[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 15]
[Senate]
[Pages 20091-20092]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               RECOGNITION OF THE ACTING MINORITY LEADER

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Nevada is 
recognized.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, while the majority leader is on the floor, 
we have had a number of conversations privately and publicly with the 
distinguished Senator from New Mexico on this electricity title. As I 
indicated last night, we have Senators Feinstein, Feingold, Boxer, 
Dayton, and Cantwell who have amendments to offer. All of them but 
Senator Cantwell have single amendments. Senator Cantwell may have two 
or three others. We will work with Senator Domenici to have time 
agreements on these. I am confident and hopeful that the Senators 
offering the amendments will agree to time agreements.
  I also note--and I say this as respectfully as I can to the 
distinguished majority leader, who I know has such a difficult job--the 
electricity title is very complicated. I think we are approaching this 
in the right way, to move through it as quickly as possible. We are 
cooperating in that regard. It makes it really difficult, as somebody 
trying to help move this along and help the two managers, to have these 
stops and starts. We just get going on something and then we have votes 
on judges.
  I want everybody to understand I know how important Senator Hatch and 
others believe it is about these judges. For example, on Estrada, this 
will be the seventh vote. The votes are not going to change. We will 
take an hour of debate on that and get off the Energy bill, and then we 
will go back on it. It makes it extremely difficult. Senator Domenici 
told all his committee members during the committee markup that we know 
the bill isn't perfect, but we will have an opportunity on the floor to 
amend that. The leader has stuck by that. I think that is important.
  Just as an effort to help, because you have to move this bill along, 
for example, the two Bingaman amendments--Senator Dayton cannot offer 
his amendments until those are disposed of. That is another procedural 
matter we have to deal with here.
  We recognize we have a lot of work to do. We squeezed in yesterday an 
hour on trade while everybody was at the White House. I know the leader 
wants these two bills done, and the White House talked about how 
important they are. I think it is good we have time down as low as we 
do on a bill people feel so strongly about. From what I know, it should 
pass fairly easily--both of those trade agreements.
  In short, I want the Senator from Tennessee, who, I repeat, has a 
tremendously difficult job, to understand we are doing everything we 
can to cooperate. I stated yesterday twice, and I will start the day 
off today saying, I don't know of a single Senate Democrat who doesn't 
want an Energy bill. The time line you have given us makes it really 
tough. We will cooperate in any way we can to move the schedule along 
despite the difficulties I see.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, first of all, I appreciate the assistance 
of the distinguished assistant leader on the other side of the aisle in 
moving the Energy bill forward. We had the opportunity yesterday to 
have a bipartisan meeting with the President of the United States, who 
once again called for this body to address energy as expeditiously as 
possible, allowing appropriate time for debate and amendment.

[[Page 20092]]

  The President set out his energy policy 2 years and 2 or 3 months ago 
and has called upon this body to work its will. The House has done that 
and passed a bill. We have not done that and the American people 
deserve it. That is why we brought this bill to the floor on May 6. 
That is why we have spent 17 days on the bill. That is why we are 
working as hard as we can to complete this bill in the next 3 days. I 
think we are working well together. It is a complex bill. We debated 
days and days last year. It has been taken through committee this year 
and marked up and brought to the floor appropriately. We are making 
real progress there.
  The issue of judges, though, bothers me. It has been brought up every 
time I say we have to keep moving forward and that we owe it to the 
American people on this Energy bill, and then we have a few votes on 
judges. That is brought up as if that is slowing down progress on the 
Energy bill. It disturbs me.
  First of all, all we are saying is let's give Miguel Estrada an up-
or-down vote. That is all we want. If you don't like him and you want 
to vote against him, do it. We think that when judicial nominees come 
from the White House to us under advice and consent, we deserve the 
opportunity to express that advice and consent, and the only way we can 
do that is by voting. Each seat here has one vote. Let people express 
their will and, if the nominees are successful, fine. If not, we will 
move on. That is what we are saying.
  I also want to make it clear on what we are having to do this week. 
Clotures filed on our side of the aisle don't require any debate. They 
require a vote and that is all we ask. Again, we want to keep things 
moving. We have been willing, as I said time and time again, to stack 
the votes among the other energy amendment votes. We don't require the 
debate or time. It is the other side that is requiring the time.
  Another issue we have not really talked about, at least on the floor, 
is these votes on district judges, which is essentially unprecedented, 
which is being required of us today, if we look to the past, if we 
compare it to the past. The whole issue on both sides of the aisle is 
that many, if not most, of these could be approved by unanimous 
consent. Many, if not all, confirmations have to be by rollcall votes. 
Because there is this call from the other side of the aisle for 
rollcall votes, which traditionally in this body have been handled, for 
the most part, through voice votes, we are having to factor those 
rollcall votes, which take time, into the Senate schedule if we are 
going to demand justice around the country. If we do not get these 
judges confirmed, justice is, in effect, delayed. So they put a huge 
demand on us--really me as majority leader--demanding what has not been 
done in the past, rollcall votes, which take time and we have to factor 
them into the schedule, which does delay our schedule unnecessarily, 
and it means later hours at night and starting 30 minutes earlier in 
the day to accommodate the demands they are putting on us.
  That, to me, is challenging. It is challenging that we work on this 
important Energy bill and, for the most part, these rollcall votes on 
the district judges are challenging.
  To make that point, if we go back to the 105th Congress, there were 
100 judges--20 circuit and 80 district judges. In that Congress, there 
were 25 rollcall votes--7 circuit, 18 district. So on about 25 percent 
of the 100 judges, rollcall votes were required.
  If we move to the 106th Congress, there were 72 judges confirmed, and 
18 of those were rollcall votes.
  If we go to the 107th Congress, there were 100 confirmed and 59 
rollcall votes.
  And if we go to the 108th Congress, the present Congress, 37 judges 
have been confirmed. We have had to have 28 rollcall votes.
  What is interesting is that of those 28 rollcall votes, 23 were 
unanimous. So we had rollcall votes, and all 100 Senators, or everybody 
present and voting, voted to confirm. Eighty-two percent of them were 
unanimous.
  We can see this trend going back to the 104th Congress when there 
were 73 judges confirmed, and there were zero rollcall votes. What has 
happened in this Congress, because of the request from the other side 
of the aisle, is this demand that all of these judges, not just the 
circuit judges, but the district judges, have rollcall votes. 
Therefore, it has made it very difficult.
  When it is brought up that our voting on judicial nominees is slowing 
the work of the Senate down, I ask the other side to at least consider 
what happened in the 103rd, 104th, and 105th Congresses in terms of the 
number of rollcall votes required.

                          ____________________