[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 176 (Tuesday, October 31, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Page S6915]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                     Nomination of Stephanos Bibas

  This week, we will have Stephanos Bibas, President Trump's nominee to 
the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, who believes that overincarceration 
in our jails has nothing to do with race or with mandatory minimums 
despite all of the research and data that show otherwise.
  He takes on and disagrees with the experts on medical care, who 
understand the fundamentals of addiction. He says, simply, though drug 
addiction is painted as a disease that requires medical intervention, 
all of that is unnecessary. Drug addicts can just stop using drugs. If 
only it were that easy. He has such a profound misunderstanding of the 
basic healthcare issue. Person after person after person on both sides 
of this aisle has come to say that opioid addiction is an addiction 
that needs medical treatment; yet he is a nominee who does not 
understand any of that.
  He also believes that when it comes to legal sentences, corporal 
punishment should be applied that is ``public, shameful, and painful.'' 
Perhaps the understanding of rare and unusual punishment was something 
missing in his legal education.
  Let's look at his 2 years as a prosecutor in the Southern District of 
New York--the notable case of United States v. Williams, which the New 
York Times described at the time as a ``legal legend in the making.'' 
They did not say that because of its being a wise or insightful 
decision. He was working as a prosecutor, and he wanted to really go 
after the little guy.
  He used his position to marshal prosecutorial, law enforcement, and 
court resources to bring charges against a cashier at a veterans 
hospital who had been accused of stealing $7--not $7,000, not $700,000, 
and not the $700 million or $1 billion being laundered by a big bank 
but the accusation of a cashier who had stolen $7. Stealing is never 
acceptable and never appropriate, but it did not matter that the 
cashier maintained that she had given the seven crinkled $1 bills that 
she had straightened out or that the security cameras did not show her 
pocketing them or that the customer who was right there saw it and 
stated that she was innocent. It did not matter. None of those facts 
mattered. He wanted to go after the little guy rather than go after the 
big folks who steal us blind.
  The morning of the trial comes around, and a detective testifies that 
he found those seven $1 bills in the cash register, just as the 
customer had stated. Meanwhile, this nominee saw fit to spend huge 
amounts of Federal resources in going after an individual who, by every 
form of testimony, had not committed a crime in the first place. It is 
easy to go after the little people, and if you believe in government by 
and for the powerful and the privileged, as these nominees do, then 
that is your mission in life--to go after the little people. Yet she 
lost out because, even though she was innocent, she lost her job due to 
her prosecution.
  Then there is Joan Larsen, who is the President's nominee for the 
Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, a nominee who was added at the last 
moment to another circuit court nominee's confirmation hearing, which 
was against the Senate's practices and against minority opposition. Why 
do you add someone at the last moment? It is to ensure that the 
committee does not have enough time to adequately review her record. 
That is always a cause for suspicion--someone is changing the procedure 
so that a person's record cannot be reviewed before the committee sits 
down to the hearing.
  This is probably fitting with Ms. Larsen's long-held disdain for the 
legislative branch. She coauthored a law review article that stressed 
the importance of protecting the President from Congress, she said, 
``the most dangerous branch of government.''
  She goes on to denigrate the use of committees in Congress. She says 
that Congress has maintained an extensive, costly, extra-constitutional 
network of committees that watch over the work of Cabinet departments 
because ``the ambition and love of power of our Senators and 
Representatives caused them to lust after the patronage and media glory 
that a committee post could bring.''
  Is there any deeper or more profound misunderstanding of the 
committee process here in Congress? Does she have any idea that the 
reason we have committees is that there are complex topics? As 
President Trump said: Who knew healthcare could be so complicated? So 
you have a committee of members that specializes in that effort, that 
learns the details so that it can fairly consider the ideas for 
legislation. It has very little to do with ambition and a love of power 
and a lusting after patronage. There really is not patronage on a 
committee. We, the members, do not hire the staff.
  With her being someone with such a profound misunderstanding of the 
branches of government, why do my colleagues say that they want her in 
there? Is it because of this vision of a government that is by and for 
the powerful that takes on the little people, beats them up, squeezes 
them dry, and delivers the benefits to the richest in our society on 
every single issue--on healthcare, on taxes, on judicial appointments?