[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 16547-16548]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     EMERGENCY JUDICIAL RELIEF ACT

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I would like to alert my colleagues that 
I intend to object to any unanimous consent agreement for the 
consideration of S. 1014, the Emergency Judicial Relief Act of 2011. 
While the sponsors of the legislation adopted one amendment I offered 
during debate in the Judiciary Committee, and that amendment improves 
the legislation, the bill remains deeply flawed and I cannot support 
it.
  I oppose S. 1014 in its current form for a number of reasons, and I 
will just briefly describe them here. First, I believe strongly that we 
should analyze critically any expansion of the Federal Government, and 
first and foremost, determine whether there is a more efficient and 
cost effective way to allocate taxpayer resources. This is especially 
true during a time when our Federal debt is at historic levels.
  In its current form, this legislation creates 10 new judgeships and 
converts two judgeships from temporary to permanent. The legislation 
does not pay for the increased spending by cutting a corresponding 
amount of Federal spending. Rather, it raises the filing fees imposed 
on litigants.
  The sponsors of the legislation have argued, based on caseload 
statistics, that these districts have some of the highest caseloads in 
the country. That may be true if you believe that the caseload 
statistics accurately describe how busy a particular district is. I am 
not arguing, today, that these statistics are necessarily inaccurate, 
but I would simply note that there have been some questions raised over 
the years regarding how well those statistics describe the caseloads. 
Regardless, based on those same statistics, there are other districts 
that are slow and getting slower.
  If we conclude that some districts are disproportionately busy, and 
therefore conclude that we should increase the number of judgeships in 
those districts, then it only makes sense to offset the increase in 
judgeships by reallocating judicial resources away from districts that 
are slow. For this reason, I offered an amendment in the Judiciary 
Committee that would have reduced the number of judgeships in other 
districts by a total of 10. I will not take the time here to go through 
the statistics in each of the districts where I proposed eliminating 
judgeships. Suffice it to say, in each district slated for a reduction, 
the caseloads have decreased over the last 5 years, with the exception 
of 1 district, where the caseload has remained flat. And, even after 
you reduce the number of judgeships in these districts, they would 
still have caseloads that are well below the national average, across 
all 94 districts. If we are going to add judgeships, I believe this is 
the most appropriate way to do it.
  The amendment I proposed in committee would also have delayed the 
effective date for the creation of the new judgeships until after the 
next Presidential election. Because none of us knows for certain who 
will be sworn in as President in January 2013, delaying the effective 
date would remove politics from the debate. Not only would it remove 
politics from the discussion, but it is consistent with how this issue 
was handled in the past. For instance, when the chairman of the 
committee introduced legislation to create additional judgeships during 
the 110th Congress, this is the approach he embraced.
  Finally, I would note that the sponsors of the bill agreed to adopt a 
separate amendment I offered in the Judiciary Committee that would 
extend Whistleblower protection to Judicial Branch employees. This is 
an improvement. My amendment ensures that Judicial Branch employees are 
not simply left without redress when they face retaliation for blowing 
the whistle on fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. While I 
appreciate the bill's

[[Page 16548]]

sponsors' willingness to adopt my amendment, and I believe it is an 
improvement, the underlying legislation remains deeply flawed for the 
reasons I have discussed. Therefore, I must oppose it. I urge my 
colleagues to do the same.

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