[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 134 (Saturday, August 2, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5494-S5498]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Nominations
Mr. SCHMITT. Mr. President, 2\1/2\ years ago, I was sworn in as
America's 2,000th Senator, a pretty unique honor for a kid that grew up
in a working-class neighborhood in Bridgeton, MO. And as someone who
appreciates history, the U.S. Senate has always been held out as the
greatest deliberate body in the history of the world.
It is a very uniquely American institution. As our Founders
envisioned what our system of government looked like, they wanted
something that was very different than the House and something that you
had equal representation as opposed to proportional representation,
this system of checks and balances in a bicameral legislature, every
State, no matter the size, having two Senators was thought of very
differently and has proven over the course of our nearly 250 years to
be a very important place to protect individual rights and a whole host
of other issues that matter to the American people.
There has also been some people whose names are famous. You had Henry
Clay, the great compromiser. You had, of course, Webster, Calhoun, and
Clay as the great triumvirate. Missouri's first Senator Thomas Hart
Benton was known as Old Bullion.
And I want to propose a new name, someone who serves currently in the
U.S. Senate: the great arsonist, Chuck Schumer. Chuck Schumer has
singlehandedly, more than any Senator in the history of our Republic,
done more to diminish the importance and significance of this Chamber.
And I am going to walk through a few ways in which he has done that.
To take a step back for the folks watching on C-SPAN, for the folks in
the Gallery, for over 200 years--for over 200 years--the Executive
Calendar, which is what we are dealing with today and what this whole
debate is about--this Executive Calendar, there was no filibuster ever.
It didn't happen. It didn't exist.
Presidents were able to come in; they were able to nominate folks.
They were done by unanimous consent. Maybe there was some debate. But
to put this in perspective, the folks nominated as judges for the
Cabinet and other related posts--judges, for example, weren't even
really subject to the filibuster.
Think about this, Clarence Thomas, perhaps one of the most
controversial Supreme Court Justices--or that nomination was--got 52
votes. A filibuster wasn't instituted on Clarence Thomas--52 votes and
he was confirmed. Any Senator could have moved forward with an effort
to filibuster, requiring cloture, and then a vote requiring 60 votes.
So then, of course, you move into sort of the 20th century, Harry
Reid and Chuck Schumer grew tired of that old institution of having to
have 60 votes once that started to be employed. So they decided to
change things around here, that you only needed 51 votes for anything
other than a Supreme Court nominee. Lit the fuse. Lit the fuse.
Then, of course, now even for Supreme Court nominees, it is only 51.
That happened in the 21st century. For the entirety of the 20th
century, we didn't have this nonsense that we are doing here today.
I mean, even as we go back into the 1990s and into the 2000s, this
Executive Calendar that we are dealing with was done by unanimous
consent in voice votes. There are people literally being voted on
today, I don't think the Ambassador of Uruguay has been voted on in 50
years; we just did that.
So Chuck Schumer rode shotgun with Harry Reid to upend the Executive
Calendar as it relates to judicial nominees. Now, Chuck Schumer is
doing that to all these other positions. We have never seen this in the
history of our Republic. With over a thousand people that need to be
Senate confirmed, the Democrats are requiring--they are filibustering
and requiring cloture for every single one of them.
Because of those stall tactics, the 30-hour rule was changed to 2
hours, but this is all about delay. And why? Well, there is a couple
reasons. One is the Democrats, at this point, are catering to a very,
very radical and growing element of their party. And they are competing
to be the greatest resister against President Trump. They can't believe
he got back in. They can't believe it.
They tried to throw him in jail for the rest of his life. They
invented this Russiagate nonsense in the first term. But the American
people sat in that jury box, they weighed all the evidence, they saw
all the shenanigans. And they said: Do you know what? We want our
country back. We can't believe that you would weaponize the Justice
Department against parents who showed up to school board meetings or
Catholics or your chief political rival.
They rejected it. They rejected it because they want reform. So now
President Trump is offering candidates who are reformed candidates for
different positions, but they don't want to do it. And do you know
what? Vote no or whatever, but this level of obstruction has never been
seen before. It has never been seen before.
And don't even get me started on what Chuck Schumer would do to the
legislative filibuster. He is already on record, his colleagues are on
record, many of which I have talked to privately and can't believe they
would actually do it, but if they are ever in the position that the
Republicans are in right now, with a President in the White House,
Democratic Senate, and a Democrat House, they will blow up the
legislative filibuster.
They have all voted to do it--save Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema,
who are no longer here.
[[Page S5495]]
Mr. MERKLEY. Would my colleague yield to a question?
Mr. SCHMITT. No.
Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you.
Mr. SCHMITT. They won't do it. They won't yield at all. And by the
way, I have had very--I won't mention who--conversations with my
Democrat colleagues who pretend to care about this institution and who
are on record for that, on record for voting to end the legislative
filibuster.
Oh, it is just for one issue. It was just for the voting rights
issue. Give me a break--because you know exactly what comes next, DC
and Puerto Rico come into the Union, federalizing our elections,
packing the Supreme Court, put a shot clock on the Republic on that
day.
So here we are now, that is the legislative calendar. We are in the
Executive Calendar. They already lit the fuse on judicial nominees. And
now Chuck Schumer is lighting the fuse on this. And I have got news for
you: A reckoning is coming, because we are going to get back--the
Republicans in this Chamber are going to get back to where the Senate
always was, where the Executive Calendar isn't being utilized like
this.
And so whether it is, you know, because a rule change is coming, if I
have anything to say about it--and by the way, in a few hours, we may
be recessing, and President Trump is going to get his recess picks.
You have lit the fuse. And let me give you another example of what
Chuck Schumer has done. Last year, for the first time in the history of
the Republic, articles of impeachment were delivered over to this
Chamber, all Senators were seated, all of us.
In every single instance that articles of impeachment have come over
to this Chamber if the person was alive or still in office, there was a
trial. It happens to be in the Constitution. That is part of our job.
There are only three calendars, the legislative calendar, the Executive
Calendar, and the impeachment calendar.
The fuse was lit yet again. For the first time in our country's
history, Chuck Schumer made a motion to dismiss the articles without a
trial, and the Democrats, with a simple majority vote, went along with
it.
I don't ever want to be lectured by any Senator on that side of the
aisle about how much they care about the institution of the Senate. All
three calendars would be lit ablaze, set on fire by the great arsonist
and his merry men.
So what are we going to do about it? This is the charge to my
Republican colleagues today. The charge is: We are not going to let you
do this to the Senate. We are not going to let you destroy this place.
We are going to get back to a place it has always been.
And one more example. I heard Chuck Schumer on the floor earlier
today lauding the passage of appropriations bills. In my first 2 years
in this place, we spent exactly 0.0 minutes on appropriations bills, a
Blutarsky, nothing.
Leader Thune has made it a priority to open this place up, to have
amendments. In fact, when I carried the rescissions package, I wasn't
seeking to box anybody out. Offer your amendments. Let's have free and
open debate.
We didn't see that when Chuck Schumer was in charge--not once.
So lit the fuse on judicial nominees. Lit the fuse on the Executive
Calendar. Lit the fuse on the legislative filibuster. Lit the fuse on
regular order. He will go down in the annals of history as someone with
total disregard for this Chamber, the work we are charged to do when we
are elected.
But I think Republicans have a chance to course correct today, and I
hope we do it to get back to a place that can actually function.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Just as a reminder to my colleagues, you
should refer to each other as a person or Senator from, for example,
Ohio. And I also just want to remind my colleagues that ``no Senator in
debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to
another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or
unbecoming a Senator.''
The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I was hoping my colleague would stay on
the floor to have a little bit of discussion about the topic he just
raised because there seemed to be some missing elements in his
discussion.
And isn't that kind of what happens here, where we hear from our
leadership about all of these terrible things the other side is doing,
and we just kind of swallow that hook, line, and sinker, rather than
actually looking at the record.
Now, one of the pieces left out of his story was 1974, 100 Senators
on this floor said: We are going to create a special fast track,
filibuster-free, for one single purpose: reducing the deficit. And
think of Robert Byrd of West Virginia. And Robert Byrd was an adamant--
adamant--advocate for the filibuster. Unfortunately, he had been very
supportive of using the filibuster to block civil rights bills. But, in
general, he was dedicated to making sure that it stayed in place. And
even he joined 99 other Senators to say: Hey, we should have a special
fast track solely for reducing the deficit. That was 1974.
At that same time, that same bill created the Congressional Budget
Office so we would use honest numbers in putting forward spending bills
because if we are going to actually reduce the deficit, we have to quit
using smoke and mirrors to pretend that what we are spending is less
than it really is.
So let's go forward 22 years to 1996. And in 1996, we were in the
middle of the first term of the Gingrich revolution. The election of
1994 had been of dramatic success for Republicans in the House, picking
up dozens of seats with an agenda for America. And in that agenda was
something called the line-item veto. And the line-item veto was the
idea that we would delegate our constitutional responsibility of the
power of the purse to the President of the United States of America and
say the President can decide what is spent on what programs.
And the Supreme Court said: Oh, no. You can't do that. You have a
constitutional responsibility under the separation of powers. Under the
checks and balances, Congress, by law, establishes what must be spent
on each program, not the President of the United States.
Certainly, the President gets a role. The President provides the
budget. The President has to sign the spending bills. But Congress
could not take the power assigned to it and simply hand it over to the
Executive. That is the way you end up in a strongman state.
And so the Supreme Court wiped out, in 1996--well, they canceled, if
you will, the line-item veto power that Congress tried to give the
President.
And so the Republican team controlling the House and Senate said:
Well, we have another idea, and that other idea is a balanced budget
constitutional amendment. Now, that happens to require two-thirds of
both bodies here to vote for it and then three-quarters of the States
to do a constitutional amendment.
It easily flew through the House of Representatives. All very good.
It came over to the Senate, and we needed 67 votes for that, and there
were 66 votes. The 67th vote was potentially the chair of the
Appropriations Committee, Senator Hatfield from Oregon, and Senator
Hatfield said: This is a bad idea. Here is why it is a bad idea.
Sometimes we are at war, and we need to spend more money. Sometimes we
are in recession, and we need to spend more money. And we do decide
every single year, and we are in the majority, Republican majority, we
decide every single year how much is going to be spent through the
spending bills, the appropriations bills. And we decide through the
revenue bills how much is going to be raised. So we already have the
power to do a balanced budget in the years that it should be balanced,
but we need to retain the power to address these emergencies.
It is kind of an interesting story in that Senator Hatfield, for
standing on this principle as the chair of the Appropriations
Committee, was vilified--vilified--for defending the responsibility of
the power of the purse held here. And, in fact, he was so vilified that
he even received a message from his son-in-law with a picture of his
granddaughter, saying: For her sake, you should do this.
He then went to the majority leader, Senator Dole, and said: If you
feel so strongly this is right, and clearly I feel it is a mistake, I
will resign. And Senator Dole decided, no, we are not going to ask you
to resign. We are not going
[[Page S5496]]
to suggest that is the right answer. And so it fell one vote short.
There is kind of an interesting twist to this story because Oregon
did not have a law that allowed a Governor to appoint a replacement. So
had Senator Hatfield resigned, there would have been 99 Senators, and
then you would have only needed 66 votes for the balanced budget
amendment. But that did not transpire because Senator Dole turned
Senator Hatfield's offer down.
So then what happened? Well, a little bit of frustration among the
Republican majority. Their line-item veto had been knocked down by the
Supreme Court. Their constitutional amendment had not cleared the
Senate. And they said: We really want to do a massive tax bill,
particularly giving huge breaks for the richest Americans. And they
said: Ah, but we can't do it. We can't get it done. Why not? Because
the Democrats won't agree to massive tax breaks for the richest
Americans. So we won't be able to get the 60 votes we need to be able
to pursue this path.
And then what happened? Well, Majority Leader Dole and others
conferred and said: Let's do a nuclear option. And let's take this
strategy, this tool, that we created in 1974 to reduce deficits, and
let's repurpose it and allow it to be used to increase deficits--of
course, not at all what the 100 Senators had voted on in 1974.
Well, that was pretty dramatic to proceed to take a tool,
reconciliation, invented in 1974 to reduce deficits and to say it can
be used to increase deficits. Well, so dramatic, in fact, that it
couldn't be done unless they overturned the opinion of their
Parliamentarian. So they fired the Parliamentarian. That is what the
Republicans did. They fired the Parliamentarian and they brought in a
new Parliamentarian and his name was Robert Dove.
Now, Robert Dove had been here in 1974. He knew about why they passed
this bill with 100 Senators to have a fast track with no filibuster was
only for decreasing the deficits. But where had Mr. Dove been working?
He had been working for the majority leader, Robert Dole. And so he
took and he came in and he ruled--or provided the recommendation to the
chair--that it was just fine to completely repurpose this 1974 tool
called reconciliation for decreasing the deficits so it could be used
to increase deficits. That was the nuclear option. Wow.
Now, my colleague didn't mention any of that. He talked about
lighting the fuse. Lighting the fuse, as if Democrats had been
degrading the structure of this institution. But I would suggest maybe
there is responsibility on both sides of the aisle. What was done in
1996 was a dramatic--dramatic--well, contravention of the very core of
the understanding that every Democrat and every Republican had agreed
to. It was a deal broken--deal broken--in the exercise of power
politics.
Or let's go forward to 2008, and this man named Barack Obama ran for
President. He was a Member of the Senate, and he was elected. At that
point, something dramatic happened, and that is the minority leader
decided to undertake a dramatic blockade of President Obama's nominees.
I mean, couldn't fill the National Labor Relations Board, couldn't get
the Labor Secretary into place. The list went on and on and on.
Well, Democrats didn't respond with a nuclear option. They responded
with: Let's work this out. Let's preserve the supermajority on
nominations. But to preserve it, we can't abuse it in this fashion.
Just the number of blockades of nominations soared dramatically. This
instrument that had really almost never been used on nominations, it
started being used routinely on the Republican side of the aisle. That
was left out of the speech you heard a few minute ago.
So we negotiated. We pleaded. It was like a 9-month process. And,
finally, we all met in the Old Senate Chamber--no staff present. I
don't know if there was anyone to even record the comments for history,
and we basically talked to each other in very real terms about let's
preserve this supermajority on nominations. But it can't be that the
minority uses that as a blockade against a President to keep qualified
people from being put into office. An agreement was reached that that
blockade would be dialed back enormously.
I recall that a month or so into that, there was us on the verge of
the minority blocking a very qualified individual that there was no
justification for. I remember Senator McCain grabbing the arm of a
fellow colleague coming down the aisle over here and saying: We mustn't
do this. We agreed to not be irresponsible in blocking qualified
people. And that person just got the 60 votes and went through.
All good and well, like we had resolved this conflict and preserved
the supermajority, until the minority leader changed his mind and said:
I don't care how qualified a nominee is from President Obama for the DC
Circuit Court. We are going to block anyone--anyone--from being
assigned to fill those seats.
Well, that was the final straw.
As much as Harry Reid tried to, as majority leader, say: Back off,
don't do that; that is a violation of the agreement we reached in the
Old Senate Chamber, the minority leader said: No, we are not going to
allow Obama to put a single justice on the DC court.
A few arguments--policy arguments--were made by the minority leader
to support the position. He said: I think they have enough justices
already. We don't need to fill those additional positions. But that is
not an argument that had ever been used here, that even though courts
had a huge backlog, they didn't need the additional justices.
No, it was just a plain outpower move to block the President of the
United States from putting people on the DC Circuit Court.
Why was that the target? Well, for one reason, the DC Circuit Court
considers--a lot of the national issues go through the DC Circuit Court
of Appeals. And for another, a lot of folks who eventually get
nominated to the Supreme Court serve on the DC Circuit Court of
Appeals. That makes it kind of a pretty important place.
But this pretty important place where justices consider pretty
important issues and sometimes have a chance to be recognized as
someone who might be a good candidate for the Supreme Court was blocked
by the minority. And he has made all the efforts to undo that. The
minority said: No, regardless of qualifications, we are going to back
up the minority leader and not allow any justices to be appointed, no
matter how qualified they are.
So I am just adding to the conversation that my colleague began--who
proceeded to throw in kind of a dialogue of, say, all the obstruction
here stems from one side of the aisle, the blue side of the aisle--I am
suggesting that there have been moments where both sides have stretched
their power. There have been moments when both sides have sought--and
sometimes successfully--to resolve that conflict.
But in the end, there have been some big moments in which the
Republicans have torn down the system. That may be true for the
Democrats, as well. But it might be helpful to have a more balanced
conversation.
And while we are at this dialogue, recognizing factors that have
occurred on both sides of the aisle, let's talk about something else
that never happened in U.S. history until it happened by the
Republicans refusing to hold a debate and a vote on a Supreme Court
nomination. It had never happened until the last year of the Obama
administration when a vacancy became open due to an untimely death and
the President nominated a candidate to fill that seat. And Republicans
said: We are not even going to allow a debate or a vote--the first time
in the history of the United States of America.
I was just reading a column the other day that referred to this as
the ``stolen seat.'' I noticed it because that is what I called it at
the time. I said this is wrong. Once one side steals a seat from a
President, it will be horrifically difficult to fix that problem
because if the Democrats have the same chance to do the same and
balance things out, now you just have a tradition of stealing seats.
You have a Republican President and a Democratic majority that blocks
debate on a nominee until the next election, hoping that you will keep
that seat empty until there is a Democrat in the Oval Office. That just
means we have locked in obstruction.
I came to this floor at 6 p.m. and started speaking and addressed my
comments to the majority leader
[[Page S5497]]
across the aisle and the minority leader and said: Please get together.
There have been several recommendations for fixing this, because if
this seat is stolen in this fashion--kept empty until the next
President comes in--we will never be able to fix it. There is no path
for fixing it.
I proceeded to make that plea through the night up until cloture
ripened--that is a motion to close debate--ripened the following
morning, 15\1/2\ hours later.
Why would I stand on this floor 15\1/2\ hours later? Because I was
asking my Republican colleagues: Do not tear down this institution.
That is three examples of what the Republican side has done. It
didn't come up in my colleague's speech.
Let's talk about a fourth. I see my colleague from Illinois is here
and I am going to defer to him. The fourth was just recently in which,
for the first time ever since the 1974 act, we passed a bill--I say we
passed a bill--Republicans passed on a partisan line bill, a spending
reconciliation bill that will create deficits beyond a 10-year window.
They had already blown up the agreement from 1974 that there could be
no deficits created in a 10-year window. They blew that up in 1996, as
I referred to. Then they proceeded to blow up, just weeks ago, the
second half, second pillar of that deal, that there would be no
deficits after that 10-year period.
Then they blew up the third pillar of that 1974 act, which was: We
would use honest numbers from the Congressional Budget Office in laying
out what a bill costs.
I say to my colleague across the aisle who was speaking before me:
You pointed out things that you feel Democrats stretched the boundaries
and damaged this institution, but you left out enumerable cases that I
have just pointed to. Isn't it time to not do one more damage to this
institution and, instead, get together a group from each side to
wrestle with the issue at hand?
It is my understanding that as of this moment, this day, there is
almost exactly the same number of nominees that have been approved to
date under the Trump administration as there were under the Biden
administration, a similar number of days under his administration--
almost exactly the same number. I think the hyperbole across the aisle
is profoundly exaggerated.
Let me yield to my colleague from Illinois, who stands ready to share
a few thoughts.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic whip.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Oregon for his
statement. I would like to join in the chorus for just a moment and
note two or three things that have not been mentioned on the floor by
the other side. In fairness, I think they should.
I have listened to several Republican Senators today, with the pie
charts, come to the floor and express concern--even outrage--at what is
happening in this Chamber. There is some legitimacy to their complaint.
There are a lot of things that need to be changed.
I join in with my colleague from Oregon to say we ought to put a
group together to try to calmly come up with changes and Senate
procedure to bring us back to the stature this Chamber once had. Today,
we don't have it, and we should. There are several things I would like
to mention briefly.
If you are talking about denying a voice vote or a rollcall to an
individual seeking a nomination, I call to mind what happened with our
colleague at that time, JD Vance, the U.S. Senator from Ohio, who
announced when I was chairman of the Judiciary Committee that he would
no longer allow U.S. attorneys to go through the voice vote. At that
point, he said they should go through the procedure we are now using
for all nominees. He literally stopped the process of choosing U.S.
attorneys for President Biden at 63. There are over 90 U.S. attorney
positions in the United States.
So he did exactly what is being complained about by Republican
Senators, saying that we can no longer use the voice vote or unanimous
consent to pick U.S. attorneys.
Let the record reflect, when President Trump was in his first term,
every one of his U.S. attorneys was chosen by voice vote, no record
votes. Democrats were in control and gave that option to President
Trump. And then Vice President Vance had an opportunity to stop it and
did. He said at the time he wanted to ``grind the Department of Justice
to a halt.'' I quoted that while he was standing on the floor right
there. He didn't deny it. He had been quoted in the press.
When you talk about balance and fairness in reforming the Senate, it
goes both ways.
Secondly, do you remember when Anton Scalia died on vacation and
there was a vacancy at the U.S. Supreme Court? Do you recall what
happened? That vacancy was protected by the Republican Senate leader,
Senator McConnell, for 10 months so that Obama would not have an
opportunity to fill that vacancy. He wanted to make certain that was
done by President Trump in his next term. There is another illustration
of departure from common practice and precedent for political
advantage.
But the last point that I want to make is one that came by as I
listened to the Senator from Arkansas come to the floor and talk about
the treatment of Republicans under his experience in the Senate.
We have something in the Senate called a hold. What that means,
basically, when your name makes it to the Calendar, the Executive
Calendar here, which means you have gone through the background
investigation at the White House, you have gone through the committee
process, you have been chosen by the committee, and you come to the
Calendar to be considered for a position in our Federal Government.
There is still one last hurdle--not just a vote on the Senate floor,
but the possibility of a hold. Individual Senators can put a hold on a
nominee indefinitely.
One of the most egregious examples that has happened in modern times
relates to the Senator from Arkansas. Let me read from an article by
Frank Bruni in the New York Times, June 6, 2016:
In early 2014, after decades of government and nonprofit
work that reflected a passion for public service, Cassandra
Butts got a reward--or so she thought. She was nominated by
President Obama to be the next U.S. Ambassador to the
Bahamas.
It wasn't an especially high-profile gig at the crossroads
of the day's most urgent issues, but it was a longstanding
diplomatic post that needed to be filled, and she had
concrete ideas about how best to do the job.
``She was very excited,'' her sister [Deidra Abbott, told
me] said.
The Senate held a hearing on her nomination on May 2014,
and then . . . nothing. Summer came and went. So did fall. A
new year arrived, then another new year after that.
When I met her last month--
Mr. Bruni wrote--
she'd been waiting more than 820 days on the Senate Calendar
to be confirmed. She died suddenly two weeks later, still
waiting. She was 50 years old.
The delay had nothing to do with her qualifications, which
were impeccable. It had everything to do with Washington.
The woman says:
At another point Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas
Republican, put a hold specifically on Butts and on nominees
for ambassadorships to Sweden and Norway. He had a legitimate
gripe with the Obama administration over a Secret Service
leak of private information about a fellow member of
Congress, and he was trying to pressure Obama to take
punitive action. But that issue was unrelated to Butts and
the Bahamas.
Cotton eventually released the two other holds, but not the
one on Butts. She told me that she once went to see him
[personally] about it, and he explained that he knew that she
was a close friend of Obama's--the two first [met] . . . at
Harvard Law School . . . and that blocking her was a way to
inflict special pain on the president.
Cotton's spokeswoman did not dispute Butts'
characterization of that meeting, and stressed, in separate
emails, that Cotton had enormous respect for her and her
career.
That's Washington for you.
A hold of 820 days. A woman who waited on the calendar patiently for
this ambassadorship to the Bahamas passed away from leukemia.
So, when we sit down and talk about bringing civility and common
sense back to the Senate, let's bring in more than just the topic of
the votes as to whether there will be record votes or whether there
will be voice votes. That is an important issue, but it is not the only
issue. Let us show civility, one to the other--Democrats to Republicans
and Republicans to Democrats.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The President pro tempore. The Senator from
Iowa.
[[Page S5498]]
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, soon, we will vote on the U.S. attorney
for the Southern District of Florida.
Until recent years, it has been unheard of to use floor time to
confirm U.S. attorneys. Typically, they are confirmed by voice vote. I
regret that we have become a body where every nominee has been
obstructed. U.S. attorneys keep our communities safe and ensure law and
order is enforced. There are 93 U.S. attorneys in the United States. It
would take more than 230 hours to confirm all of them. That is totally
unrealistic, and that is not hyperbole.
The Democrats' obstruction of nominees is hindering law and order
across our Nation. As chairman of the Judiciary Committee, I will
continue to work across the aisle to restore a commonsense confirmation
process for U.S. attorneys.