[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 54 (Tuesday, March 28, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2018-S2019]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       NOMINATION OF NEIL GORSUCH

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, first I will speak on the Supreme Court. 
Last Thursday, I announced my opposition to Judge Neil Gorsuch and 
endeavored to explain why, on the merits, I don't believe he deserves 
to be elevated to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court.
  I listen to my friend, the distinguished majority leader, each 
morning. Since the beginning of this Congress, he has chalked up every 
Democratic request or objection in this body to ``sour grapes,'' to 
some leftover resentment from the election. It is just not true, but he 
keeps trying. Now he is trying the same strategy with Judge Gorsuch. He 
repeatedly cites a quote by a friend of the judge's who, of course, 
said ``there is no principled reason'' to oppose this nomination, so it 
must be politics, the majority leader concludes. I respectfully but 
wholeheartedly disagree with the majority leader on this point.
  There are several principled reasons to oppose Judge Gorsuch's 
nomination.
  First, Judge Gorsuch was unable to sufficiently convince me that he 
would be an independent check on a President who has shown almost no 
restraint from Executive overreach. He asserted independence but could 
not point to a single thing in his record to guarantee it.
  He refused to publicly condemn what the President did when he went 
after the three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit. He had a case before 
them, and the President said: If they don't decide my way, they will be 
guilty of terrorism. I have never seen anything like that in all my 
years of politics. Judge Gorsuch refused to publicly condemn. He said 
privately to different people that he was disheartened. When President 
Trump said: He didn't mean me, Judge Gorsuch shrugged his shoulders, 
going along with what the President said.
  Second, he was unable to convince me that he would be a mainstream 
Justice who could rule free from the biases of politics and ideology. 
His career, his early writings, and his judicial record suggest not a 
neutral legal mind but instead someone with a deep-seated conservative 
ideology. He was championed by the Federalist Society and the Heritage 
Foundation and has not shown 1 inch of difference between his views and 
theirs. I would ask my colleagues this question: Are all these groups 
who are spending dark, secret, undisclosed money to support his 
nomination doing so because they just want a Justice on the Court who 
will ``call balls and strikes''? I doubt it. Some here may agree with 
the Heritage Foundation, but they are not a mainstream organization. 
They are on the far right. That is their right to be. But their 
advocacy of Judge Gorsuch suggests he is not a ``balls and strikes'' 
guy.
  Finally, Judge Gorsuch is someone who almost instinctively favors the 
powerful over the weak and corporations over working Americans. That is 
what his record shows. Judge Gorsuch repeatedly sided with insurance 
companies that wanted to deny disability benefits to employees, and in 
employment discrimination cases, he sided with employers the great 
majority of the time.
  He wrote--in dissent--that trucking company executives were right to 
fire truckdriver Alphonse Maddin for leaving his trailer in order to 
save his life. And just last week, we saw another example of how 
extreme Judge Gorsuch's views are when the Supreme Court unanimously 
rebuked his interpretation of the Individuals with Disabilities Act. In 
the opinion of even Justice Thomas, the educational rights Judge 
Gorsuch would allow to disabled students under the law amount to no 
education at all.
  Judge Gorsuch's opportunity to disabuse us of all of those objections 
was in the hearing process, but he declined to substantively answer 
question after question. Absent a real description of his judicial 
philosophy, all we have to go on is his record--a record that landed 
Judge Gorsuch on the lists of the conservative Federalist Society and 
Heritage Foundation. President Trump, of course, selected Judge Gorsuch 
off those preapproved conservative lists, as he promised he would 
during his campaign.
  To claim, as the majority leader does, that Judge Gorsuch is simply a 
neutral judge is belied by his history since his college days, his own 
judicial record, and the manner of his selection.
  These are principled reasons to oppose Judge Gorsuch, even if people 
on the other side disagree with them. We need a Justice who will be an 
independent check on the President. We need someone who will consider 
fairly the plight of average citizens, not further tip the scales of 
justice in favor of already powerful corporations. Judge Gorsuch--his 
record and his performance in the hearing--did nothing to show me he 
could be that kind of Justice.
  So when Republicans said that if Democrats won't support Judge 
Gorsuch, we won't support any Republican-nominated judge, that is 
simply not true. It may be hard for us to support anyone from a list 
culled by the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, but we 
have several reasons to be concerned with Judge Gorsuch specifically.
  For all the hand-wringing by my friends on the other side of the 
aisle that they cannot imagine Democrats voting against Judge Gorsuch, 
I would like to remind them that only three--three--of the current 
Senators on the Republican side voted for either of President Obama's 
confirmed nominees, and all of them went along with my friend the 
majority leader's unprecedented plan to refuse President Obama's third 
nominee, Judge Garland, even a hearing or a vote for nearly a year.
  Which brings us back to the present day, where we Democrats have 
participated in a fair, transparent, and thorough process of advice and 
consent. Now that the time to decide whether to provide consent 
approaches, we take that responsibility seriously. A lifetime 
appointment on the highest Court of the land is not something to be 
taken lightly.
  To participate in hearings and a thorough process--something we were 
denied--does not mean you have to be a rubberstamp. After a thorough 
review of Judge Gorsuch's record, many of my colleagues and I have 
concluded we cannot consent.

[[Page S2019]]

  If Judge Gorsuch fails to reach 60 votes, it will not be because 
Democrats are being obstructionists, it will be because he failed to 
convince 60 Senators that he belongs on the Supreme Court.
  My friend the majority leader made the decision to break 230 years of 
Senate precedent by holding this seat open for over a year. If the 
nominee cannot earn the support of 60 Senators, the answer is not to 
break precedent by fundamentally and permanently changing the rules and 
traditions of the Senate; the answer is to change the nominee. This 
idea that if Judge Gorsuch doesn't get 60 votes, the majority leader 
has to inexorably change the rules of the Senate--that idea is utter 
bunk.
  It is the free choice of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle 
to pursue a change in rules if that is what they decide. And I would 
remind the majority leader that he doesn't come to this decision with 
clean hands. He blocked Merrick Garland for over a year. We wouldn't 
even be here if Judge Garland had been given fair consideration. That 
is why we are here today--not because of any Democrat.

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