to the streets to fight for American values. They are 
protesting in the streets and calling their Representatives. They are 
getting involved in local organizations, and they are organizing around 
the causes they support.
  We know that American values are threatened when the President issues 
an order banning immigrants from the country based on their religion. 
We know that American values are threatened when politicians try to 
break apart a health care system that has extended medical benefits to 
millions of Americans, and we know that American values are threatened 
when a President tries to stack his government with billionaires and 
insiders who have a history of grinding working people into the dirt.
  Yesterday something happened that is a threat to our American values. 
President Trump nominated Judge Neil Gorsuch to serve on the Supreme 
Court. For years now, I have repeated this warning: America's promise 
of equal justice under the law is in danger. Over the last three 
decades, as the

[[Page S559]]

rich have grown richer and middle-class families have struggled, the 
scales of justice have also tilted, tilted in favor of the wealthy and 
the powerful.
  This is not an accident. It is part of a deliberate strategy to turn 
our courts into one more rigged game for folks at the top, and its 
effects have been devastating. Recent court decisions have protected 
giant businesses from accountability, made it harder for people who 
have been injured or cheated to get a hearing, gutted longstanding laws 
protecting consumers who have been swindled, and unleashed a flood of 
secret money into our politics that is rapidly tilting the entire 
government in favor of the wealthy.
  Billionaires and corporate giants have launched a full-scale attack 
on fair-minded, mainstream judges. It has happened at every level of 
our judiciary, but the best example was the unprecedented blockade of 
Judge Merrick Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court. Judge Garland 
was an obvious consensus nominee and a straight shooter who followed 
the law. Why block him? The problem was that Judge Garland's career 
didn't reflect a sufficient willingness to bend the law to suit the 
needs of the rich and powerful. And for that sin, far-right groups, 
financed by Big Business interests, spent millions of dollars attacking 
him, to torpedo his nomination and keep that seat open.
  They did something else that is even more damaging: Far-right groups 
also drew up a list of ``acceptable'' Supreme Court nominees, people 
who demonstrated they were sympathetic to the rich and the powerful. 
Judge Neil Gorsuch made the cut, and his nomination is their reward.
  Judge Gorsuch is intelligent and accomplished. He is polite, 
respectful, and articulate. Make no mistake, his professional record, 
which I have reviewed in detail, clearly and consistently favors the 
interests of big corporations over workers, big corporations over 
consumers, and big corporations over pretty much anybody else.
  Let's not mince words. The nomination of Judge Gorsuch is a huge gift 
to the giant corporations and wealthy individuals who have stolen a 
Supreme Court seat in order to make sure that the justice system works 
for them. What I am saying shouldn't be controversial. They haven't 
made a secret of what they were doing. This is exactly why Judge 
Gorsuch has been on their list for 4 months. He is the payoff for their 
multimillion-dollar investment.
  Throughout his professional career, Judge Gorsuch has shown a truly 
remarkable insensitivity to the struggles of working Americans and an 
eagerness to side with businesses that break the rules over workers who 
are seeking justice.
  Even before he became a judge, Judge Gorsuch famously argued in favor 
of limiting the ability of investors and shareholders to bring lawsuits 
when companies commit fraud, whining about how annoying it is for 
billionaire corporations to have to face their investors when they 
cheat them.
  As a judge for more than a decade, he has twisted himself into a 
pretzel to make sure that the rules favor giant companies over workers 
and individual Americans. Let me just count some of the ways. He has 
sided with employers who deny wages, employers who improperly fire 
workers, employers who retaliate against whistleblowers for misconduct. 
He has sided with employers who denied retirement benefits to their 
workers. He has sided with big insurance companies against disabled 
workers who were denied benefits. He has ruled against workers in all 
kinds of discrimination cases. He has even argued that the rights of 
corporations outweigh the rights of the people working for them, for 
example, allowing businesses to assert religious beliefs so they can 
limit their employees' access to health care.
  Listen to that one again. He thinks that a company can assert a 
religious belief and decide whether female employees get access to 
birth control. Let's be clear. That means a lot of employees will be 
living at the whim of their employers.
  Judge Gorsuch has written dismissively about lawsuits to vindicate 
the rights of vulnerable people. Equal marriage? Assisted suicide? Keep 
those issues out of his courtroom.
  He is willing to open the doors wide when big corporations show up in 
his court to challenge health and safety rules they don't like or 
regulations to prevent them from polluting our air and water, poisoning 
our food, undermining our public safety, or just plain cheating people. 
When that happens, Judge Gorsuch is ready to go, to override the rules 
with his own views. On that score, he is even more extreme than Justice 
Scalia.
  This is exactly the type of Supreme Court Justice that giant 
corporations want, but they have never been quite so brazen about it. 
Spending millions to slime a consensus straight shooter nominee like 
Merrick Garland and steal a Supreme Court seat, then drawing up a 
public list of ``acceptable'' alternatives and handing it over to a 
billionaire President so he can do his buddies a favor. That is bold. 
That is bold, and that is not how America is supposed to work.
  Our courts are supposed to be neutral arbiters, dispensing justice 
based on the facts and the law, not people chosen to advance the 
interests of those at the top.
  Let's be clear. This fundamental principle might be more important 
today than it has ever been in modern history. Every day our new 
President finds more ways to demonstrate his hostility for an 
independent judiciary, for a civil society, and for the rule of law. 
That is precisely the reason that our Constitution gives us a neutral, 
independent judiciary. We don't need Justices who have been handpicked 
for their willingness to kowtow to those with money, power, and 
influence. We need Justices who will stand up to those with money, 
power, and influence.
  Judge Gorsuch may occasionally write in vague terms about the 
importance of the independent courts. Today, right now, that simply is 
not good enough. Now, more than ever, the United States needs a Supreme 
Court that puts the law first every single time. That means Justices 
with a proven record of standing up for the rights of all Americans--
civil rights, women's rights, LGBTQ rights, and all the protections 
guaranteed by our laws.
  We cannot stand down when American values and constitutional 
principles are attacked. We cannot stand down when the President of the 
United States hands our highest Court over to the highest bidder, and 
that is why I will oppose Judge Gorsuch's nomination.
  Mr. President, I yield.
  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. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the nomination 
of Judge Neil M. Gorsuch to serve as the next Associate Justice of the 
Supreme Court of the United States. Judge Gorsuch has been nominated to 
fill the seat left vacant by the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
  Justice Scalia was a dear friend of mine, and his death was a great 
loss to me and to our country, not just to me personally but for the 
whole Nation. Justice Scalia joined the Supreme Court after years of 
unbridled activism by the Court, during which time Justices imposed 
their own left-wing views--completely unmoored from the law as 
written--on the American people.
  In response, he led a much needed revolution based on the enduring 
principle that the role of a judge is to say what the law is, not what 
a judge wishes it were. As the intellectual architect of the effort to 
restore the judiciary to its proper role under the Constitution, 
Justice Scalia was a singularly influential jurist.
  To say that he leaves big shoes to fill is an understatement. Any 
worthy successor to his legacy will not only be committed to continuing 
his life's work but also capable of delivering the sort of intellectual 
firepower and leadership that Justice Scalia provided for decades.
  Of all the potential candidates for this position, this vacancy, Neil 
Gorsuch stands out as the jurist best positioned to fill this role. His 
resume

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can only be described as stellar: Columbia University, a Marshall 
Scholarship to study at Oxford, Harvard Law School, clerkships for 
Judge Sentelle on the DC Circuit and for Justices White and Kennedy on 
the Supreme Court, a distinguished career in private practice and at 
the Department of Justice, and more than a decade of service on the 
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

  Even among his many talented colleagues on the Federal bench, his 
opinions consistently stand out for their clarity, thoughtfulness, and 
airtight reasoning. In the words of one of his colleagues appointed by 
President Carter, Judge Gorsuch ``writes opinions in a unique style 
that has more verve and vitality than any other judge I study on a 
regular basis.'' He continued: ``Judge Gorsuch listens well and decides 
justly. His dissents are instructive rather than vitriolic. In sum, I 
think he is an excellent judicial craftsman.''
  This view of Judge Gorsuch's capabilities is broadly shared across a 
wide swath of legal observers. Consider some other descriptions of his 
qualifications from outlets that could hardly be considered 
conservative. The New York Times reported on his ``credentials and 
erudition.'' The Los Angeles Times called him a ``highly regarded . . . 
jurist,'' and ABC News described how ``in legal circles, he's 
considered a gifted writer.''
  I think there can be no doubt that Judge Gorsuch has the credentials 
to make him a capable and effective member of the U.S. Supreme Court. 
Nevertheless, I have long held that a nominee's resume alone--no matter 
how sterling--should not be considered sufficient evidence to merit 
confirmation to the Supreme Court. Rather, we should also consider a 
nominee's judicial philosophy. In this analysis, Judge Gorsuch has 
developed a record that should command ironclad confidence in his 
understanding of the proper role of a judge under the Constitution.
  Judge Gorsuch's opinions and writings show a clear fidelity to a 
judge's proper role. While his body of work is replete with examples of 
this fidelity, I want to point to one example in particular, a lecture 
he delivered last year in the wake of Justice Scalia's death that is 
one of the most thoughtful and persuasive cases for the proper role of 
a judge that I have ever read. In it, he affirmed his allegiance to the 
traditional account of the judicial role championed by Justice Scalia, 
which he described as such:

       The great project of Justice Scalia's career was to remind 
     us of the differences between judges and legislators. To 
     remind us that legislators may appeal to their own moral 
     convictions and to claims about social utility to reshape the 
     law as they think it should be in the future. But that judges 
     should do none of these things in a democratic society. That 
     judges should instead strive (if humanly and so imperfectly) 
     to apply the law as it is, focusing backward, not forward, 
     and looking to text, structure, and history to decide what a 
     reasonable reader at the time of the events in question would 
     have understood the law to be--not to decide cases based on 
     their own moral convictions or the policy consequences they 
     believe might serve society best.

  As Justice Scalia put it, ``If you are going to be a good and 
faithful judge, you have to resign yourself to the fact that you're not 
always going to like the conclusions you reach. If you like them all 
the time, you are probably doing something wrong.''
  This is exactly the kind of judicial philosophy we need our judges to 
espouse, and Neil Gorsuch is exactly the man to embody it on the 
Supreme Court. If there is one line in that lecture to which I could 
draw attention, it is the quotation of Justice Scalia's formulation of 
the very basic notion that a good judge will oftentimes reach outcomes 
that he does not personally agree with as a matter of policy. Such a 
notion should be uncontroversial.
  Indeed, many of Justice Scalia's brightest opinions came in cases in 
which I suspect he would have voted differently as a legislator than as 
a judge. Yet such a concept might seem wholly foreign to a casual 
observer of media coverage of the Supreme Court, in which cases are 
invariably viewed through a political lens. Decisions and Justices are 
regularly described as liberal or conservative, with little attention 
paid to rationale and methodology, the matters properly at the core of 
a judge's work. This phenomenon reflects a regrettable dynamic observed 
by Justice Scalia himself. As the late Justice observed, when judges 
substitute their personal policy preferences for the fixed and 
discernible meaning of the law, the selection of judges--in particular, 
the selection of Supreme Court Justices--becomes what he called a mini-
plebiscite on the meaning of the Constitution and laws of this country. 
Put another way, if judges are empowered to rewrite the laws as they 
please, the judicial appointment process becomes a matter of selecting 
life-tenured legislators practically immune from any accountability 
whatsoever.
  If we value such a system of judicial review, a system deeply at odds 
with the Constitution's concept of the judiciary, then one can easily 
see why judicial selection becomes a matter of producing particular 
policy outcomes. Thus, it is easy to see why many on the left who 
believe in such a system demand litmus tests on hot-button policy 
issues. To them, a judge is not fit to serve unless they rule in a way 
that produces a particular policy. Simply put, this is a terrible way 
to approach judicial selection. It undermines the Constitution and all 
of the crucial principles that it enshrines from the rule of law to the 
notion that our government's legitimacy depends on the consent of the 
government.
  A good judge is not one that we can depend on to produce particular 
policy outcomes. A good judge is one we can depend on to produce the 
outcomes commanded by the law and the Constitution. Neil Gorsuch has 
firmly established himself as that kind of a judge. In Neil Gorsuch's 
America, the laws that bind us are made by the people's elected 
representatives, not unelected, unaccountable judges. In Neil Gorsuch's 
America, the powers and limits of each branch of government are decided 
by the Constitution, no matter whether their enforcement produces a 
liberal or conservative outcome. In Neil Gorsuch's America, the basic 
freedoms of the American people enumerated in the Bill of Rights are 
carefully protected, whether they are in fashion lately with the left, 
the right, both or neither. In Neil Gorsuch's America, the views that 
matter are yours and mine, not those of a handful of lawyers in black 
robes in Washington.
  For these reasons, I applaud the President for his absolutely stellar 
choice. Judge Gorsuch will do us proud as our next Supreme Court 
Justice. I will do everything in my power to ensure his confirmation. I 
will have more to say on this in the future, but I yield the floor at 
this time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
  Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, it hasn't even been 2 weeks, and President 
Trump has already demonstrated that he has little tolerance for 
independent thinking and dissent. He has his own version of reality, 
which is why his administration resorts to alternative facts.
  When the media accurately reported how small the crowd was at his 
inauguration, he presented us with alternative facts. When the media 
pointed out he lost the popular vote by the largest margin of any 
President, he boldly proclaimed, without any evidence, that 3 to 5 
million people voted illegally. Many consider this whopper as a cynical 
way to encourage more States to pass voter suppression laws justified 
by the bogus claim of widespread voter fraud.
  Just 2 days ago, the President again showed the American people how 
intolerant he is of principled dissent when he fired acting Attorney 
General Sally Yates after she refused to enforce or defend his totally 
unjustifiable, knee-jerk, and probably unconstitutional Executive order 
on Muslim immigration.
  By firing Sally Yates, the President demonstrated once again that he 
values loyalty to himself above service to the American people and 
adherence to the Constitution. This is particularly disturbing as we 
begin to consider the President's nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to 
sit on the Supreme Court.
  I am only beginning to scrutinize Judge Gorsuch's record, but I am 
very concerned that he will be a rubberstamp for President Trump's 
radical agenda. You don't have to take my word for it. You only have to 
listen to what the President has been saying

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over the past 2 years. In June 2015, then-Candidate Trump told CNN's 
Jake Tapper that he would apply a pro-life litmus test for his nominees 
to the Supreme Court. He did it again at a press conference last March, 
during the third Presidential debate, and shortly after his election.
  This isn't the only litmus test President Trump promised to apply. In 
February 2016, President Trump committed to appointing a Justice who 
would allow businesses and individuals to deny women access to health 
care on the basis of so-called religious freedom. In February 2016, 
President Trump told Joe Scarborough he would make upholding the Heller 
decision on guns another litmus test for his Supreme Court nominee. 
Like tens of millions of Americans, I am deeply concerned that 
President Trump applied each of these tests before he nominated Judge 
Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.
  In the weeks and months ahead, I will carefully and extensively 
scrutinize Judge Gorsuch's record. I will question him on his judicial 
philosophy and how he interprets the Constitution. I will insist he 
clarify his position on a woman's constitutionally protected right to 
choose, on voting rights, and the appropriate balance between corporate 
interests and individual rights. I will do my job as a United States 
Senator. The American people deserve nothing less from each of us.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. President, 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. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.