[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 85 (Tuesday, May 21, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2985-S2986]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              NOMINATIONS

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, this week presents us with more 
opportunities to make progress on the backlog of qualified nominees who 
are still awaiting Senate confirmation.
  We began yesterday by voting to advance an exceptionally well-
qualified nominee to the Federal judiciary. Daniel P. Collins of 
California was chosen by President Trump to be U.S. circuit court judge 
for the Ninth Circuit, and the reasons why are abundantly clear.

[[Page S2986]]

  Mr. Collins is a graduate of Harvard and of Stanford Law School. He 
has held clerkships on both the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the 
U.S. Supreme Court for Justice Scalia. He served at the Department of 
Justice as Associate Deputy Attorney General and as Attorney-Advisor in 
the Office of Legal Counsel. He spent 4 years as an assistant U.S. 
attorney. He has complemented that experience with more than 20 years 
of well-regarded work in private practice.
  Mr. Collins has developed a reputation for legal excellence. The 
American Bar Association rates him well qualified for this new post. 
Our colleagues on the Judiciary Committee reported him favorably here 
to the floor.
  I hope my colleagues will join me as we vote later today to confirm 
this fine nominee.
  Following the Collins nomination, we will consider four more 
nominations to district courts around our Nation: Howard Nielson of 
Utah, Stephen Clark of Missouri, Carl Nichols of the District of 
Columbia, and Kenneth Bell of North Carolina. Each has been tapped by 
the President to fill important vacancies. Collectively, they represent 
decades of experience in private practice and decades more in public 
service, and they come before us with the high esteem of their legal 
peers.
  Take the case of Mr. Nielson, whose nomination we will consider 
first. Former circuit judge Mike Luttig, for whom he served as law 
clerk, said: ``Howard Nielson may well be the single most qualified 
person to serve on the federal bench that I have ever had the privilege 
to know.''
  It would be hard to come up with a more unequivocal endorsement, so I 
hope each of my colleagues will join me in support of Mr. Nielson, 
along with each of the nominees who will follow him this week.
  I have noticed that a few of my colleagues across the aisle have 
expressed some displeasure that the Senate has recently been spending 
some time on nominations. I would remind our friends on the other side 
that not so long ago, thoroughly qualified district judge nominees were 
the kinds of nominations that would sail through the Senate floor by 
voice vote and in big groups.
  Since this particular President was inaugurated in 2017, this 
Democratic minority has largely taken a different view. They have 
chosen to deploy an unprecedented level of systematic, across-the-board 
delaying tactics. The effect has been the need for cloture votes and 
individual consideration for all kinds of uncontroversial nominations, 
where it hadn't been a tradition in the Senate in the past. So more 
than 2 years into this consideration, we are left with too many 
vacancies still unfulfilled and a backlog of qualified nominees who 
need considering.
  Confirming unobjectionable individuals continues to take more of the 
Senate's time than it should, but this obstruction is not going to 
deter us. We will be here as long as it takes. We will keep confirming 
highly qualified nominees to the Federal bench. We will keep putting 
the President's team in place and giving Americans the government they 
actually voted for.

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