[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 19350-19352]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



  THE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ACT AND THE NOMINATION OF BONNIE CAMPBELL

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I want to engage in a small colloquy with 
the Senator. I tell my friend from Washington, I meant to get to the 
floor before the Senator finished speaking on the Violence Against 
Women Act.
  Mr. BIDEN. Yes.
  Mr. HARKIN. I know you switched from that to talk about our mutual 
enemy, Milosevic. But I wanted to, again, thank the Senator for his 
remarks and his strong support for the Violence Against Women Act. 
Hopefully, we will get it over here from the House and pass in due 
course.
  But I want to ask the Senator this question. The Senator knows the 
person who heads the Violence Against Women Office in the Department of 
Justice, the former attorney general of the State of Iowa, Bonnie 
Campbell. She is the first and only person to head this office in all 
these years. She has done a great job. I think both sides recognize 
that.
  I ask the Senator from Delaware, not only is it important to pass the 
Violence Against Women Act, to get it reauthorized, but isn't it also 
equally important to get people on the Federal bench who understand 
this issue, who have worked on this issue, like Bonnie Campbell, whose 
nomination is now pending before the Judiciary Committee?
  I ask the Senator, wouldn't it be a good thing for this country to 
have someone with Bonnie Campbell's experience and her background and 
leadership in that office on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals? We 
have had the hearings. She has been approved. We have had all the 
hearings. She is supported by the bar association, and by the Iowa 
Police Association. She has broad-based support from both sides of the 
aisle.
  I ask the Senator, wouldn't her confirmation be good for this 
country? Wouldn't it be good to have someone in the Eighth Circuit like 
Bonnie Campbell to make sure that the Violence Against Women Act was 
thoroughly enforced and upheld in our courts?
  Mr. BIDEN. In response to my friend, the answer is absolutely yes. I 
will tell him that because I was the one who authored that act. The 
President was very gracious in calling me and asking me who I would 
like to see be the one to oversee that office. I recommended one, and 
only one person, the former attorney general of the State of Iowa who 
helped me write the act in the first instance, Bonnie Campbell.
  I cannot tell you how disappointed, dismayed, and angry, quite 
frankly, I have been, as a member of the Judiciary Committee, about the 
fact that--I will be blunt about it--our Republican colleagues in the 
committee and here will not allow this woman to have a vote on the 
floor of the Senate. The ABA rates her highly. As you said, everyone I 
know in the Midwest who knows her, everyone, Republican and Democrat, 
likes her.
  I see my friend Slade Gorton on the floor. He knows a little bit 
about the process of picking judges. I am confident he and others, as 
my other colleagues in this room, would agree that qualified judges 
should not be kept from being on the bench for politics.
  People say: Well, this is the usual thing. We hold up these judges 
all the time near the end of a session when there is going to be a 
Presidential election.
  That is flat malarkey. Ask the Senator from Texas, Mr. Gramm, who is 
a good friend of mine. He and I are on opposite ends of the political 
spectrum. I was chairman of the Judiciary Committee. My friend from 
Iowa may remember this. We went into a caucus in the last 2 days when 
President Bush was the President of the United States. We were about to 
go out of session, as we say in the Senate, and adjourn sine die. What 
happened? We walked out onto the floor of the Senate. The Senator from 
Texas said he had several qualified judges in Texas, Republicans, and 
why were we holding them up.
  I went to our caucus and said: We should pass those judges. Several 
in our caucus, two who are no longer here, said they opposed this. I 
said: Well, you are going to have to oppose me to do it. On the floor 
of the Senate, the last day, the last hour, the last session, we passed 
those Texas judges.
  I will never forget, the reason I love him so much, the Senator from 
Texas, Mr. Gramm--who I kiddingly call ``Barbwire'' Gramm; we kid each 
other--he walked up on the floor and put his hand out to me and he 
said: Joe, I want to thank you. You are one of the nicest guys here--
that is not true--but he said: You are one of the nicest guys here. I 
want you to know one thing: I would never do it for you.
  That is literally a true story, and he will repeat that story for 
you. The truth is, it is not good politics. It is not good justice. It 
is not good anything, just to hold up somebody.
  By the way, it has been held up for a year. It is not as if they have 
held up this woman for the last 10 minutes, the last 10 days.
  Mr. HARKIN. She has been in since earlier this year.
  Mr. BIDEN. I think the long answer to a very short question is, this 
is an outrage. It is an outrage that she is not on the bench now. And I 
would hope that sanity would prevail.
  Mr. HARKIN. I ask the Senator further, I had been hearing that one of 
the reasons that it might be hard to get Bonnie Campbell through was, 
well, this is a circuit court and it is right before an election. You 
have to understand that in an election year, we don't confirm very many 
circuit court judges. And so I looked back in the records. I wonder if 
the Senator can attest to this, since he is on the Judiciary Committee.
  Mr. BIDEN. I was chairman for every one of these people. I can 
probably give you the names of all nine of these people.
  Mr. HARKIN. In 1992, an election year, your committee confirmed nine 
circuit court judges.
  Mr. BIDEN. That is right.
  Mr. HARKIN. Under a Republican President.
  Mr. BIDEN. This is in the waning hours. This last one, we were 
literally going out of session. I mean, we could have shut this place 
down easily and walked away and pretended to have a clear conscience 
and said: We have done the Nation's work.
  To be fair about it, there were three members of our caucus who 
ripped me a new ear in the caucus for doing this,

[[Page 19351]]

three of them. Two are gone; one is still around. No, we shouldn't do 
this. But this is an example of what happens.
  I have been here since 1972. It started in October of the 1972 
election. I wasn't here in the 1972 election. Then in the 1976 
election, they started to hold up judges. They started holding up 
judges somewhere around September. And then it moved; by the 1980 
election, they were being held up in July. This year, our Republican 
friends started 18 months ago to hold these folks up.
  This is what I am worried is going to happen, and I will end with 
this. I am worried if we take back this place, we are going to have a 
lot of new women and men in this place say: Hey, the Republicans did 
that. Mark my words. You will have a bunch of Democratic Senators who 
have no institutional memory out here--if we have a Republican 
President and a Democratic Senate--holding up Republican judges a year 
out. This is bad, bad, bad precedent. This is not a good thing to do.
  Mr. HARKIN. I ask the Senator further, is it true that we have only 
had one circuit judge that was nominated this year, approved?
  Mr. BIDEN. Best of my knowledge. I don't do it day to day as I did 
before. Coincidentally, he was from Delaware.
  Mr. HARKIN. The other reason I have heard that they had had trouble 
with Bonnie Campbell is that she wasn't nominated until early this 
year.
  I did some further research. Again, I ask the Senator, he has a lot 
of institutional knowledge. I looked up the circuit court judges in 
1992, to find out when they were nominated and when they were 
confirmed. If we look, here is one who was nominated in January of 
1992, confirmed in September. Here is another one, January of 1992, 
confirmed in February of 1992. We come clear down here, there is one 
here, Timothy K. Lewis, nominated in September of 1992, hearing in 
September, confirmed in October, right before the election, nominated 
by a Republican President.
  Mr. BIDEN. Look at Norm Stahl. Norm Stahl is in the first circuit, a 
New Hampshire judge. Norm Stahl was nominated in March. I held the 
hearing in June, and in June of that year, 1992, election year, we 
confirmed him. Justin Wilson didn't make it. There were reasons that 
that occurred, by the way. I can understand a political party saying: 
Hey, look, this nominee you have sent up is just not palatable to us. 
We in the majority will not vote for that person. We are flat not going 
to. I got that. I understand that.
  The deal I made honestly, straight up with President Bush--if he were 
here, he would acknowledge it, and my Republican colleagues on the 
committee will tell you--I said: Here is what I will do. If there is 
someone who is absolutely, positively going to be a fire storm, if they 
are brought up, I will flag that person as soon as you name him, tell 
you what the problem is, and tell you there is going to be a fight. And 
you can decide whether you want to go forward or not go forward.
  That is not the case with Bonnie Campbell. I ask the Senator a 
question: Has anyone come to him and said, the reason I am against 
Bonnie Campbell is she is incompetent, or the reason I am against 
Bonnie Campbell is because she doesn't have a judicial temperament, or 
the reason I am against Bonnie Campbell is she is just not a mainstream 
person? I mean, I haven't heard anybody tell me why they are against 
Bonnie Campbell. Have you?
  Mr. HARKIN. I can tell the Senator, no one has ever said that to me. 
In fact, Republicans in Iowa ask me why she is being held up. Why isn't 
she going through? Mainstream Republicans are asking me that. 
Editorials are being written in Iowa papers saying the Senate ought to 
move on this nominee and not hold her up. No, not one person has come 
up to me and said she is not qualified, not one person. When you were 
chairman and we had a Republican President and a Democratic Senate, we 
had just the opposite of what we have now. Nine circuit court judges 
were nominated in 1992 who were confirmed the same year.
  Mr. BIDEN. In fairness, 5 of those 14 judges were not confirmed. We 
laid out why, and there was a great controversy about it. We debated it 
and we laid out why.
  Again, I never question the right of the Senate or an individual 
Senator to say, I do not want so-and-so on the bench and I will tell 
you why and I will fight it.
  I got that. I got that. I understand that. That is what the advise 
and consent clause is about. But what I don't get is: Hey, you know, 
she is a Democrat, we are Republicans. We may win so we will not 
confirm anybody until we determine whether we win.
  Mr. HARKIN. I don't have all the memory the Senator has.
  Mr. BIDEN. I have too much of it, unfortunately.
  Mr. HARKIN. I am not on the Judiciary Committee. I had my staff look 
this up. I did remember Mr. Carnes, who was highly controversial, a 
very conservative assistant attorney general who was nominated that 
year, a lot of civil rights groups opposed him because he was 
considered one of the nation's best attorneys in arguing for the death 
penalty. There was talk about him being insensitive to civil rights, 
regarding the death penalty. Even with all of that, we brought him out 
on the floor and he passed in September of 1992. This was a 
controversial candidate. But, Bonnie Campbell has bipartisan support. 
Senator Grassley and I have been calling for a Senate vote on her 
confirmation. She also has the bipartisan support from Democrats and 
Republicans from my state of Iowa who worked with her when she served 
as Iowa attorney general.
  (Mr. L. CHAFEE assumed the chair.)
  Mr. BIDEN. The point that is important to make for people who may be 
listening is that we Democrats controlled the committee. I remember 
this case explicitly because I got walloped. I ran for the Senate 
because of civil rights, and I got walloped because I held a hearing. 
Every liberal group in the country castigated me for holding the 
hearing. And then we referred Judge Carnes to the Senate--get this--in 
September of the election year; we confirmed a very controversial 
judge.
  So, again, I understand the point the Senator is making. I just think 
this is a terrible precedent that we are continuing to pile on here. I 
think there is going to be a day when the nature of this place--as my 
Republican friends told me: What goes around comes around. That is a 
nice political axiom, but it is not good for the courts. We have a 
fiduciary responsibility under the Constitution to deal with the third 
coequal branch of the Government. We are not doing it responsibly. What 
the Senator hasn't mentioned and won't go into because the floor staff 
wants me to make a request here--but that doesn't even count. The 
District Court judges, where there are serious emergencies that exist 
because they cannot try the civil cases because the criminal cases are 
so backed up, we have held up for over a year.
  Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Senator for yielding. I apologize to my 
friend from Washington who wants to speak. I did want to engage in this 
colloquy because of the history of the circuit judges. But, more 
specifically, everybody is now talking about the Violence Against Women 
Act and how it needs to be reauthorized. That must be done. Yet 
everybody is falling all over themselves. The House passed it today 
with 415 votes in the House.
  Mr. BIDEN. Isn't that amazing--415 votes? You only get that on 
resolutions, say, for motherhood and the flag.
  Mr. HARKIN. You know what 415 votes says to me? It says that the 
House has given Bonnie Campbell an A-plus for her job in implementing 
the provisions of the Violence Against Women's Act, since it became law 
in 1994. If you had somebody who had done a terrible job and given a 
bad impression of what the law was about, no, you would not have had 
415 votes. It is obvious to all that Bonnie Campbell has run that 
office in an exemplary fashion, in a professional manner, and has 
brought honor to the judiciary, to the Department of Justice, and to 
this law that we passed here. Yet people are falling all over 
themselves today talking about how the Violence Against Women Act needs 
to be reauthorized. It

[[Page 19352]]

makes sense to put someone on the federal bench who understands this 
important law because she helped write it and implement it.
  Mr. BIDEN. When she was attorney general, she helped write it.
  Mr. HARKIN. She can help make sure that the law lives, that the 
Violence Against Women Act is enforced by the courts by being on the 
Eighth Circuit. Yet she is being held up here. I will tell you, it is 
not right. I hope when we take up the Violence Against Women Act, which 
I hope we do shortly, I will have more to say about this sort of split 
personality that we see here. They say: Yes, we are for the Violence 
Against Women Act, but, no, don't put a woman on the circuit court who 
is widely supported, who has headed this office and did it in an 
exemplary fashion.
  I thank the Senator.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I understand the passion the Senator feels. 
It is particularly difficult to go through this kind of thing when it 
is someone from your home State being so shabbily treated. I empathize 
with him. I might say parenthetically, Bonnie Campbell--and we are not 
being colloquial calling her Bonnie. People might be listening and 
saying, well, if this were a male, would they call him Johnny Campbell? 
Bonnie Campbell is what she is known as. So we are not making up pet 
names here. This is Bonnie Campbell.
  This is a woman who has been an incredible lawyer, a first-rate 
attorney general in one of the States of the United States. She has run 
an office that, at its inception, didn't have a single employee, didn't 
have a single guideline, didn't have a single penny when she came in. 
She has done it in a fashion, as the Senator said, that the ABA thinks 
she is first rate. Coincidentally, this will cause controversy, but we 
seem to hold up people of color and women for the circuit court. They 
tend to get slowed up more than others around here. It simply is not 
right. This is a woman who is as mainstream as they come, who is well 
educated. If anybody has a judicial temperament, this person has it.
  Mr. HARKIN. Absolutely.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I will join the Senator in whatever way he 
wants, as many times as he wants. I can't say enough good about 
Attorney General Campbell, and I have known her for a long time.

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