[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 173 (Thursday, October 26, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Page S6825]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          JUDICIAL NOMINATIONS

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the Senate is continuing to move 
forward on President Trump's outstanding judicial nominations. Many of 
the well-qualified men and women the President has nominated enjoy 
substantial bipartisan support.
  Unfortunately, Senate Democrats have decided to continue wasting the 
Senate's time with the pointless obstruction of these nominees. Time 
and again, they have erected partisan procedural hurdles that are 
designed not to change the outcome--they don't change the outcome--but 
simply to waste the Senate's time. Often, Democrats do not even oppose 
the nominee in question.
  Let's compare the number of times this days-long delay has been 
invoked for nominees of the last two Presidents during the first years 
of their Presidencies--during the first year of the Obama Presidency 
and the first year of the Trump Presidency. Republicans required 
cloture on one of President Obama's judicial nominees during his first 
year--cloture one time on a judicial nominee for President Obama in his 
first year. Democrats have invoked this delay for every single one of 
President Trump's judicial nominees, so far, except one. This week, 
they are at it again.
  Today, we will have a cloture vote on the nomination of Trevor 
McFadden to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Not a 
single Democrat on the Judiciary Committee registered an objection to 
the nomination; yet we still have to waste time in overcoming a 
procedural hurdle from our Democratic colleagues before the Senate can 
take up the nomination and consider it. It came out of committee with 
no opposition.
  We are not going to let these mindless attempts to slow progress stop 
us from confirming the President's nominees to the judiciary. If that 
means more cloture votes and more time focused on this task, that is 
what we will do, but we will confirm these nominees. You can count on 
it.

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