[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Page 18323]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         ORDER FOR ADJOURNMENT

  Mr. REID. Madam President, if there is no further business to come 
before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent it adjourn under the 
previous order, following the remarks of approximately one-half hour of 
Senator Lamar Alexander.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I wonder if I might ask the majority 
leader a question.
  Mr. REID. Of course.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. If I may ask it through the Chair, as I understand it, 
there are a total of 13 district judges on the calendar, and the 
majority leader is the only one in the Chamber who has the right to 
bring a judge from the calendar to the floor.
  If I heard him correctly, he filed cloture on four district judges. 
The way I understand the Senate procedure is that means we have an 
intervening day tomorrow and we can start voting on Wednesday.
  Because we changed the rules at the majority leader's request to make 
it easier to confirm district judges, there is only, in effect, 1 hour 
of debate on each district judge, 2 hours equally divided. Then, if 
Democrats decide they don't want to use their hour, we could use our 
hour if we wanted to--and that there never has been in the history of 
the Senate a district judge denied his or her seat by a filibuster, not 
President Obama, not anyone else.
  If that is the case, why doesn't the majority leader bring up all the 
district judges? Let's bring up all 14 of them, bring them to the 
floor, have 1 hour of debate on each one? Why don't we do that?
  Mr. REID. We tried to do that. The distinguished Senator from 
Tennessee objected.
  The truth is that the Senate has gotten out of whack. If there was a 
controversy with one of these judges, then you could have some reason 
to stall. In years past, we have done it by unanimous consent. I think 
it is unfortunate that this Senate has come to this, but that is where 
we are.
  We could approve 14 of these by my friend not objecting to them. He 
is on the record as saying he doesn't think there should be judges who 
are objected to; district court judges should be filibustered.
  But here is the situation. During the entire time we have been a 
country, there have been 23 district court judges filibustered, in the 
entire time we have been a country. Twenty of them have been during the 
Obama administration.
  So this is a game Republicans have played to do everything they can 
to make Obama a failed President, and they are not doing it. He is a 
very successful President and has a long list of things he has done in 
spite of the Republicans.
  So I don't know the point my friend is trying to make, but let's 
approve all these. They are all going to get approved anyway. So what 
we are going to do is go through this process.
  I saw my friend, the Senator from Arkansas, come through here. He 
helped, along with this Senator whose idea it was, from Tennessee--
because Senator Frist was the leader and he backed off that and I 
understand why--where we had this nuclear option come up before, the 
Constitutional option, and there was an agreement made by my Republican 
colleagues that they would not filibuster a judge unless there were 
extraordinary circumstances. Does anyone understand--does anyone not 
understand why the whole country is upset about this?
  Extraordinary circumstances? Look at these circuit court judges. It 
is outrageous that they do not like them just because they do not like 
them. Their qualifications are superb. Their educational backgrounds? 
They went to the best law schools in America. They all have good work 
records. But they objected to them.
  My friend, for whom I have great admiration, the senior Senator from 
the State of Tennessee, has a stellar record. He has been Governor of a 
State, he has been a Cabinet Secretary, and he has been a very fine 
Senator. But in his heart he knows that what is going on here in the 
Senate has been wrong. He may criticize the majority leader for working 
to change the rules here, but they have been changed before, and they 
are going to be changed again.
  It simply is not working. Who can complain about a majority vote? Who 
can complain about that? Someone talks about this filibuster as if it 
is something engraven someplace along with the Ten Commandments, but it 
is not. It is not in the Constitution. It is something we have 
developed here in the Senate. It originally came about to help get 
legislation passed. But my friends, the Republicans, the last number of 
years have used it to defeat legislation.
  These nominations should have been approved. We should not have had 
to go through all this and we will not have to in the future.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.

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