[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Pages 6044-6045]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     JUDICIAL CONFIRMATION PROCESS

  Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I thank the great and wonderful Senator 
from Delaware for yielding me the time.
  I rise to speak briefly about the bipartisan action taken by the 
Senate yesterday when it confirmed the nomination of Paul Crotty to be 
U.S. district judge for the southern district of New York.
  I commend my colleagues for their willingness to put aside their 
partisan differences and to make sure that the judicial confirmation 
process worked in the case of Judge Crotty. I commend them for acting 
so obviously for the good of the American people.
  Even more importantly, it is my hope that this example will prove to 
be an enduring one for all of us as we move forward with the subject of 
judicial nominations in the future. Our duty to evaluate Presidential 
judicial nominations and to confirm or reject nominees is a 
particularly solemn obligation under our Constitution. Our 871 article 
III Federal judges hold positions of great respect and great power. 
They put criminals in jail. They decide our most important private 
disputes and they explain what our laws mean. Our constitutional duty 
to evaluate judicial nominees is doubly important because judges are 
appointed for life. If we make a mistake, our country is stuck with a 
bad judge for years and sometimes decades.
  On March 1, 2005, I sent a letter to President George Bush concerning 
judicial nominations. I respectfully suggested to the President that 
there are many well-qualified candidates to serve on the Federal bench, 
men and women who unquestionably would gain the consensus and approval 
of this body. The fact that the Senate reached consensus on 205 of the 
President's 215 judicial nominations over the past 4 years demonstrates 
the willingness, indeed the strong desire, of the majority and minority 
in the Senate to achieve this consensus.
  Let me repeat that statistic one more time: 205 of the 215 
nominations of President Bush have been confirmed by this body. That is 
a 95-percent confirmation approval rating. When there is that kind of 
approval of the President's nominees, this body is doing its job and 
not being, as some people have suggested, an obstructionist body.
  Judge Crotty is an example of the way judicial nominations should be 
pursued in order to be successful under our Constitution. His 
nomination resulted first from consultations and then from an agreement 
among Senator Schumer, Governor Pataki of New York, and the White 
House. That kind of collaborative consensus approach to making sure 
there are no problems with the confirmation of judges who are nominated 
by the White House is exactly what ought to be pursued in other 
judicial vacancies that occur in our country.
  Partisanship in this particular appointment played no role 
whatsoever, and it should play no role. Judge Crotty was a consensus 
choice, a nominee without extreme ideologies or any troubling factors 
in his background. Judge Crotty's qualifications to sit in judgment of 
others were apparent to all Senators, Democrats and Republicans alike.
  Our duty runs to all the people of our Nation, whether they are 
Republicans, Democrats, Independents, or something else. At the end of 
the day, I plead with my colleagues in this Chamber, which has been so 
much a part of our constitutional history, to avoid moving forward with 
the so-called nuclear option that has the potential of shutting down 
the work of this body on behalf of the people of the United States.
  At the end of the day, I suggest to the President of the United 
States and to our leadership in this body that there are issues which 
are of much greater importance for all of us to work on on behalf of 
the people. The people's work should be about having a national and 
homeland security program that works to protect our homeland and 
protect our Nation. The people's business should be about making sure 
that we pass energy legislation that addresses our overdependence on 
foreign oil today. The people's business should be about how we deal 
with the problem of health care which is strangling so many Americans 
and so many businesses across our country.
  There are so many issues that are important to take care of the 
people's business that we ought not allow ourselves to get into the 
distractive avenue of dealing with the controversial issue of the few 
judges who historically have been rejected by the Senate. I suggest to 
all of my colleagues that it is important we move forward in the 
collaborative, cooperative approach that was taken in the nomination 
and in the confirmation of Judge Crotty to be a Federal district judge 
for the State of New York.
  I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the 
quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, would you inform me how much time is 
remaining in morning business on the Democratic side?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. There remains 17 minutes 24 
seconds.

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