[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 15341-15345]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         JUDICIAL CONFIRMATIONS

  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I sought recognition to comment on the 
forthcoming proceedings on the confirmation of Judge Sotomayor for the 
Supreme Court of the United States.
  Judge Sotomayor comes to this position with an extraordinary record. 
Her academic standing at Princeton was summa cum laude, a graduate of 
the Yale Law School where she was a member of the Yale Law Journal 
Board of Editors.
  Then in her practice, she was an assistant district attorney in 
Manhattan, a position which gives very extensive experience in many 
facets of the law, something I know in my own experience years ago as 
an assistant district attorney.
  She was in private practice with a very prestigious New York law 
firm, then served on the U.S. District Court, and more recently on the 
Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
  The hearings will give Judge Sotomayor an opportunity to respond to a 
number of issues which have been raised about her background. I think

[[Page 15342]]

Chairman Leahy was correct in moving the hearing dates so that the 
confirmation process could be concluded in time for Judge Sotomayor, if 
confirmed, to sit with the Court during September when the Court will 
decide what cases it will hear.
  A great deal of the important work of the Supreme Court of the United 
States is decided on what cases they decide not to hear. And perhaps 
that in some ways is as important as the cases they do hear, the cases 
they do decide. It is during that period of time when the decision is 
made of a grant of certiorari with four Justices deciding which cases 
to hear where the presence of a new Justice could be very important.
  Confirmation hearings at an early stage will give Judge Sotomayor an 
opportunity to respond to many questions which are highly publicized. 
It is a very noteworthy matter when a nominee is being considered for 
the Supreme Court. There is a lot of publicity, and some of it is 
controversial.
  As a matter of fairness, the earlier a nominee can have an 
opportunity to respond to those issues--a question has been raised 
about her decision on the New Haven firefighters case. Well, the 
nuances of disparate impact do not lend themselves too well to brief 
newspaper articles nor sound bites on the talk shows. They are made for 
Supreme Court hearings.
  Her decision on property rights following the Kelo decision has been 
subjected to certain comment. There again, the nuances require a 
hearing. Or her statement about ``a wise Latina woman'' has been widely 
commented upon. And there again, she ought to have an opportunity to 
speak to those issues.
  There have been some questions raised about her decisions under the 
Second Amendment, membership in the Belizean Grove, and a lot of 
speculation. So let's bring on the hearings where there will be an 
opportunity for Judge Sotomayor to present her views.
  Based on what I have studied in her opinions, an extensive meeting 
which I had with her, she is a powerful intellect and prospectively she 
is likely to be able to have good comments. But that is what the 
confirmation process is all about. So let's move forward on it to the 
July hearing dates so we can consider her nomination and she can have 
an opportunity to respond to those issues.
  There have been contrary views about the value of confirmation 
hearings. There are some who say they have outlived their usefulness, 
pointing historically to the fact that prior to 1955 or thereabouts 
there were very few confirmation hearings, only when there was some 
extraordinary question.
  In recent decades the confirmation hearings have been extensive. 
Having participated in some 11 of those confirmation hearings, it is my 
judgment that they are very worthwhile, from many points of view.
  It presents an opportunity to have a public focus on the appropriate 
role of the Supreme Court, a lot of very major questions about the 
respective roles on the separation of powers between the courts and 
Congress, on fact finding, and on the record.
  There are important questions on the relative authority of the 
executive versus the Court on the issues of detention, of habeas; 
important issues on the relative power of the Congress versus the 
executive, as exemplified by the conflict between the Foreign 
Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the powers of the President under 
article II of the Constitution as Commander in Chief.
  There are also hearings where it is a public focus on a civics lesson 
as to what the Court does, and public attention is focused on the 
Court. My preference would be, as I have noted on legislation I have 
introduced, which has been passed out of the Judiciary Committee in 
prior congresses, to have the proceedings of the Supreme Court 
televised under certain circumstances. That has not yet been approved. 
But I think the day will come when the Supreme Court hearings will be 
televised. I think they could be televised without having showboating, 
and real insight by the public as to what happens at the Supreme Court 
of the United States, just as hearings of the House of Representatives 
and the Senate are televised.
  There are a lot of quorum calls, but there are debates that go on 
here for the public to see, where very major matters of public policy 
are decided.
  At least the confirmation hearings do bring the role of the Court 
into focused hearings, I think, to a very beneficial effect.
  We had the hearings on Judge Bork widely commented upon, very 
extensive hearings on his writings, his view of original intent. There 
was an opportunity for the American people and the scholars to see what 
was involved.
  There has grown a myth that in that proceeding, the nominee was 
``Borked,'' turning his name into a verb. My own view is that is not 
so; that the decision made in rejecting the confirmation of Judge Bork 
turned on the record, turned on what happened in the Judiciary 
Committee proceedings. When we took a look at original intent, it was 
way outside the mainstream of constitutional law, way outside the 
constitutional continuum. If we look to what Congress intended in 1868, 
when the equal protection clause was passed in the 14th amendment in 
this Chamber, the galleries were segregated. African Americans were on 
one side and Caucasians were on another. So the intent of Senators 
certainly could not have been that equal protection meant integration. 
But after Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, there was no doubt equal 
protection did mean integration.
  The confirmation proceedings of Chief Justice Rehnquist were very 
informative. Chief Justice Rehnquist had more than 30 votes cast 
against his nomination in 1986. The issue arose as to the adequacy of 
his answering questions as to the role of the Supreme Court contrasted 
with the role of Congress. Chief Justice Rehnquist had written an 
interesting article for the Harvard Law Record, back in 1959, when he 
was a young practicing attorney, criticizing the Senate for the 
confirmation hearings of Justice Whittaker, not asking probing 
questions about due process of law but only extolling Justice 
Whittaker's virtues because he represented both the State of Kansas and 
the State of Missouri, living in one State and practicing law in the 
other. When Chief Justice Rehnquist was asked questions about the 
authority of Congress to take away the jurisdiction of the Supreme 
Court, he answered, finally, that the Congress did not have the 
authority on first amendment issues but declined to answer about the 
fourth amendment, fifth, sixth or eighth or to answer a question as to 
why he would respond on the first amendment but not on others.
  There are some issues which are so firmly established that they are 
outside the respected rule that we don't ask nominees to say how they 
will decide upon cases that might come before them. But where we deal 
with issues such as Marbury v. Madison or Brown v. Board of Education 
or the authority of the Congress to take away jurisdiction of the 
Supreme Court in derogation of Marbury v. Madison, there are questions 
which ought to be answered.
  The confirmation hearings provide an opportunity to go into detail 
about the functioning of the Court. A few years ago, when the issue of 
judicial pay was before the Congress, a number of Senators were invited 
to confer with the Justices. It provided an opportunity for me to see 
the conference room. I had been a member of the bar of the Supreme 
Court, argued a few cases there but had never seen their conference 
room. Frankly, it was quite an eye-opener--a small room, plain table, 
modest chairs, very intimate, very austere, quite some insight as to 
how close the Justices are together. When we talk about diversity, how 
long it took to get an African American on the Court, Thurgood Marshall 
did not go to the Court until 1967. Justice Lewis Powell made a comment 
reportedly that just having Thurgood Marshall in the room made a 
difference in perspective. Surprising, perhaps scandalous, that it took 
until 1981 to have a woman on the Supreme Court. Now there have only 
been two. When I was asked for recommendations for the current vacancy, 
I recommended four women. To

[[Page 15343]]

say that a woman's point of view is different and valuable is trite. 
When I was elected to the Senate in 1980, Senator Kastenbaum was the 
only woman in the Chamber. Senator Hawkins was elected that year. Now 
we have 16 and growing. It has been a very great addition and 
improvement to the deliberations here to have more women. Another woman 
on the Supreme Court would be a plus there, if Judge Sotomayor is 
confirmed.
  Also, the diversity on being a Hispanic is important. We live in a 
very diverse society. When one sees that small Supreme Court Chamber, 
they can see the intimacy and can almost visualize the intellectual 
discussions and the powerhouses in that room and how the big cases are 
decided, with the Court having the last word on life and death, a 
woman's right to choose, medicinal issues of attempted suicide, the 
death penalty in capital cases, all the cutting edge issues of our 
society.
  The confirmation proceeding of Judge Sotomayor will give us an 
opportunity to inquire into some very important issues on executive 
versus judicial authority, on the authority of the Court versus the 
Congress. Toward that end, I wrote a letter to Judge Sotomayor, dated 
June 15. I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed in the 
Record at the conclusion of my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Bennet). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)
  Mr. SPECTER. As I note in the opening paragraph, our so-called 
courtesy call lasted more than an hour. At that time, I commented to 
her that I would be writing on other subjects on which I intended to 
comment at her hearing. She responded she would be glad to have that 
advance notice. The issue I focus on in this letter involves the 
respective authority of the Congress contrasted with the Court on the 
establishment of a record to warrant legislation which Congress enacts. 
I noted I had written to Chief Justice Roberts in a similar vein back 
on August 8, 2005, in advance of his confirmation hearings. I take up 
in my letter to Judge Sotomayor the same issue I took up with Chief 
Justice Roberts; that is, decisions of the Supreme Court in 
invalidating congressional enactments, declaring them unconstitutional, 
because of what the Court says is an insufficient record.
  I note the case of United States v. Morrison, which involved 
legislation to protect women against violence, where the Court was 
denigrating, disrespectful to Congress, where the Court said the 
congressional findings were rejected because of our ``method of 
reasoning,'' as if there is some unique quality which comes to the 
nominee at the time of confirmation in walking across the green between 
the hearing room and the Supreme Court chambers.
  A dissent by Justice Souter noted that the Court's judgment was 
``dependent upon a uniquely judicial conference,'' as if the competence 
of the Congress was to a lesser extent. Justice Souter commented, in 
disagreeing with Chief Justice Rehnquist, who said there was an 
insufficient record, that ``the mountain of data assembled by Congress 
included a record on gender bias from a task force of 21 States, eight 
separate reports by the Congress.''
  There was a similar finding by the Supreme Court of the United States 
in the case of Alabama v. Garrett, where the Supreme Court decided 
there was an insufficient record to support the enactment of title I of 
the Americans with Disabilities Act, even though there had been task 
force hearings in every State attended by more than 30,000 people, 
including thousands who had experienced discrimination, with more than 
300 examples of discrimination by State Governments. Notwithstanding 
that, the Supreme Court in Garrett said there was an insufficient 
record.
  In dissent, Justice Scalia called the test of congruence and 
proportionality a flabby test, a test that was ``an invitation to 
judicial arbitrariness and policy-driven decisionmaking.''
  When we look to a standard of congruence and proportionality, it is 
very vague. Sharp divergence from the standard that Justice Harlan 
articulated in Maryland v. Wirtz in 1968, whether there was a rational 
basis for the congressional decision. So that as Justice Scalia noted 
in his dissent in Tennessee v. lane, the standard of congruence and 
proportionality was flabby. Justice Scalia went on to say:

       Worse still, it casts this Court in the role of Congress's 
     task master. Under it the courts--and ultimately, this 
     Court--must regularly check Congress's homework to make sure 
     that it has identified sufficient constitutional violations 
     to make its remedy constitutional and proportional.

  In the confirmation hearings of Chief Justice Roberts, he responded 
in a way very supportive of the role of Congress, where the Court 
should be deferential to the Congress. In response to a question by 
Senator DeWine, he said the Supreme Court ought to defer to 
congressional findings, and the answer will be in the Record with this 
letter.
  In response to my questioning, Chief Justice Roberts said:

       And I appreciate very much the difference in institutional 
     competence between the judiciary and the Congress, when it 
     comes to basic questions of fact finding, development of a 
     record and also the authority to make the policy decisions 
     about how to act on the basis of a particular record. It is 
     not just disagreement over a record. It is a question of 
     whose job it is to make a determination based on the record. 
     As a judge, that you are beginning to transgress into the 
     area of making a law is when you are in a position of 
     reevaluating legislative findings, because that doesn't look 
     like a judicial function.

  There, the Chief Justice comes to grips with the dominant role of the 
Congress that ought to be deferred to and says, when the court takes 
over, it is judicial lawmaking, which is something which is generally 
recognized to be in an area which ought not to be transgressed. 
``Transgression'' is Chief Justice Roberts' word, that it is up to 
Congress to make the laws and up to the Court to interpret them.
  In a hearing on the Voting Rights Act on April 29, 2009, Northwest 
Austin Municipal Utility District v. Holder, on the issue of the 
sufficiency of the record, here we have 16,000 pages of testimony, 21 
different hearings, 10 months of action. Congress, in 2006, 
reauthorized the Voting Rights Act. In listening to the Supreme Court 
argument and reading the record--you cannot draw any conclusions 
totally--but it looks very much as if the Court may be on the verge of 
finding the record insufficient.
  Chief Justice Roberts had this to say in the course of the argument 
on the Voting Rights Act:

       . . . one-twentieth of one percent of the submissions are 
     not precleared. That, to me, suggests that they are sweeping 
     far more broadly than they need to address the intentional 
     discrimination under the Fifteenth Amendment.
       That's like the old elephant whistle. You know, I have this 
     whistle to keep away the elephants. You know, well, that's 
     silly. Well, there are no elephants, so it must work. I mean, 
     if you have 99.98 percent of those being precleared, why 
     isn't that reaching too broadly?

  We will all be watching very closely to see what the Supreme Court of 
the United States does in the voting rights case and especially the 
opinion of Chief Justice Roberts, who has testified so emphatically at 
his confirmation hearing as to the role of the Congress being dominant, 
and it was, as he put it: ``. . . as a judge that you may be beginning 
to transgress into the area of making a law . . . ''
  So those are issues which I am going to be addressing to Judge 
Sotomayor in the course of the confirmation hearings. I am not going to 
ask her how she is going to decide a case. That is outside the bounds. 
But I think it is fair to inquire as to what is the standard. Is it the 
Justice Harlan standard of rational basis or is it a standard of 
congruent and proportional--a standard which is of recent vintage in 
the City of Boerne v. Flores case, and having been applied in cases 
where it is very difficult to understand the conclusions of the Court, 
if you take Tennessee v. Lane, where one article of the Americans with 
Disabilities Act was upheld and contrast it with the Alabama v. Garrett 
case, where it was stricken.
  Justice Scalia, in the argument of the voting rights case, took issue 
with

[[Page 15344]]

the Congress on a 98-to-0 decision, suggesting if it is 98 to 0, it 
must not have been too carefully thought through.
  It reminds me of the 98-to-0 vote Justice Scalia got on his 
confirmation and the many unanimous decisions of the Supreme Court. I 
will ask to have printed in the Record a group of recent cases--10 or 
more--where Justice Scalia decided cases 9 to 0.
  So if this legislative body--the Senate--votes 98 to 0 in favor of 
renewing the Voting Rights Act, relying upon the extensive record, 
which I have cited, that is not a sign of weakness. That is not a sign 
that the Senate does not know what it is doing with a 98-to-0 vote.
  So the questions which I have posed for Judge Sotomayor are these:
  First: Would you apply the Justice Harlan rational base standard or 
the congruent and proportionality standard?
  Second: What are your views on Justice Scalia's characterization that 
the ``congruence and proportionality standard'' is a flabby test and an 
``invitation to judicial arbitrariness and policy-driven 
decisionmaking,'' where Justice Scalia says that is the way for the 
courts to make law on a standard which is so vague?
  Third: Do you agree with Chief Justice Rehnquist's conclusion that 
the Violence Against Women legislation was unconstitutional because of 
Congress's ``method of reasoning''?
  And fourth: Do you agree with the division of constitutional 
authority between Congress and the Supreme Court as articulated by 
Chief Justice Roberts in his responses, cited in this letter, to 
questions posed at his hearing by Senator DeWine and myself?
  I do believe there will be an opportunity for very important issues 
to be presented to the nominee. Based on what I have seen of her, in 
reviewing her record, and the meeting I had with her--I have noted her 
excellent resume--I am looking forward to giving her an opportunity to 
answer the many questions that have been raised in the press, where she 
will have more of an opportunity than to have a sound bite but to give 
commentary on her record in support of her nomination.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the material to 
which I referred.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

  Recent Unanimous Decisions With Opinions Authored by Justice Scalia

       Republic of Iraq v. Beaty,--S.Ct.--, 2009 WL 1576569 
     (2009).
       Virginia v. Moore, 128 S.Ct. 1598 (2008).
       Beck v. Pace Intern. Union, 551 U.S. 96 (2007).
       U.S. ex rel Goodman v. Georgia, 546 U.S. 151 (2006).
       U.S. v. Grubbs, 547 U.S. 90 (2006).
       Domino's Pizza, Inc. v. McDonald, 546 U.S. 470 (2006).
       Merck KGAA v. Integra Lifesciences I, Ltd., 545 U.S. 193 
     (2005).
       Devenpeck v. Alford, 543 U.S. 146 (2004).
       Norton v. Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, 542 U.S. 55 
     (2004).
       Barnhart v. Thomas, 540 U.S. 20 (2003).
       Pacificare Health Systems, Inc. v. Book, 538 U.S. 401 
     (2003).

  Mr. SPECTER. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

                               Exhibit 1


                                                  U.S. Senate,

                                    Washington, DC, June 15, 2009.
     Hon. Sonia Sotomayor,
     The Department of Justice,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Judge Sotomayor: When we concluded our meeting which 
     lasted more than an Hour, I commented that I would be writing 
     to you on other subjects which I intended to cover at your 
     hearing, and I appreciated your response that you would 
     welcome such advance notice.
       In the confirmation hearing for Chief Justice Roberts, 
     there was considerable discussion about the adequacy of 
     congressional fact finding to support legislation. This issue 
     is again before the Supreme Court on the re-authorization of 
     the Voting Rights Act where the legislation is challenged on 
     the ground that there is an insufficient factual record. At 
     our hearing, I would uphold like your views on what legal 
     standards you would apply in evaluating the adequacy of a 
     Congressional record. In the 1968 case Maryland v. Wirtz, 
     Justice Harlan's rationale would uphold an act of Congress 
     where the legislature had a rational basis for reaching a 
     regulatory scheme. In later cases, the Court has moved to a 
     ``congruence and proportionality standard.''.
       In advance of the hearing for Chief Justice Roberts by 
     letter dated August 8, 2005. I wrote him in part:
       ``members of Congress are irate about the Court's 
     denigrating and, really, disrespectful statements about 
     Congress's competence. In U.S. v. Morrison, Chief Justice 
     Rehnquist, speaking for five members of the Court, rejected 
     Congressional findings because of ``our method of 
     reasoning''. As the dissent noted, the Court's judgment is 
     ``dependent upon a uniquely judicial competence'' which 
     implicitly criticizes a lesser quality of Congressional 
     competence.
       In Morrison, there was an extensive record on evidence 
     establishing the factual basis for enactment of the Violence 
     Against Women legislation. In dissent. Justice Souter noted . 
     . . the mountain of data assembled by Congress here showing 
     the effects of violence against women on interstate 
     commerce,'' and added:
       ``The record includes reports on gender bias from task 
     forces in 21 states and we have the benefit of specific 
     factual finding in eight separate reports issued by Congress 
     and its committees over the long course leading to its 
     enactment.''
       In a subsequent letter to Chief Justice Roberts dated 
     August 23, 2005, I wrote concerning Alabama v. Garrett where 
     Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act was based on 
     task force field hearings in every state attended by more 
     than 30,000 people including thousands who had experienced 
     discrimination with roughly 300 examples of discrimination by 
     state governments.
       Notwithstanding those findings, the Garrett Court concluded 
     in a five to four decision:
       ``The legislative record of the Americans with Disabilities 
     Act, however, simply fails to show that Congress did in fact 
     identify a pattern of irrational state discrimination in 
     employment against the disabled.''
       In another five to four decision, the Court in Lane v. 
     Tennessee concluded Title II of the Americans with 
     Disabilities Act met the ``congruence and proportionality 
     standard''. There, Justice Scalia dissented attacking the 
     ``congruence and proportionality standard'' calling it a 
     ``flabby test'' and ``invitation to judicial arbitrariness 
     and policy driven decision making'':
       ``Worse still, it casts this Court in the role of 
     Congress's taskmaster. Under it, the courts (and ultimately 
     this Court) must regularly check Congress's homework to make 
     sure that it has identified sufficient constitutional 
     violations to make its remedy constitutional and 
     proportional. As a general matter, we are ill-advised to 
     adopt or adhere to constitutional rules that bring us into 
     conflict with a coequal branch of Government.''
       During the confirmation hearing of Chief Justice Roberts, 
     he testified extensively in favor of the Court's deferring to 
     Congress on fact finding. In response to questions from 
     Senator DeWine, he testified:
       ``. . . The reason that congressional fact finding and 
     determination is important in these cases is because the 
     courts recognize that they can't do that, Courts can't have, 
     as you said, whatever it was, the 13 separate hearings before 
     passing particular legislation. Courts--the Supreme Court 
     can't sit and hear witness after witness after witness in a 
     particular area and develop that kind of a record. Courts 
     can't make the policy judgments about what type of 
     legislation is necessary in light of the findings that are 
     made''. . . `We simply don't have the institutional expertise 
     or the resources or the authority to engage in that type of a 
     process. So that is sort of the basis for the deference to 
     the fact finding that is made. It's institutional competence. 
     The courts don't have it. Congress does. It's constitutional 
     authority. It's not our job. It is your job. So the defense 
     to congressional findings in this area has a solid basis.''
       In response to my questioning, Chief Justice Roberts said:
       ``And I appreciate very much the differences in 
     institutional competence between the judiciary and the 
     Congress when it comes to basic questions of fact finding 
     development of a record, and also the authority to make the 
     policy decisions about how to act on the basic of a 
     particular record. It's not just disagreement over a record. 
     It's a question of whose job it is to make a determination 
     based on the record' . . . as a judge that you may be 
     beginning to transgress into the area of making a law is when 
     you are in a position of re-evaluating legislative findings, 
     because that doesn't look like a judicial function.''
       The Supreme Court heard oral argument in Northwest Austin 
     Municipal Utility District v. Holder on April 29, 2009 
     involving the sufficiency of the Congressional record on 
     reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act. While too much cannot he 
     read into comments by justices at oral argument, Chief 
     Justice Roberts' statements suggested a very different 
     attitude on deference to Congressional fact finding than he 
     expressed at his confirmation hearing. Referring to the 
     argument that ``. . . action under Section 5 has to be 
     congruent and proportional to what it's trying to remedy,'' 
     Justice Roberts said that:
       ``. . . one-twentieth of l percent of the submissions are 
     not precleared. That, to me, suggests that they are sweeping 
     far more

[[Page 15345]]

     broadly than they need to, to address the intentional 
     discrimination under the Fifteenth Amendment.''
       Chief Justice Roberts went to say:
       ``Well, that's like the old--you know, it's the elephant 
     whistle. You know, I have this whistle to keep away the 
     elephants. You know, well, that's silly. well, there are no 
     elephants, so it must work. I mean if you have 99.98 percent 
     of these being precleared, why isn't that reaching far too 
     broadly.''
       As a factual basis for the 2007 Voting rights Act, Congress 
     heard from dozens of witnesses over ten months in 21 
     different hearings. Applying the approach from Chief Justice 
     Roberts' confirmation hearing, that would appear to satisfy 
     the ``congruence and proportionality standard''.
       My questions are:
       1. Would you apply the Justice Harlan ``rational basis'' 
     standard or the ``congruence and proportionality standard''?
       2. What are your views on Justice Scalia's characterization 
     that the ``congruence and proportionality standard'' is a 
     ``flabby test'' and ``an invitation to judicial arbitrariness 
     and policy driven decision making''?
       3. Do you agree with Chief Justice Rehnquist's conclusion 
     that the Violence Against Women legislation was 
     unconstitutional because of Congress's ``method of 
     reasoning''?
       4. Do you agree with the division of constitutional 
     authority between Congress and the Supreme Court articulated 
     by Chief Justice Roberts in his responses cited in this 
     letter to questions posed at his hearing by Senator DeWine 
     and me?
           Sincerely,
                                                    Arlen Specter.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (The remarks of Mr. Corker pertaining to the introduction of S. 1280 
are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')

                          ____________________