[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 76 (Thursday, May 10, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Page S2600]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                   Recognition of the Minority Leader

  The Democratic leader is recognized.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, later today the Senate will vote on the 
confirmation of Michael Brennan to the Seventh Circuit over the 
objections of one of his home-State Senators, Ms. Baldwin, who has not 
returned a blue slip on his nomination.
  It is an abject breach of senatorial courtesy that both parties have 
long respected. In fact, the seat Mr. Brennan will fill on the Seventh 
Circuit has been held open for 6 years by the senior Senator from 
Wisconsin, Mr. Johnson, via the same process, the blue slip. When 
Barack Obama was President and when Patrick Leahy was chairman of the 
Judiciary Committee, we Democrats obeyed the blue slip, and it led that 
seat to be vacant for 6 years. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, 
the Republican majority will ignore the blue-slip rights of the 
Democratic Senator even though it fervently believes that we ought to 
listen to the rights of the Republican Senator from Wisconsin. The 
actions of the Republican leader erode one of the few remaining customs 
in the Senate that forces consultation and consensus on judicial 
nominations.

  In the grand scheme of things, the vote may seem to some of my 
colleagues on the other side like a small one--one judge for one 
circuit court. But in truth, the vote on Mr. Brennan is a death by a 
thousand cuts of the grand tradition of bipartisanship and comity in 
the U.S. Senate. I know all too well that there is plenty of blame to 
go around on both sides of the aisle, but if we don't take a step back 
now, the Senate will soon become a rubberstamp or graveyard for 
Presidential nominees, rendering our advice and consent nearly 
meaningless.
  I understand the pressure on the leader from the hard right. They 
want judges who are not bipartisan. They wanted a judge in this case 
who did not go through a bipartisan judicial panel, composed of both 
Democrats and Republicans, who have always sent us judges from 
Wisconsin. Two were sent, but, instead, Brennan, who couldn't get 
through the panel, was sent.
  This is so wrong. This goes beyond what we have seen done before. 
When Leader McConnell changed the rules on the Supreme Court--which we 
didn't--many on the other side, I understand, said: Well, that is tit 
for tat because Democrats changed the rules on the lower courts. But 
the blue-slip tradition has always been obeyed. We didn't change that. 
We could have. We could have stuffed through our nominees with no 
Republican support, but we didn't.
  I hope for the sake of comity that one or two of my Republican 
colleagues will stand up and vote against Mr. Brennan's nomination, not 
because of his beliefs--which they may agree with, for all I know--but 
for the sake of the Senate, for the grand tradition of the Senate, for 
the right afforded to every Senator to consult on judges from their 
State, minority or majority, and most of all, for the traditions that 
have held this body together for more than two centuries and separated 
it from the more partisan Chamber on the other end of the Capitol.