[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 15834-15835]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          LEGISLATIVE SESSION

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will now 
return to legislative session.
  Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, first let me thank my friends and 
colleagues, Senator Reid and Senator Daschle, for finally moving some 
of these nominees. Some are long overdue. Some are still yet to be 
confirmed.
  I will make one mention: Kyle McSlarrow, to be Deputy Secretary of 
Energy. He worked for us in the Senate. He is more than qualified. I 
happen to know the Secretary of Energy because he used to be a Senator, 
Spence Abraham, and he has personally requested that he be confirmed. 
He needs a Deputy Secretary of Energy.
  So while I am pleased we were able to confirm a large number of 
nominees, we have some nominees who are now going to have to wait the 
entire month of August and well into September to be confirmed. I find 
that to be unfair. I wanted to express my pleasure with the one we were 
able to confirm and my displeasure with the fact that there are about 
30 people who will still be left on the calendar, including individuals 
such as Kyle McSlarrow to be Deputy Secretary of Energy, and other 
outstanding nominees who will still be held in limbo in the 
confirmation process throughout August and maybe well into September. I 
find that regrettable. There is no reason in the world not to move more 
of these nominees. I am appreciative of the many we have confirmed. I 
have not totaled the number, but it is a significant number. Still, 
there will be several very well qualified individuals who, for no 
reason whatever, are not being confirmed to this date.
  I wanted to express my displeasure and mention that nominee. I could 
go through the list. I will not do that at this late time. I want my 
colleague to know I am not happy we were not able to confirm Mr. 
McSlarrow, who was reported out by the Energy and Natural Resources 
Committee unanimously on June 5. He has been waiting almost 2 months. 
The Secretary of Energy has been waiting to get a deputy. 
Unfortunately, he still will not have a deputy for the next couple of 
months, at a time when we will mark up an energy bill. It is probably 
the most significant piece of energy legislation in decades, and the 
Secretary does not have his deputy confirmed.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, it would be good if we could approve all of 
these, but problems occur. As I indicated, on one of these nominees, I 
personally went to a lot of trouble to find a Senator so we could get 
that person approved.
  This is not a perfect system, but it works pretty well and we do the 
very best we can. It is not just holds over here; we have holds over 
there on people we care about.
  I worked on the Aging Subcommittee; I am still a member of the Aging 
Subcommittee. One of the highest people assigned to me was a man by the 
name of Jonathan Steven Adelstein. I hoped he would be approved to 
serve on the Federal Communications Commission. We could go tit for 
tat. But I would tell my friend, the Senator from Oklahoma, for whom, 
everyone knows, I have the greatest respect about a trip I had a couple 
of weeks ago to Nevada. I had the wonderful opportunity to have three 
of my grandchildren spend a weekend with us. My little grandchild just 
turned 4, Mitchell. I did not realize his parents had told him to be 
patient because I would want to find out how Tiger Woods was doing in 
the golf tournament, and he wanted to watch a video. This little boy 
came into the room and looked at me with sad eyes saying: ``It is so 
hard to be patient.''
  I say to my friend Senator Nickles, it is so hard being patient, but 
being a Member of the Senate, you have to be. Even a 4-year-old said 
that. It certainly applies to what goes on in the Senate. It is hard to 
be patient, but I think a lot of people are celebrating tonight because 
these people have already been approved.
  I look forward to coming back in the fall and hoping we can confirm 
more of these men and women who certainly, with rare exception, are 
qualified for the appointments they have been given.
  Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I thank my friend and colleague. I 
understand that maybe he is not the source of some of the remaining 
holds. We are

[[Page 15835]]

confirming a large number of people, well qualified people, at long 
last. That is good. There still remain some outstanding nominees; I 
think about 30.
  I hope my colleague from Nevada will work with me and Senator Daschle 
and Senator Lott and see if we can clean the rest of the calendar. 
Historically, we try to clean the calendar before we break, both in 
August and October. I hope we will not wait until the end, early 
October, to clean the calendar this time. I hope we will try to confirm 
as many of these nominees as early as we can in September, both for the 
agencies that need the help and the expertise and also for them 
individually. They should not be held indefinitely.
  I will work with my colleague, and I would appreciate his assistance 
to see if we can get some of them through--there may be holds on both 
sides--and see if we can eliminate some of those and expedite the 
confirmation process.
  Mr. REID. I look forward to that. One thing we need to do: It does 
not matter if you have a Republican President or a Democrat President, 
the problem is the slow process in approving nominees to serve in an 
administration. It is not right that we have to wait months for a 
Presidential nomination. Judicial appointments are a good example. They 
go step after step after step before we even get to look at them. We 
have to speed up this process for the good of the country. It is not 
right that this President is almost halfway through his term and still 
does not have people working for him. It is not all our fault, and it 
is not all the minority's fault. Much of it is the fault of the system. 
We have to do something to make it a system that moves more quickly.
  If there were ever something we needed to work on in conjunction with 
the executive branch of Government, it would be to establish a blue 
ribbon panel to figure out a way we could speed up this process. It 
takes a long time for nominees to be sent to the Senate. We are running 
good people away from government, not because the process is too long, 
people are beleaguered before they even go through it.
  I would be happy to work with my friend doing what we can to clear up 
the nominations. I look forward to that. I also hope the Senator will 
work with me, and maybe we can come up with an idea that will make all 
Presidencies a little more in tune with what is going on, because we 
have to wait for months and months to get people working in agencies.
  Mr. NICKLES. If my colleague would yield, I would be happy to work 
with the Senator. Some legislation has been considered by the 
Governmental Affairs Committee on that issue, and maybe we should 
review that to achieve more fair consideration.
  I spoke earlier tonight about judicial nominations. We did confirm, I 
believe, seven or eight judges today. That is good. But on circuit 
court nominees, we have confirmed 13 out of 32; that is 40 percent, 8 
of which have been languishing for over a year, 445 days, I think, 
since May of last year. Several of those eight are outstanding 
nominees. One of them, John Roberts, has argued 37 cases before the 
Supreme Court. Miguel Estrada has argued 15 cases before the Supreme 
Court and has yet to have a hearing. Another nominee argued 10 cases 
before the Supreme Court. Other nominees served on district court 
levels for years, and were rated very high by the ABA. For fairness, we 
need to treat these individuals with respect and give them a hearing 
before the committee.
  Mr. President, 40 percent on the circuit court level is not 
satisfactory. I just mention that; I am not trying to pick a fight. I 
would just like to see that we let circuit court nominees have 
consideration. They should not have to languish for over a year after 
the nomination to have a hearing.
  I might mention, two of the eight have had hearings. Six of the eight 
have not even had a hearing scheduled, and they have waited over a 
year.
  So I mention that. I appreciate my colleague's consideration.
  Mr. Reid. I think, generally speaking, we have to do better. It is 
too bad that someone has had to wait a year. But during the time when 
we were trying to get some judges approved and we were in the minority, 
we had judges who waited 4 years. I hope that record is not beaten.
  I would say we have held more hearings on district and circuit court 
nominees, 78, than in the past 22 years. I have all the statistics 
here. We need not go through them.
  We need to try to have a better system. I am happy to work on that, 
and I will be happy to work with my esteemed friend, the senior Senator 
from Oklahoma, to do whatever we can to work out some of these bumps in 
the road that exist.

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