[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 5847-5859]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           EXECUTIVE SESSION

                                 ______
                                 

  NOMINATION OF JANE KELLY TO BE UNITED STATES CIRCUIT JUDGE FOR THE 
                             EIGHTH CIRCUIT

                                 ______
                                 

 NOMINATION OF SYLVIA MATHEWS BURWELL TO BE DIRECTOR OF THE OFFICE OF 
                         MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations, 
which the clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read the nomination of Jane Kelly, of Iowa, to 
be United States Circuit Judge for the Eighth Circuit.
  The legislative clerk read the nomination of Sylvia Mathews Burwell, 
of West Virginia, to be Director of the Office of Management and 
Budget.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, there will be 90 
minutes for debate equally divided in the usual form. The time from 
10:30 to 11 o'clock a.m. shall be for debate on Calendar No. 60, and 
the time from 11:30 a.m. until 12 noon shall be for debate on Calendar 
No. 64.
  The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, just last month Senate Republicans 
filibustered the nomination of Caitlin Halligan to fill a vacancy on 
the D.C. Circuit that arose when Chief Justice Roberts left the D.C. 
Circuit to join the Supreme Court 8 years ago. Caitlin Halligan is a 
woman who is extraordinarily well-qualified and amongst the most 
qualified judicial nominees I have seen from any administration. The 
smearing of her distinguished record of service was deeply 
disappointing.
  Senate Republicans blocked an up-or-down vote on her confirmation 
with multiple filibusters of her nomination and procedural objections 
that required her to be nominated five times over the last 3 years. To 
do so they turned upside down the standard they had used and urged upon 
the Senate for nominees of Republican Presidents. In those days they 
proclaimed that everything President Bush's controversial nominees had 
done in their legal careers should be viewed as merely legal 
representation of clients. They abandoned that standard with the 
Halligan nomination and contorted her legal representation of the State 
of New York into what they contended was judicial activism. It was not 
just disappointing but fundamentally unfair to a public servant and 
well qualified nominee.
  Also disconcerting were the comments and tweets by Republican 
Senators after their filibuster in which they gloated about payback. 
That, too, is wrong. It does our Nation and our Federal judiciary no 
good when they place their desire to engage in partisan tit-for-tat 
over the needs of the American people. I rejected that approach while 
moving to confirm 100 of President Bush's judicial nominees in just 17 
months in 2001 and 2002.
  Had Caitlin Halligan received an up-or-down vote, I am certain she 
would have been confirmed and been an outstanding judge on the United 
States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Instead, 
all Senate Republicans but one supported the filibuster and refused to 
vote up or down on this highly-qualified woman to fill a needed 
judgeship on the D.C. Circuit. Now that Senate Republicans have during 
the last 4 years filibustered more of President Obama's moderate 
judicial nominees than were filibustered during President Bush's entire 
8 years--67 percent more--I urge them to cease their practice of 
sacrificing outstanding judges based on their misguided sense of 
partisan payback.
  Regrettably, however, Senator Republicans are expanding their efforts 
through a ``wholesale filibuster'' of nominations to the D.C. Circuit 
by introducing a legislative proposal to strip three judgeships from 
the D.C. Circuit. I am tempted to suggest that they amend their bill to 
make it effective whenever the next Republican President is elected. I 
say that to point out that they had no concerns with supporting 
President Bush's four Senate-confirmed nominees to the D.C. Circuit. 
Those nominees filled the very vacancies for the ninth, tenth, and even 
the eleventh judgeship on the court that Senate Republicans are 
demanding be eliminated now that President Obama has been reelected by 
the American people. The target of this legislation seems apparent when 
its sponsors emphasize that it is designed to take effect immediately 
and acknowledge that ``[h]istorically, legislation introduced in the 
Senate altering the number of judgeships has most often postponed 
enactment until the beginning of the next President's term'' but that 
their legislation ``does not do this.'' It is just another of their 
concerted efforts to block this President from appointing judges to the 
D.C. Circuit.
  In its April 5, 2013 letter, the Judicial Conference of the United 
States, chaired by Chief Justice John Roberts, sent us recommendations 
``based on our current caseload needs.'' They did not recommend 
stripping judgeships from the D.C. Circuit but state that they should 
continue at 11. Four are currently vacant. According to the 
Administrative Office of U.S. Courts, the caseload per active judge for 
the D.C. Circuit has actually increased by 50 percent since 2005, when 
the Senate confirmed President Bush's nominee to fill the eleventh seat 
on the D.C. Circuit. When the Senate confirmed Thomas Griffith--
President Bush's nominee to the eleventh seat in 2005--the confirmation 
resulted in there being approximately 119 pending cases per active D.C. 
Circuit judge. There are currently 188 pending cases for each active 
judge on the D.C. Circuit, more than 50 percent higher.
  Senate Republicans also seek to misuse caseload numbers. The D.C. 
Circuit Court of Appeals is often considered ``the second most 
important court in the land'' because of its special jurisdiction and 
because of the important and complex cases that it decides. The Court 
reviews complicated decisions and rulemaking of many Federal agencies, 
and in recent years has handled some of the most important terrorism 
and enemy combatant and detention cases since the attacks of September 
11. These cases make incredible demands on the time of the judges 
serving on this Court. It is misleading to cite statistics or contend 
that hardworking judges have a light or easy workload. All cases are 
not the same and many of the hardest, most complex and most time-
consuming cases in the Nation end up at the D.C. Circuit.
  Today's nominee is fortunate to be from Iowa and nominated to a 
vacancy on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. I fully support 
confirming her and commend Senator Harkin for recommending her to the 
President and Senator Grassley for also supporting her confirmation. 
The confirmation to fill a vacancy on the Eighth Circuit also 
demonstrates that the caseload argument that Senate Republicans sought 
to use as justification for their unfair filibuster of Caitlin Halligan 
was one of convenience rather than conviction. With the confirmation 
today, the Eighth Circuit will have the lowest number of pending 
appeals per active judge of any circuit in the country. Yes, lower than 
the D.C. Circuit. The sponsors of the partisan bill directed as a 
wholesale filibuster of the D.C. Circuit do not propose the Eighth 
Circuit, which covers Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, 
North Dakota and South Dakota, be stripped of any judgeships.
  Although they unnecessarily delayed the confirmation from last year 
to this year of Judge Bacharach of Oklahoma to the Tenth Circuit, 
Senate Republicans all voted in favor of confirming him. They did not 
object, vote against, filibuster or seek to strip that circuit of 
judgeships even though its caseload per judge is 139, well below that 
of the D.C. Circuit.
  This Iowa nominee has also proven the exception to the practice of 
Republicans of holding up confirmations of circuit nominees with no 
reason for months. The Senate is being allowed to proceed to her 
confirmation barely a month after it was reported by the Judiciary 
Committee. I would like to think that this signals a new willingness to 
abandon their delaying tactics

[[Page 5848]]

but fear that it is an exception. To expedite this nomination meant 
skipping over a number of nominees, including some who have been 
waiting since last year for the Senate to vote on their confirmations.
  President Obama's other circuit court nominees have faced filibusters 
and unprecedented levels of obstruction. Senate Republicans used to 
insist that the filibustering of judicial nominations was 
unconstitutional. The Constitution has not changed, but as soon as 
President Obama was elected they reversed course and filibustered 
President Obama's very first judicial nomination. Judge David Hamilton 
of Indiana was a widely-respected 15-year veteran of the Federal bench 
nominated to the Seventh Circuit and was supported by Senator Dick 
Lugar, the longest-serving Republican in the Senate. They delayed his 
confirmation for 7 months. Senate Republicans then proceeded to 
obstruct and delay just about every circuit court nominee of this 
President, filibustering 10 of them. They delayed confirmation of Judge 
Patty Shwartz of New Jersey to the Third Circuit for 13 months. They 
delayed confirmation of Judge Richard Taranto to the Federal Circuit 
for 12 months. They delayed confirmation of Judge Albert Diaz of North 
Carolina to the Fourth Circuit for 11 months. They delayed confirmation 
of Judge Jane Stranch of Tennessee to the Sixth Circuit and Judge 
William Kayatta to the First Circuit for 10 months. They delayed 
confirmation of Judge Robert Bacharach of Oklahoma to the Tenth Circuit 
for 8 months. They delayed confirmation of Judge Ray Lohier of New York 
to the Second Circuit for seven months. They delayed confirmation of 
Judge Scott Matheson of Utah to the Tenth Circuit and Judge James Wynn, 
Jr. of North Carolina to the Fourth Circuit for 6 months. They delayed 
confirmation of Judge Andre Davis of Maryland to the Fourth Circuit, 
Judge Henry Floyd of South Carolina to the Fourth Circuit, Judge 
Stephanie Thacker of West Virginia to the Fourth Circuit, and Judge 
Jacqueline Nguyen of California to the Ninth Circuit for 5 months. They 
delayed confirmation of Judge Adalberto Jordan of Florida to the 
Eleventh Circuit, Judge Beverly Martin of Georgia to the Eleventh 
Circuit, Judge Mary Murguia of Arizona to the Ninth Circuit, Judge 
Bernice Donald of Tennessee to the Sixth Circuit, Judge Barbara Keenan 
of Virginia to the Fourth Circuit, Judge Thomas Vanaskie of 
Pennsylvania to the Third Circuit, Judge Joseph Greenaway of New Jersey 
to the Third Circuit, Judge Denny Chin of New York to the Second 
Circuit, and Judge Chris Droney of Connecticut to the Second Circuit 
for 4 months. They delayed confirmation of Judge Paul Watford of 
California to the Ninth Circuit, Judge Andrew Hurwitz of Arizona to the 
Ninth Circuit, Judge Morgan Christen of Alaska to the Ninth Circuit, 
Judge Stephen Higginson of Louisiana to the Fifth Circuit, Judge Gerard 
Lynch of New York to the Second Circuit, Judge Susan Carney of 
Connecticut to the Second Circuit, and Judge Kathleen O'Malley of Ohio 
to the Federal Circuit for 3 months.
  The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has reported that the 
median time circuit nominees have had to wait before a Senate vote has 
skyrocketed from 18 days for President Bush's nominees to 132 days for 
President Obama's. This is the result of Republican obstruction. So 
while it is good that they have allowed this vote on Jane Kelly from 
Iowa, if it proves an exception rather than a change in their tactics 
of obstruction, we will recognize it for what it is. Senate Republicans 
have a long way to go to match the record of cooperation on consensus 
nominees that Senate Democrats established during the Bush 
administration.
  Delay has been most extensive with respect to circuit court nominees 
but not limited to them. Consensus district court nominees are also 
being needlessly delayed. During President Bush's first term alone, 57 
district nominees were confirmed within just 1 week of being reported. 
By contrast, during his first 4 years only two of President Obama's 
district nominees have been confirmed within a week of being reported 
by the Committee.
  Just before the Thanksgiving recess in 2009, when Senator Sessions of 
Alabama was the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, we were 
able to get Republican agreement to confirm Judge Abdul Kallon, a 
nominee from Alabama, and Judge Christina Reiss, our Chief Judge for 
the Federal District Court for the District of Vermont. They had their 
hearing on November 4, were voted on by the Judiciary Committee two 
weeks later on November 19, and were confirmed by the Senate on 
November 21. They were not stalled on the Senate Executive Calendar 
without a vote for weeks and months. They were confirmed two days after 
the vote by the Judiciary Committee. That should be the standard we 
follow, not the exception. It should not take being from the ranking 
Republican's home State to be promptly confirmed as a noncontroversial 
judicial nominee.
  The obstruction of President Obama's nominees by Senate Republicans 
has contributed to the damagingly high level of judicial vacancies that 
has persisted for over 4 years. Persistent vacancies force fewer judges 
to take on growing caseloads, and make it harder for Americans to have 
access to speedy justice. While Senate Republicans delayed and 
obstructed, the number of judicial vacancies remained historically high 
and it has become more difficult for our courts to provide speedy, 
quality justice for the American people. There are today 83 judicial 
vacancies across the country. By way of contrast, that is nearly double 
the number of vacancies that existed at this point in the Bush 
administration. The circuit and district judges that we have been able 
to confirm over the last four years fall 20 short of the total for this 
point in President Bush's second term.
  There should be no doubt that these delays, and the vacancies they 
prolong, have a real impact on the American people. Last week, the 
president of the American Bar Association wrote in The Hill that:

       Real costs are often borne by businesses whose viability 
     relies on the timely resolution of commercial disputes, by 
     defendants who lose jobs and sometimes family ties while 
     languishing behind bars awaiting trial, and, ultimately, the 
     public that expects courts to deliver on the promise of 
     justice for all. Our economy depends on courts to enforce 
     contracts, protect property and determine liability. Judicial 
     vacancies increase caseloads per judge, creating delays that 
     jeopardize the ability of courts to expeditiously deliver 
     judgments. Delay translates into costs for litigants. Delay 
     results in uncertainty that discourages growth and 
     investment.

  She concluded that ``vacancies are potential job-killers.'' I ask 
unanimous consent that this article be printed in the Record at the 
conclusion of my remarks.
  Today the Senate will vote on the nomination of Jane Kelly to the 
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. She has a distinguished 
career in the Federal Defender's Office, first as an assistant federal 
public defender and then as a supervising attorney. In addition to 
working in the Federal Defender's Office, Jane Kelly has also served as 
a visiting instructor at the University of Illinois College of Law and 
taught at the University of Iowa College of Law. After law school, she 
served as a law clerk to two Federal judges: the Honorable Donald J. 
Porter of the U.S. District Court for the District of South Dakota and 
the Honorable David R. Hansen of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 
Eighth Circuit. Jane Kelly was reported unanimously by the Judiciary 
Committee one month ago. I am especially pleased that her nomination is 
not being blocked the way Senate Republicans blocked the nomination of 
Bonnie Campell, the former Attorney General of Iowa and first head of 
the Justice Department's Violence Against Women Office. In part because 
that nomination was blocked, Jane Kelly will be just the second woman 
ever to serve on the Eighth Circuit.
  After today's vote, a dozen judicial nominees remain pending on the 
Executive Calendar, including four who could and should have been 
confirmed last year. Like Jane Kelly, they deserve swift consideration 
and an up-or-down vote.

[[Page 5849]]

  Finally, over the last several months, I have continued to speak out 
about the damaging effects of sequestration on our Federal courts and 
our system of justice. The harmful effects continue. As a result of 
sequestration, Federal prosecutors and Federal public defenders 
continue to be furloughed. In a column dated April 18, 2013, 
distinguished Federal Judges Paul Friedman and Reggie Walton from the 
United States District Court for the District of Columbia spoke out 
against the harmful impact of sequestration. They wrote:

       [S]equestration poses an existential threat to the right of 
     indigent defendants to have publicly funded legal 
     representation--a right that the Supreme Court recognized 50 
     years ago in its landmark decision in Gideon v. Wainwright. . 
     . .
       [T]the effect of sequestration on the courts severely 
     threatens the rights guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment to 
     those accused of crimes and, in the process, threatens our 
     federal judiciary's reputation as one of the world's premier 
     legal systems. This is a price we cannot afford to pay.

  I ask unanimous consent that this column be printed in the Record at 
the conclusion of my remarks.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                     [From The Hill, Apr. 17, 2013]

       President and Congress Must Act to Fill Judicial Vacancies

                          (By Laurel Bellows)

       The judicial appointment process has been broken for two 
     decades. Through the first two centuries of our republic, the 
     Senate was renowned as the world's greatest deliberative 
     body, the home of lawmakers and statespeople who understood 
     not only the impact of soaring rhetoric but also the value of 
     collaboration and compromise. Senators assiduously exercised 
     their authority to provide advice and consent on judicial 
     nominations. The judicial appointment process was divisive at 
     times, but presidents and senators have historically 
     recognized that stonewalling judicial nominees undermines the 
     independence of the judiciary as a coequal branch of 
     government. With 86 (one in 10) vacancies on our federal 
     bench and with 37 vacant judgeships qualifying as judicial 
     emergencies, the time for collaboration and compromise is 
     now.
       Successive presidents and Senate majority and minority 
     leaders have pointed at each other and claimed with 
     exasperation that their political opponents are responsible 
     for stalling judicial nominees. Neither side is willing to 
     end a process that has degenerated into Beltway gridlock. 
     There are many losers in this stalemate. One is the judicial 
     nominee, whose law practice and family suffer during the 
     extended limbo of the pending nomination. Real costs are 
     often borne by businesses whose viability relies on the 
     timely resolution of commercial disputes, by defendants who 
     lose jobs and sometimes family ties while languishing behind 
     bars awaiting trial, and, ultimately, the public that expects 
     courts to deliver on the promise of justice for all. Our 
     economy depends on courts to enforce contracts, protect 
     property and determine liability. Judicial vacancies increase 
     caseloads per judge, creating delays that jeopardize the 
     ability of courts to expeditiously deliver judgments. Delay 
     translates into costs for litigants. Delay results in 
     uncertainty that discourages growth and investment. With 60 
     percent more judicial vacancies at present than in January 
     2009 and pending civil cases in U.S. District Courts 7 
     percent higher than in 2005, vacancies are potential job-
     killers.
       The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of 
     Georgia has had one open judge's position for more than 1,500 
     days and another for more than 1,100 days. Federal courts in 
     Arizona, North Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin have similarly 
     long-lived vacancies. In the U.S. District Court for the 
     Central District of California, a venue that recently 
     considered a $1 billion case, a seat on the Ninth Circuit 
     U.S. Court of Appeals has been open for more than 3,000 days, 
     since 2004.
       Vacancies affect our criminal justice system. Major crimes 
     like terrorism, bank robbery and kidnapping are tried in 
     federal courts that are understaffed. Plus, the number of 
     defendants pending in criminal cases before U.S. district 
     courts has increased 33 percent since 2003. The 
     constitutional rights of defendants to a speedy trial are not 
     waived because senators cannot agree on judges. To meet those 
     constitutional obligations, criminal trials receive 
     precedence over civil matters, further adding to the civil 
     backlog. Exacerbating slowdowns caused by vacancies, the 
     courts have announced that sequestration will require staff 
     furloughs. Some courts will not accept civil filings on 
     certain days.
       Progress can be made with small steps and collaborative 
     leadership. As a first step, Democrats and Republicans should 
     schedule up-or-down floor votes for those 13 nominees 
     favorably reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee with 
     little or no opposition.
       Second, the 11 nominees who were pending on the floor when 
     the 112th Congress adjourned should be fast-tracked. These 
     women and men nominees already have endured the laborious 
     review process and Judiciary Committee approval. The 
     technicality of adjournment should not stall their 
     consideration.
       Next, the Senate majority and minority leaders should agree 
     to prioritize filling judicial emergencies and shorten the 
     period of time between nomination and votes. A nominee for 
     Majority Leader Harry Reid's home state of Nevada has waited 
     more than 200 days without a floor vote. Minority Leader 
     Mitch McConnell's home state has fared even worse. A seat has 
     been vacant in the Western District of Kentucky for more than 
     500 days.
       Finally, the White House should offer a nominee for every 
     open seat on the bench. The many vacancies and anticipated 
     vacancies warrant making judicial vacancies a priority this 
     year. Additional nominations from President Obama will 
     emphasize the responsibility of the Senate to end decades of 
     escalating retaliation against qualified judicial nominees.
       Bellows is president of the American Bar Association.
                                  ____


               [From the Washington Post, Apr. 18, 2013]

     Public Defenders Offices Shouldn't Suffer Under Sequestration

               (By Paul L. Friedman and Reggie B. Walton)

       Paul L. Friedman and Reggie B. Walton are federal judges on 
     the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
       Generally, federal judges should not become embroiled in 
     political disputes. But we feel compelled to speak out 
     because sequestration poses an existential threat to the 
     right of indigent defendants to have publicly funded legal 
     representation--a right that the Supreme Court recognized 50 
     years ago in its landmark decision in Gideon v. Wainwright.
       Before becoming judges, we served as federal prosecutors 
     and as defense lawyers. As the former, we vigorously pursued 
     the prosecution of individuals accused of violating the law. 
     And upon securing convictions, we aggressively sought 
     incarceration when the circumstances warranted. Our ethical 
     obligation as prosecutors was not only to secure convictions 
     but also to ensure that the results we obtained were just. 
     Confidence in the justice of an outcome--especially when the 
     accused loses his or her freedom--is maximized only if the 
     defendant has had competent legal representation.
       Our adversarial system works best with competent lawyers on 
     both sides. In federal court in the District of Columbia, 
     where we serve as judges, 90 percent of criminal defendants 
     cannot afford to pay for lawyers. Of those defendants, 60 
     percent are represented by attorneys employed by the Office 
     of the Federal Public Defender for the District of Columbia; 
     the others are represented by private attorneys approved by 
     the court, provided training by the federal public defender 
     and paid from public funds under the Criminal Justice Act. 
     Because of the demanding selection criteria for defense 
     attorneys, the caliber of representation provided to indigent 
     defendants in D.C. federal courts is outstanding. So when a 
     person represented by one of these attorneys is convicted in 
     our courtrooms, we can impose sentences with a high degree of 
     confidence that the defendant's best arguments and defenses 
     were explored or presented.
       Sequestration has the potential to alter this reality. 
     Federal public defender offices throughout the country stand 
     to have their already tight budgets reduced significantly. 
     The District's office is poised to furlough each of its 
     lawyers for at least 15 days before the end of the fiscal 
     year on Sept. 30. Also impaired will be its ability to assist 
     private attorneys appointed to represent indigent defendants. 
     Already, we judges are seeing court dates pushed back because 
     lawyers at the federal public defender's office and the U.S. 
     attorney's office are being furloughed.
       Lawyers in the federal public defender's office in the 
     District--public servants who earn much less than their 
     private-sector counterparts--must also endure a roughly 12 
     percent reduction in salary. (The furloughs and salary cuts 
     were poised to be worse, but the executive committee of the 
     Judicial Conference announced efforts this week to help make 
     up the shortfall.) ``It's tremendously demoralizing, even for 
     people who are used to fighting against extraordinary odds,'' 
     noted one federal public defender.
       This all seems a heavy price, given that cutting the 
     judiciary's budget will do little to redress the country's 
     economic crisis. The federal courts' budget nationwide 
     comprises only 0.2 percent, or about $7 billion, of the $3.7 
     trillion federal budget, and funding of federal public 
     defenders and Criminal Justice Act attorneys must come from 
     that small share.
       ``Lawyers in criminal cases are necessities, not 
     luxuries,'' the Supreme Court said 50 years ago in Gideon. A 
     federal public defender in Ohio echoed the sentiment this 
     month: ``These are not luxury services that we're providing. 
     These are constitutionally mandated services, and because 
     they're mandated, someone has to do it.'' When it comes to 
     the constitutional right to the effective assistance of 
     counsel, can we really say, ``We don't have the money''?

[[Page 5850]]

       Alexander Hamilton observed in the Federalist Papers that 
     unlike the legislative branch, which ``not only commands the 
     purse, but prescribes the rules by which the duties and 
     rights of every citizen are to be regulated,'' and the 
     executive branch, which ``not only dispenses the honors, but 
     holds the sword of the community,'' the judiciary ``is beyond 
     comparison the weakest of the three departments of power.'' 
     Because it has ``neither force nor will, but merely 
     judgment,'' Hamilton explained, the judicial branch depends 
     on the other branches to fulfill its constitutional mandate.
       Particularly as concerns grow about wrongful convictions, 
     it is distressing to see resources so dramatically diminished 
     for those who protect the rights of the poor in the criminal 
     justice system. And the judiciary is virtually powerless to 
     do anything about it. We appreciate that the country's fiscal 
     problems must be addressed. But the effect of sequestration 
     on the courts severely threatens the rights guaranteed by the 
     Sixth Amendment to those accused of crimes and, in the 
     process, threatens our federal judiciary's reputation as one 
     of the world's premier legal systems. This is a price we 
     cannot afford to pay.

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I come to the floor to speak about the 
nomination of Jane Kelly. I compliment the chairman for speaking on 
immigration. I am not going to speak on immigration today, probably, 
but I hope to be able to speak several times before the bill actually 
gets to the floor of the Senate, to inform my colleagues about my point 
of view on the whole issue of immigration. But I can say generally that 
we all know the immigration system is broken and legislation has to 
pass. I hope we can get something that has broad bipartisan agreement. 
Already the product before us is a product of bipartisanship because 
four Democrats and four Republicans have submitted a proposal for our 
committee to consider.
  I rise today, as I have said, in support of the nomination of Jane 
Kelly to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the Eighth Circuit. The nominee 
before us today, Ms. Kelly, presently serves as an assistant public 
defender for the Federal Public Defender's Office for the Northern 
District of Iowa. She does that work in the Cedar Rapids office.
  She is well regarded in my home State of Iowa, so I am pleased to 
support Senator Harkin's recommendation that he made to the President, 
and subsequently the President's nomination of Ms. Kelly.
  She received her BA summa cum laude from Duke University in 1987. 
After spending a few months in New Zealand as a Fulbright scholar, she 
went on to Harvard Law School, graduated there cum laude, earning her 
J.D. degree in 1991.
  Upon graduation, she served as a law clerk, first for Judge Donald J. 
Porter, U.S. District Court, South Dakota, and then for Judge David R. 
Hansen of the Eighth Circuit. Judge Hansen sent us a letter in support 
of Ms. Kelly. Before I quote from it, I have confidence in Judge 
Hansen's words because he was a person I suggested to Republican 
Presidents, both for district judge and then his long tenure on the 
Eighth Circuit, and he has been a friend of mine as well.
  This is what now-retired Judge Hansen said in support of Ms. Kelly: 
``She is a forthright woman of high integrity and honest character.''
  Then he went on to say she has an ``exceptionally keen intellect.''
  Then Judge Hansen concludes by saying: ``She will be a welcome 
addition to the Court if confirmed.''
  I have no doubt that she will be confirmed.
  Beginning in 1994, she has served as an assistant Federal public 
defender in the Northern District of Iowa. She handled criminal matters 
for indigent defendants, has been responsible for trying a wide range 
of crimes. She became the supervising attorney in that Cedar Rapids 
office starting in 1999.
  Ms. Kelly is active in the bar and in district court matters. She 
presently serves on the Criminal Justice Act Panel Selection Committee, 
the blue-ribbon panel for criminal cases. She also serves on the 
Facilities Security Committee of the district court.
  In 2004, her peers honored her with the John Adams Award from the 
Iowa Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and Drake University Law 
School. She was unanimously chosen for this award, which recognizes 
individuals who show a commitment to the constitutional rights of 
criminal defendants.
  The American Bar Association's Standing Committee on the Federal 
Judiciary gave her a unanimous ``qualified'' rating.
  I congratulate Ms. Kelly on her accomplishments and wish her well in 
her duties. I am pleased to support her confirmation and urge my 
colleagues to join me.
  This brings us to a point where, as of today, prior to this supposed 
approval of Ms. Kelly, we have a record in the Senate of approving 185 
judges throughout the 4\1/2\ years of this Presidency, and the Senate 
has only rejected 2. That would be a .989 batting average for the 
President of the United States with his nominees here in the Senate.
  As I stated last week, a .989 batting average is a record any 
President would be thrilled with. Yet this President, without 
justification, complains about obstruction and delay.
  Today's confirmation is the 14th so far this year including 5 Circuit 
Judges and 9 District Judges.
  Let me put that in perspective for my colleagues. At this point in 
the second term of the Bush presidency, only one judicial nomination 
had been confirmed. A comparative record of 14-1 is nothing to cry 
about.
  As I said, this is the fifth nominee to be confirmed as a Circuit 
Judge this year, and the 35th overall. Over 76 percent of his Circuit 
nominees have been confirmed. President Clinton ended up at 73 percent; 
President Bush at 71 percent. So President Obama is doing better than 
the previous two Presidents.
  So again, this President and Senate Democrats should have no 
complaints on the judicial confirmation process. The fact of the matter 
is that President Obama is doing quite well.
  I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                             Sequestration

  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, this morning our Democratic leader, 
Senator Reid, and the Republican leader, Senator McConnell, came to the 
floor and talked about sequestration. Sequestration had an 
overwhelmingly bipartisan vote of 74 to 26. What it said was if 
Congress, on a bipartisan basis, could not reach an agreement on budget 
reduction, then automatic spending cuts would go into place.
  Unfortunately, we did not reach that agreement. The spending cuts, 
known as sequestration, went into place, and for the last month or so 
there has been speculation as to whether anybody would notice.
  People are starting to notice because across this country changes are 
taking place. For example, the Federal Aviation Administration has been 
asked to cut about 5 percent from their operating budget, such as 
salaries for employees. Because it is being done in a 6-month period, 
it turns out to be a 10-percent cut.
  What that means, for example, is one of the largest groups of 
employees in the FAA, the air traffic controllers, is going to go 
without pay 1 day out of every 10 working days. So with fewer air 
traffic controllers on the job and fewer people able to direct flights, 
we have noticed this week that flights are starting to slow down across 
the country. The FAA estimates that some 6,800 flights a day will be 
delayed. We have already started feeling that because air traffic 
controllers are being laid off due to the sequestration plan.
  Putting that into perspective, on the worst day of last year, because 
of weather, 3,000 flights were delayed. Now, on a regular daily basis 
more than twice that number will be delayed because of the reduction in 
force of air traffic controllers due to the sequestration passed by 
Congress.
  Senators are coming to the floor and looking for relief from that. 
Some on the other side are arguing if the Secretary of Transportation 
just had the

[[Page 5851]]

power to pick and choose within his Department, he might be able to 
avoid these layoffs. I don't know if that is true, but I will say that 
making these cuts at the end of a fiscal year is going to create 
hardship in a lot of different departments and agencies.
  I heard one of my colleagues from Indiana come to the floor and say 
families face this all the time, and they have to make cutbacks. That 
is true. I have had that happen with my own family. They also want to 
make certain, if they can, to get through tough periods without cutting 
into the essentials of life, such as prescription drugs, paying the 
mortgage, and paying the utility bills. We need to make this a 
thoughtful effort to avoid sequestration.
  The Democratic leader, Senator Reid, has proposed that we, in fact, 
defer this sequestration through the remainder of this fiscal year, 
until October 1. To make up the costs, he uses the overseas contingency 
fund. This was a fund created to pay for our wars overseas, and thank 
goodness Iraq has been closed down as an act of war and Afghanistan is 
in the process. So there will be a surplus of money in this fund--some 
$600 billion--that otherwise had been anticipated to be spent.
  What the majority leader suggested is that we take a small part of 
that and use it so we can avoid the impact of sequestration and go back 
to business as usual for the remainder of this year.
  I happen to think sequestration is not a good policy. We need a 
better approach and more thoughtful approach, and this will give us a 
chance. We can take the funds that otherwise would be spent overseas--
on a war that, thank goodness, will not be there--and instead use them 
at home to avoid some hardships which have just been described.
  So now we hear from the Republican side that they don't think this is 
a viable alternative. They question whether there is an overseas 
contingency account. The irony is that Congressman Paul Ryan, chairman 
of the House Budget Committee, included the same money in his 
Republican budget. Senator McConnell, who was critical of it today, 
said back in April 2011:
  Today, the Chairman of the House Budget Committee, Congressman Paul 
Ryan, is releasing a serious and detailed plan for getting our nation's 
fiscal house in order.
  That serious plan, I might remind Senator McConnell, included just 
the funding that Senator Reid is asking for. So we are not asking for 
something the Republicans have not already stood up and embraced. 
Instead, we are saying let's deal with the national challenges and 
national emergencies and let's deal with them with the money that would 
otherwise be spent overseas.


                        Marketplace Fairness Act

  After we have finished the vote on the judge, I am hoping this 
important issue will leave us in a position to move to proceed to the 
underlying bill, the Marketplace Fairness Act. This is a bill that 
Senator Enzi of Wyoming and I have introduced in an effort to bring 
some equity and fairness when it comes to the collection of sales tax.
  Currently, in the United States, Internet retailers are not required 
by law to collect sales tax from sales in States that have a sales tax, 
and that is about 45 or 46 States. The Supreme Court told us 20 years 
ago if remote sales--catalog sales and Internet sales--are to collect 
sales tax, Congress has to pass the law to do it. That is what this is. 
We have been waiting 20 years. In the meantime, it has created some 
serious problems.
  First, Internet retailers have an advantage over the brick-and-mortar 
businesses in communities. They have an advantage because the Internet 
retailers don't collect sales tax, so there is an automatic discount on 
whatever the State sales tax might be--6, 8, 9, or 10 percent. This has 
caused many of the stores on Main Street and in shopping malls to face 
competition that is unfair and sometimes forces them into closing their 
businesses.
  We are trying to level the playing field and say: If you sell into a 
State such as Illinois, you will collect our sales tax on the sales to 
Illinoisans buying your products, period.
  The debate has come up over the States which have no sales tax. Let 
me make it clear: There is nothing in the Marketplace Fairness bill 
which will impose any new Federal tax or any sales tax beyond what is 
currently in the law in every State in the union.
  If a State, such as Oregon, Montana, New Hampshire, Delaware, even 
Alaska, has no State sales tax, this bill will not change it. The 
residents of those States will not be compelled to pay a sales tax 
either over the counter or over the Internet. If a retailer that 
happens to be located in one of those States sells into a State with a 
sales tax, we will provide, free of charge, the software for them to 
collect the sales tax and remit it to the State where the purchase was 
made.
  There have been arguments that this is too complicated; that there 
are 9,000 different taxing districts. I just have to say that with 
software available today, what we are suggesting is something that is 
easily done without great cost. In fact, in this bill we are requiring 
the States to provide software to the Internet retailers free of charge 
so they can collect the sales tax as it is charged on each Internet 
purchase.
  There have been suggestions by some that we ought to carve out some 
States; that we ought to say this new law will apply to some States but 
not to other States. The States and their businesses have to volunteer 
to collect a sales tax for another State.
  I cannot accept that. It is worse than the current situation.
  In the current situation, the store on Main Street is competing with 
an Internet retailer that doesn't collect a sales tax. This carve-out 
approach would say not only will we discriminate against those shops on 
Main Street, other Internet retailers which are not in the State that 
is carved out have to collect sales tax, but those in the carve-out 
State don't. So it makes for an even more inequitable situation. I 
could not accept it.
  I might say the Presiding Officer, who has quite a history on this 
issue, having been one of the parties to the Quill Supreme Court 
decision, also made the point that we ought to take care; the standard 
we set for the collection of sales tax is likely to be used in the next 
trade negotiation with a country that is trying to establish their 
rules when it comes to competition on Internet commerce.
  So if the collection of sales tax is required across the board in 
America, the same can be asked in our trade agreements with other 
countries. If we don't do that, we run the risk that the carve-out 
becomes the exception that makes the rule in the next trade agreement, 
which is something that would be totally unfair to American companies.
  So that is where we stand. What I said yesterday, I will repeat now. 
At noon today we will move to proceed to this bill. I have urged my 
colleagues to come forward with amendments if they have them. If they 
don't, that is fine. But if they do, bring them forward. Let's not 
delay this issue.
  We are in the last week before a recess. Members have plans back in 
their States for the weekend, and we want to make sure they can keep 
those plans. Those Members who have an amendment to this bill should 
step forward with their suggestions immediately after the vote on the 
motion to proceed.
  Members should bring their amendments to the Senate floor. Don't 
wait. It is important that we do this on a regular basis so we can 
debate those amendments which need to be debated and vote on them, 
which is almost how a Senate is supposed to do it. That is what we 
face.
  I urge those who are holding back their amendments and want to wait 
until Thursday or Friday--if anybody does that, we are likely to be 
here beyond Thursday and Friday, and that is not fair to our 
colleagues. If anybody has a good amendment--or any amendment for that 
matter--bring it to the floor.
  Senator Enzi, Senator Alexander, Senator Heitkamp, and I will work to 
try to find a way to accommodate amendments that are consistent with 
the bill--or at least debate them and

[[Page 5852]]

have a vote on them if they are not. I think that is the best thing we 
can do. As I said, I think that is why we were elected--to debate these 
issues, resolve them, and vote.
  So this is a fair warning to everyone. There are no excuses left. 
This bill has been on the calendar and available for amendment since 
last week, which gave everyone plenty of time to craft their amendment. 
Bring it to the floor immediately after the vote on the motion to 
proceed, and let's get down to business. Let's do what we were elected 
to do and pass this bill--or at least vote on this bill, and I hope 
pass it--before we break for this recess.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. ISAKSON. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to address the 
Senate for up to 5 minutes on the marketplace fairness legislation.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. ISAKSON. Madam President, before he leaves the floor, I would 
like to thank the distinguished majority whip for his leadership. I 
also want to thank Senator Enzi, Senator Alexander, and the Presiding 
Officer for their leadership on what is an important issue to my State, 
and really to every State.
  The marketplace fairness bill is a good idea whose time has finally 
come. We have been waiting 20 years since the court decision to give 
direction to our States so they can collect the retail sales tax upon 
which many of them finance most--if not all in some cases--of their 
governmental operations. This is not a new tax. It is not a different 
tax. It is not a tax we are applying to anybody. It is a mechanism for 
the collection of a tax that has been owed for over 20 years by people 
making retail purchases in our States from people who sell out of 
State.
  I commend the leadership on the legislation, the way it is drawn. I 
hope everybody will bring their amendments to the floor, if they have 
any. I don't know that there is any need for them. I hope we can send a 
clear message to the House and to our States that we are prepared to 
let our local governments and our State governments collect the tax 
that is owed to them and has been owed to them.
  The Governor of my State, Nathan Deal, last year led a major tax 
reform package that passed with only one dissenting vote in our 
legislature. It reformed taxes on utilities for manufacturing to 
attract businesses to our State. It reformed our income tax code and it 
reformed a lot of our taxes, but it also passed legislation consistent 
with the Marketplace Fairness Act so we can finally collect a tax that 
has been owed for a long time in our State.
  As a real estate guy, as someone who used to lease retail space in 
shopping centers and on corners in the cities and counties in our 
State, I know what it has meant to retailers. What has happened is, in 
many cases, they become showrooms and servicing agents for an offsite 
seller. Customers in our community will go to the retail store, look at 
the products, go home and go on the Internet, buy the product on the 
Internet, and if something goes wrong with it, they will go back to the 
store and try to get it fixed. But the State never gets the sales tax 
on that sale because it was an Internet sale made by someone offsite.
  Secondly, it has put pressure on the rest of the tax system. Think 
about this. If a local community gets most of its revenue from a local 
special purpose sales tax and all of a sudden that tax goes down, not 
because people aren't paying it but because it is not being collected, 
what happens? The pressure on the ad valorem tax goes up. So the 
retailer, who is already burdened with losing business because of 
Internet sales, becomes further burdened because they have more 
pressure from the ad valorem tax they pay for the space they lease and 
occupy. So it has had a compounding effect.
  Also, we are famous in Washington for what is known as unfunded 
mandates to local government, whether it is IDEA in education or 
whatever it might be. It is time we gave our local governments the 
chance for a mandate to collect a tax that is owed to them.
  Lastly, for my State of Georgia, we have a 4-percent sales and use 
tax that goes to our State. We have special purpose local option sales 
taxes that are referendum taxes levied by local communities to finance 
school construction and other opportunities. We have a Metropolitan 
Rapid Transit Authority in Atlanta which in 1974 was seeded with a 
referendum that passed a 1-cent tax in Fulton and Dekalb Counties for 
the financing of the beginning of that subway system. It is not fair to 
deny those States and those entities the ability to collect a tax that 
is owed. It is only right, after 20 years of getting direction from the 
appellate courts as to what to do, that this Senate and this Congress 
and our country say to our States we are going to give a mandate for 
States to collect the taxes owed to them. We are going to take the 
pressure off the local retailers. We are going to level the playing 
field. We are not adding a tax to anyone; we are adding opportunity to 
everyone.
  I commend Senator Durbin, the Presiding Officer, Senator Alexander, 
and Senator Enzi for their tireless leadership. I urge all Members of 
the Senate to do what we did on the motion to proceed and what we did 
on the amendment on the budget. Let's give an overwhelming ratification 
of the Marketplace Fairness Act.
  Mr. CARPER. Madam President, would the Senator yield for a moment?
  Mr. ISAKSON. Absolutely.
  Mr. CARPER. Madam President, I wish to join with the Senator from 
Georgia. There are issues we disagree on, but this is a subject we 
agree on--another one we agree on.
  I was privileged to be the Governor of Delaware for 8 years, and now 
I have served with the Senator from Georgia and other colleagues for 
the last 12 years. Delaware is one of those States that doesn't have a 
sales tax. I think most of these States that don't have a sales tax are 
not supportive of this bill. I am. Either I am out of step or maybe 
not.
  We have all these signs when people come into a State that say 
``Welcome to,'' whether it is Georgia or Delaware or North Dakota. We 
had a sign that said, ``Welcome to Delaware, the Small Wonder, the 
First State'' and they all had the name of the Governor. When I became 
Governor, I said why don't we take down the name of the Governor and 
put something else up, and what we put up is ``Home of Tax-Free 
Shopping.'' That is what we put up: ``Home of Tax-Free Shopping.''
  In our little State, we have borders with New Jersey to the east and 
Pennsylvania to the north and Maryland to the west. They have sales 
tax. A lot of people in those States come to Delaware to shop, to buy 
things, and help to fuel our economy, our retail economy, and to help 
fuel our tourism economy as well. When people say to me: As a former 
Governor and a Senator from a State that doesn't have a sales tax, why 
do you support this bill, one, I think it is an equity issue. The 
brick-and-mortar merchants are there collecting the sales tax in those 
45 or so States that have a sales tax to help support the community, 
help to support the government and the services that are provided 
locally in States across America. Then we have folks who are selling 
things over the Internet to people who live in those States without 
collecting the sales tax, without being part of the solution.
  The other thing--and the Senator from Georgia knows as well as I do--
the brick-and-mortar merchants have people come into their stores 
pretty regularly, and they ask the merchants: How would you like to 
help support the Little League? How would you like to help support the 
Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts? How would you like to support this festival 
or this function? They get asked about those things all the time--and 
they do. Meanwhile, the folks they are competing with--the Internet 
sales--they are not supporting those kinds of activities. So there is 
an equity question here.
  For me, why I see value in this--a guy who comes from a State who 
doesn't have a sales tax--is this: I want more people from other 
States, including the three around us, to come and buy things in my 
State. If they can buy things over the Internet and not pay a sales 
tax, then why would they come to Delaware? But if they have to pay a

[[Page 5853]]

sales tax that is going to be collected by the Internet provider 
selling to people in those States with sales taxes, they might come to 
Delaware and shop.
  Mr. ISAKSON. Madam President, I appreciate the leadership of the 
distinguished former Governor. Knowing him as well as I do, he is a 
States rights advocate and this is a States rights issue and we are 
here to protect the rights of our States.
  Mr. CARPER. It sure is a States rights issue. I would be remiss if I 
didn't say this. I know my colleague has to leave. But in my first term 
as Governor, I had never heard of Mike Enzi. Who is this Mike Enzi guy? 
It turns out he is a great guy. He is one of our colleagues and a 
former mayor of Gillette, WY, and he has been pushing this as a Senator 
forever. Mike Leavitt, who succeeded me as chairman of the NGA, has 
been pushing this forever, a former Governor of Utah. So I give a shout 
out to both of them for their leadership. If we don't give up, 
sometimes we can get stuff done, and Mike Enzi doesn't give up and I 
know the Senator from Georgia doesn't. So I thank my friend.


                  Nomination of Sylvia Mathews Burwell

  Madam President, I would like to speak a bit, if I may, on the 
nomination of Sylvia Mathews Burwell, whose nomination as the Director 
of the Office of Management and Budget has come through our Committee 
on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs as well as through the 
Budget Committee. Her nomination was reported out unanimously by voice 
vote a week or so ago by our committee and unanimously on the same day 
by the Budget Committee.
  The nomination comes at a critical time not just for this 
administration but I think at a critical time for our country. We are 
wrestling with this large budget deficit. We know there are management 
challenges. When a person says OMB, it stands for the Office of 
Management and Budget, and whoever is confirmed to serve in this 
position is expected to oversee a great group of people, a good team 
that will focus on budget issues. The issues include how do we continue 
to rein in our budget deficit and bring it back to a more sustainable 
fiscal position for us, also what do we need to do on the management 
side to help hasten that day.
  We have across the Federal Government in this administration, and we 
had it in the last Bush administration as well, something I call 
executive branch Swiss cheese. We have too many senior positions in 
this administration; we had a number of them in the last administration 
but not to the extent we have them in this administration. We have too 
many positions that are going wanting. In some cases, the 
administration has not vetted, nominated, and submitted names to us; in 
some cases, we are not moving them very quickly once they have, so 
there is a shared responsibility. The administration--in this case, we 
haven't had a confirmed Director of OMB for about 1 year, since Jack 
Lew left to become Chief of Staff, who is now Secretary of the 
Treasury. We have gone about 1 year without a Senate-confirmed OMB 
Director. That is not good. Jeff Zients, who has been the Deputy 
Director and who has basically been responsible for being Acting 
Director; also, if you will, the ``m'' in OMB, the Management Deputy 
for OMB. We haven't had anybody running it for a while, which these are 
the regulations since Cass Sunstein left, who was very good at it.
  So the senior leadership team at OMB pretty much has been Jeff 
Zients, and we are grateful to him for taking on all this 
responsibility. But he may have other things he wants to do with his 
life and we need to put somebody in place to head up OMB and to 
surround that person with a first-rate team and I pledge to do that.
  I wish to say to my colleagues, Democratic and Republican in the 
Senate, on our Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, 
on the Budget Committee, just a big thank-you for getting this 
nomination, once we had it in hand, to move it quickly, hearings, 
through the vetting, staff interviews, and to bring that nomination to 
the floor. Thanks to the leadership, Democratic and Republican, for 
helping to make that possible.
  Who is this person whom the President has nominated? She used to be a 
Mathews, with one ``t''--a Mathews with one ``t.'' She is now Sylvia 
Mathews Burwell. She is a pretty remarkable person for someone who was 
raised and grew up in Hinton, WV, where I lived when I was 4 years old. 
I was born in Beckley, WV, not far from where Sylvia grew up. I said to 
her at our confirmation hearing: What is the likelihood that the 
President would nominate as the Director of OMB, one of the most 
powerful positions in any administration, a gal who was born in Hinton, 
WV, on the New River, close to the Bluestone Dam where I learned to 
fish as a little boy and she would be before our committee at a hearing 
chaired by a guy who used to live in Hinton, WV, when he was a 4-year-
old kid? Pretty amazing. But she is extraordinary, as the Presiding 
Officer knows.
  Sylvia Burwell grew up in West Virginia. She didn't go off to some 
fancy private school in another State. She went to Hinton High School. 
She played on the girls' basketball team there. I was kidding her at 
her confirmation hearing, and I asked her: What was the mascot? She 
said: We were the Bobcats. So she is a Bobcat. There were at the 
confirmation hearing a number of her colleagues from Hinton, who were 
fellow Bobcats and played on the basketball team with her--just a great 
celebration. She is a real person. She is just a real person. She has 
wonderful interpersonal skills.
  When the President nominated her, I found out she used to work in the 
Clinton administration. But I asked her after high school what did she 
do. I like to say she couldn't get into Delaware or North Dakota 
University, she had to go to Harvard. From there, she became a Rhodes 
Scholar over in England. She came back and did some work on the 
Clinton-Gore campaign, I think, in 1992 and ended up working for the 
administration. What did she do? She was Chief of Staff to Bob Rubin, 
one of the leaders of the economic development team in the Clinton 
administration. She was a Deputy to Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, 
Deputy Chief of Staff, and I think for the last year or two of the 
Clinton administration she was Deputy OMB Director and she had a pretty 
good experience there. She finished there and ended up working for 
McKinsey & Company, one of the top management consulting firms in the 
world. She helped stand up the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and 
more recently has helped to run the Wal-Mart Foundation. What great 
credentials.
  I called Erskine Bowles when I found out she worked for and with him, 
and I said: Tell me about this Sylvia Burwell, who has been nominated 
to head up the OMB. Here is what he told me. He told me a truly great 
story. He said: Here is the setting. We are in the Oval Office with the 
President. Bob Rubin, Sylvia Mathews at the time--for a while--and 
Erskine, and the President is having a conversation with Bob Rubin, 
asking him some questions. And Erskine notices Sylvia, who is Rubin's 
Chief of Staff, slips him a note and Rubin looks at the note, and he 
answers the President's questions to great effect and very brilliant 
responses. The President is oohing and aahing at how good that response 
was, and Erskine says: Mr. President, I have broken the code here on 
Rubin. He is not that smart. It is Sylvia. She gave him the note to 
answer the question. If I had Sylvia working for me, people might think 
I am as smart as they think Rubin is.
  Well, she ended up working with Erskine as the Deputy Chief of Staff.
  I also talked to Bruce Reed about her. Bruce was President Clinton's 
former domestic policy adviser. He and I worked with a bunch of other 
people on welfare reform. He is a great guy. He is Vice President 
Biden's Chief of Staff today. I asked him to tell me some more about 
Sylvia.
  One of the other things I sensed from both of them is this: She is a 
real person. She is a good person. We have all heard the term ``good 
guy.'' I do not know how you say that about a woman--if they are a 
``good gal'' or whatever--but if she were a man, you

[[Page 5854]]

would say ``a really good guy.'' She has a great personality. People 
like her. Around here, that is actually pretty helpful. The other thing 
they said is that she is incredibly bright and able to juggle a whole 
lot of things at the same time.
  Somehow along the way, she has gotten married to a lucky guy named 
Stephen. She said she is lucky too. They have these two young kids, and 
somehow they have managed to keep all the balls in the air and raise a 
family while having these careers.
  But I asked Erskine and Bruce, what is she really like? Great, just a 
really good person, with good values. I have talked to her about her 
values, including the one that involves faith, and it is just the kind 
of thing you are encouraged to hear. She is very bright.
  The other thing they said about her is this: She has a great ability 
to get things done. We all know people who are a good guy or gal, 
people who are arguably bright, but they are not able to get things 
done. Well, we need somebody in this position who is able to lead a 
team that gets things done. We have a huge deficit, about $800 billion. 
It is coming down, but it is still too big. We have all kinds of GAO 
issues that they raise to us on their High Risk List--the things that 
are problematic because we waste money on ineffective spending. GAO, 
most recently, has given us a whole big report on duplication in the 
Federal Government. There is a huge to-do list. And part of it is our 
jurisdiction in our Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental 
Affairs. That is an obligation and responsibility we share with the 
administration and with other branches of our government. But we need 
somebody who is very good at multitasking and who can get things done. 
And I think if we help put the right team around here, they will get a 
lot done and we will do this together.
  I will close, if I could, with this: I have never met her parents. 
Obviously, I think she has at least one sibling. But, boy, when I asked 
her how she turned out this way, Sylvia really gives the credit to her 
parents. I think most of us probably do if we have had success in life, 
although we had a great witness before the Finance Committee at 
yesterday's hearing--Antwone Fisher, a sort of self-made, up-from-the-
roots, amazing, successful guy. You never would have imagined he would 
have enjoyed the success he has, coming up through the foster care 
system in his home State.
  But she gives a lot of credit to her parents. Obviously, they are 
doing something right at Hinton High School and maybe even at Harvard 
and over in Oxford, England. But she has had good mentors. She is a 
very humble person--a very humble person. She is the real deal, and we 
are lucky she is willing to take this on.
  I commend the President for nominating her. I want to thank her 
husband and her family for their willingness to share her. I hope she 
gets a unanimous vote here today. She ought to.


                        Commending the President

  The other thing I want to say, if I could, is this: The President 
took some folks out for dinner last night. I do not know if our 
Presiding Officer was one of them. My guess is she was. I will talk to 
her later about what they had and how it went. But I commend the 
President for reaching out to Republicans and Democrats, Senators and 
Representatives. It is the kind of thing you have to do. It is the kind 
of thing you have to do if you want to get things done. As President, 
you have a million people pulling on you--300 million people pulling on 
you--and folks from around the world pulling on you, and it is hard to 
focus on building and rebuilding relationships here. It is absolutely 
necessary.
  I was talking with Angus King the other day. Angus--now our colleague 
here in the Senate, a great addition--used to be Governor of Maine. We 
were comparing notes as to his role as Governor of Maine and mine as 
Governor of Delaware, how we worked with the legislature. I am sure you 
could find people who were in the legislature when I was Governor who 
said: Thank God he is gone. But we actually worked pretty well 
together.
  One of the keys--not my idea but an idea that started with, I think, 
Pete du Pont, when he was Governor a number of years ago; also done by 
Mike Castle as Governor and Ruth Ann Minner as Governor and by me in 
between Governor Castle and Governor Minner--every Tuesday when the 
legislature was in session in Delaware--every Tuesday; they are usually 
in session on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays most weeks between 
January and June--I would host a lunch with the legislative leadership 
of the house and the senate, Democrats and Republicans from the house 
and the senate. Occasionally, we had somebody in from my 
administration, my staff. We would have lunch together. Sometimes we 
would talk about issues; sometimes we would talk about sports or 
whatever else was the topic of the day. We always had lunch together, 
and we did it week after week, month after month, year after year. You 
get to know people and you develop a sense of trust, and in many cases 
you kind of like each other.
  One of the keys to our success in Delaware is we sort of like each 
other, Democrats and Republicans. We work together, and we govern from 
the center.
  Angus had a similar story, only they did not do lunch together with 
the legislative leadership. They did breakfast together in Maine. He 
did it every week, every month, every year for the 8 years or so he was 
Governor.
  The President is doing something like that. He is doing like a DC 
version of that now. It is just great, and I urge him to keep it up.


                           Deficit Reduction

  I will close with this: My colleague, the Presiding Officer, has 
heard me say this before. The President has heard me say this a few 
times as well, probably more than he wants to remember. But I think 
there are three things--if we are really serious about deficit 
reduction--three things we need to do.
  I would mention, the first one of those is--go back to the Clinton 
administration. Erskine Bowles, the Chief of Staff, whom Sylvia helped, 
and others, put together, with Republican help in the House and 
Senate--it was then a Republican House and Senate in those years--they 
put together a deficit reduction plan. It was 50 percent revenues; it 
was 50 percent spending. They put together a balanced budget plan that 
led--for the first time since 1968, we ended up not with one balanced 
budget, not two, not three, but four balanced budgets in the last 4 
years of the Clinton administration. It was 50 percent deficit 
reduction on the spending side and 50 percent on the revenue side.
  For those 4 years, if you look at Federal revenue as a percentage of 
GDP, it ranged anywhere from 19.5 percent to 20.5 percent. That was the 
range--19.5 percent to 20.5 percent Federal revenues as a percentage of 
GDP--but the average was about 20 percent.
  Look at last year. We had a big budget deficit. Federal revenues as a 
percentage of GDP were right around 16 percent. I think spending as a 
percentage of GDP last year was around 23 percent or so. But that gap 
between 16 percent in revenues as a percentage of GDP and spending at 
about 23 percent--and spending is coming down and the revenues are 
going to go up under the fiscal cliff deal, but we will still have a 
deficit--a substantial deficit, by historical standards--so we need to 
do something more.
  The something more we need to do is, No. 2--after we address 
revenues, get them up closer to the historic mark of about 20 percent, 
where we were in the Clinton administration, 20 percent of revenues as 
a percentage of GDP, the second thing we need to do is entitlement 
reform.
  I will use the President's words, and I think he has been courageous 
because not everybody in our party agrees with him on this. We need to 
reform the entitlement programs in ways that save money, do not savage 
old people or poor people, and preserve these programs for the long 
haul.
  I remember I spoke to--it was back at Ohio State, where I did my 
undergrad as a Navy ROTC midshipman a million years ago--it was

[[Page 5855]]

back a month or so ago, and I had a chance to talk to 400 fraternity 
brothers from different States, including the Presiding Officer's 
State, who were there for a weekend conference, a leadership 
conference. I talked to them about leadership. I also talked to them 
about making tough decisions and how we use our values to make these 
tough decisions.
  I asked the 400 guys from across those eight States: How many of you 
think you will someday receive a Social Security check?
  Not one hand went up.
  I asked: How many of you think someday you might be eligible for 
Medicare when you are 65?
  Not one hand went up.
  My sons who are 23 and 24, they do not think they will. I want to 
make sure they do. I will predict that they will need it. I want to 
make sure that for our sons, our daughters, our grandsons, our 
granddaughters, our nieces, and our nephews, those programs are going 
to be there for them.
  The President gets that. And we understand we cannot just keep doing 
business as usual. We are going to run out of money in the Medicare 
trust fund by--when?--2024, and we will start to run out of money--our 
inability to pay Social Security checks fully--by about 2030 or so. So 
we need to do something differently, and we need to be smart to do it 
so we do not hurt the least of these--the least of these--in our 
society. I think we can be that smart.
  So first, we need some revenues. Second, we need entitlement reform 
that is true to Matthew 25: the least of these, looking out for the 
least of these. And the third thing--and this is where we have focused 
in our Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, as the 
Presiding Officers knows--we have put together more than a dozen 
Democrats and Republicans in this committee who are--``rabid'' is 
probably the wrong word, but I will use it--rabid about waste, rabid--
r-a-b-i-d--about waste. What we believe--as I do--is that everything we 
do as human beings, we can do better. I think that is true of all of 
us. It is true of Federal programs. Everything we do, we can do better.
  The challenge for us is to leverage from one committee, working with 
our colleagues here in the Senate and the House; working with GAO, the 
Government Accountability Office; working with OMB, the Office of 
Management and Budget; working with the inspectors general across the 
Federal Government; working with outside groups, such as Citizens 
Against Government Waste, and with other groups; with David Walker, a 
former Comptroller General; and just a bunch of folks, to say this is 
like an all-hands-on-deck deal and a shared responsibility as well. To 
the extent we have the ability to work with all those partners I just 
mentioned, we will get more done and we will leverage the effectiveness 
of our committee, but most importantly, we will actually continue to 
reduce the budget deficit.
  The three things, in closing: We need some additional revenues. We 
need to do it in a smart way. We need to reform the entitlement 
programs in ways that do not savage old people and poor people and 
would save these programs for the future. And we need to look in every 
nook and cranny of the Federal Government to say: How do we get a 
better result for less money? Find out what works and do more of that. 
Find out what does not work and do less of that. Look wherever we are 
duplicating responsibilities and activities and see how we can maybe do 
less of that.
  So there you have it, Madam President. I do not usually get to talk 
this long, but I am wound up today, very excited about this nomination, 
as the Presiding Officer can tell. Sylvia Mathews Burwell has the 
potential of being a terrific OMB Director. One of the keys to doing 
that is we have to get her confirmed today, and I think we will. Then 
we have to move promptly.
  The President has to give us a good name. I think he has given us one 
good name to be part of her team, if she is confirmed. But the 
President needs to send us somebody not just for Deputy OMB Director, 
not just to be deputy at OMB for management, not just to be the 
person--the new Cass Sunstein, whose job it will be to work the 
regulation side, but all of the above. When we get good names, we have 
an obligation to vet them quickly and promptly and, if they are good 
people with the best credentials, get them confirmed and in place so 
they can go do their job because with an $800-some-billion deficit, we 
have work to do and need a good leadership team to do that.
  Madam President, I do not see anybody standing around to chew up the 
rest of this time, which is probably a good thing. I think it signals 
that maybe we will get a good vote on this nomination.
  I am pleased to put in a good word for Sylvia and say to her husband 
and family, thanks for sharing her, and to her parents, thanks for 
raising her.
  With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MANCHIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MANCHIN. Madam President, I rise to urge the Senate to confirm 
the nomination of Sylvia Mathews Burwell to be Director of the Office 
of Management and Budget. I do so with great pride because Sylvia 
Burwell is from my home State of West Virginia. I have been dear 
friends with her family for a long time.
  Her parents have been community leaders in Hinton, WV, for over half 
a century. Her father Dr. William Mathews is a longtime optometrist, 
and her mother the Honorable Cleo Mathews previously served as the 
mayor of Hinton, as well as in a number of other public service 
positions. I worked with Sylvia for many years as mayor when I was 
Governor of the State--she was quite competent--including 8 years on 
the State Board of Education when she served as president of the board 
of education.
  If you want to know Sylvia, you should look at her small hometown of 
Hinton, WV, and the surrounding Summers County that she grew up in 
because that is her grounding. It is pure Americana, a one-time 
railroad boom town, woven into the mountains of Appalachia. The 
downtown historic district, 200 buildings, including churches, 
storefronts, and private residences, is an architectural gem of 
American Gothic, Classical, Victorian and Greek Revival styles. It is a 
movie just waiting to happen.
  Hinton is the ideal example of smalltown West Virginia and probably 
smalltown America. It only has 2,600 residents. That is a pretty large 
town for West Virginia and probably North Dakota. It is nestled into a 
lush green valley on the banks of the New River, surrounded by the 
towering, majestic mountains and forests of Summers County, one of the 
most beautiful counties in West Virginia.
  New River is one of the oldest rivers in the world. It flows south to 
north, which may be due to the fact that it was formed long before the 
Appalachian Mountains.
  This is the special place Sylvia Mathews Burwell calls home, a 
showcase for the best of West Virginia and America, the beauty, the 
outdoors, and the people are warm and welcoming. Sylvia is humble, 
hardworking, has spent most of her life helping hard-working families 
everywhere achieve the American dream her Greek immigrant grandparents 
found in this country.
  She went off to Harvard, was a Rhodes Scholar, and has traveled the 
world over. But she has never lost touch with her West Virginia roots 
and the ties that bind us together. No matter where she is, 1 day each 
week like clockwork, Sylvia is on the phone with the two best friends 
she made in the first grade in Hinton. Think about it. That is who we 
are. That is the heart and soul of West Virginia, friends and family.
  But make no mistake, I am supporting Sylvia's nomination not because 
she is from West Virginia, which makes it all that much sweeter, but 
because she embodies the best of our

[[Page 5856]]

State and our country. In West Virginia, we judge people by their deeds 
as much as their words, and Sylvia has already accomplished so much in 
her life, the public service and philanthropy she has been involved 
with.
  Sylvia Mathews Burwell is an exceptional choice to lead the Office of 
Management and Budget, especially in the aftermath of sequestration, 
which is what we are going through now, and which so many of our 
colleagues detailed on the Senate floor this past week. We are still 
discussing it.
  I say that because Sylvia served as the Deputy Director of the Office 
of Management and Budget, which now she will become Director of, from 
1998 to 2001, which was our last era--think about the last time of 
fiscal responsibility, when balanced deficit reduction gave us balanced 
Federal budgets.
  The fiscal plan she and Erskine Bowles, whom she worked with, put 
together, had we followed it to this day and not changed, would have 
erased our national debt completely by now. Can you believe that. We 
would have been totally out of debt as a nation if we had followed the 
plan that was put forward back in 1996, 1997, 1998, and followed 
through after 2001.
  Sylvia was a key part of the Clinton White House team which reached 
across the aisle, negotiated those balanced budgets with a Republican 
Congress. If we look closely at the numbers, we can see what an 
accomplishment it was to fix our finances in the 1990s. Prior to 1993, 
when Sylvia joined the Clinton administration, the United States had 
failed to balance its budget for 23 years--23 years.
  By 1992, spending had risen to historic highs--I think we all know 
that story--and revenues had reached near historic lows. We know that 
one too. That is exactly the dilemma we are in right now, compared to 
the size of the economy. In 1992, the Federal budget deficit topped out 
at $290 billion. I think we are close to $17 trillion in debt right 
now.
  By the time Sylvia left the Clinton White House and went to the 
Office of Management and Budget in 1998 as a Deputy, the wheels were in 
motion of sustainable balanced budgets for years to come. She put these 
wheels on. Spending had shrunk drastically and revenues were soaring to 
historic highs, thanks to a thriving U.S. economy and reasonable tax 
policy that ensured both corporations and wealthy individuals paid 
their fair share.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time for the majority has expired.
  Mr. MANCHIN. I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 5 minutes. At 
that time, I wish to be able to turn it over to the Senator from Iowa.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MANCHIN. In 1998, Sylvia's last year in the White House and the 
first year at OMB, the Federal budget had a $69.3 billion surplus, the 
first surplus in a generation. Sylvia has been out of government for 
the last 12 years. But I am confident she will bring a fresh 
perspective to the fiscal debate we will be having over the next few 
years.
  After serving in high-profile leadership positions, she has been well 
balanced, and she has been with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 
She has been their top person. I would hope all my colleagues on the 
Republican side and my colleagues on the Democratic side will look at 
Sylvia as part of America, part of this great country, a product of who 
we are. She will do a great job because she has a track record of 
already doing it. With that, I would encourage all my colleagues to 
please vote in support of Sylvia Mathews Burwell.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I was honored to recommend to the 
President that he nominate Jane Kelly to serve as a judge on the U.S. 
Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Today I encourage my 
colleagues to vote for her confirmation, which will be the first vote 
at noon.
  Let me begin by thanking Senator Leahy and his staff for their hard 
work in advancing Ms. Kelly's nomination in such a timely manner. I 
also thank my senior colleague from Iowa, Senator Grassley, for his 
invaluable support and assistance. For all the years we have served 
together, Senator Grassley and I have cooperated in a spirit of good 
will on judicial nominations in our State. I am grateful that tradition 
has continued.
  Jane Kelly possesses all the qualifications necessary to assume the 
responsibilities of a Federal appellate judge. Before recommending Ms. 
Kelly to the President, I reviewed a very strong field of candidates 
for this position. She stood out as a person of truly outstanding 
intellect and character, with a reputation as an extremely talented 
lawyer with a deep sense of compassion and fairness. Not surprisingly, 
she enjoys wide bipartisan support from the Iowa legal community.
  Judge Michael Melloy, who was nominated by President George W. Bush, 
and whose seat on the Eighth Circuit Ms. Kelly is nominated to fill, 
said Ms. Kelly ``is very intelligent and thoughtful.''
  Judge David Hansen, who was President George H.W. Bush's nominee to 
serve on the Eighth Circuit and for whom Ms. Kelly clerked, said: ``She 
is a forthright woman of high integrity and of honest character'' who 
``will be a welcome addition to the court.''
  I might also point out for the record that both of those nominees 
under Republican Presidents I was proud to support, under the 
leadership of Senator Grassley.
  Federal District Court Judge Stephanie Rose remembered Ms. Kelly 
``has a great blend of personality, skills and common sense to make a 
great lawyer and judge.''
  The American Bar Association gave her a unanimous ``qualified'' 
rating. Ms. Kelly is a credit to all of us who have chosen to be in 
public service. She earned her bachelor's degree summa cum laude from 
Duke, served as a Fulbright Scholar, and received her J.D. cum laude 
from Harvard Law School. After law school she was a law clerk to Judge 
Donald Porter of the District Court of South Dakota and to Judge David 
Hansen on the Iowa Eighth Circuit. She could easily have commanded a 
big salary with a top law firm, but instead for over 20 years she has 
opted for public service and long hours as a Federal public defender. 
We are fortunate she seeks to continue her public service to Iowa and 
our Nation by serving as a Federal judge.
  Let me conclude with two additional notes about Ms. Kelly's 
nomination. First, if confirmed, Ms. Kelly will only be the second 
female judge in the history of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, a 
court established in 1891. While 56 men have sat on that court, to date 
there has only been one woman, Diana Murphy of Minnesota. President 
Obama has nominated approximately 100 former prosecutors to the Federal 
bench, including one I recommended, former U.S. attorney Stephanie 
Rose, to the Southern District of Iowa. Among recent Presidents that is 
the highest percentage of former prosecutors to be nominated to the 
Federal bench. These are all outstanding attorneys and dedicated public 
servants.
  As Judge Melloy recently noted with respect to Ms. Kelly: ``It will 
be good to have someone from the public defender realm on the bench.''
  Ms. Kelly has served for more than 20 years in the Federal defender's 
office, where she has argued hundreds of cases on behalf of indigent 
clients. She has fought tirelessly to ensure that the rights of all are 
protected, and she has worked to give meaning to the phrase above the 
Supreme Court, ``Equal Justice Under Law.'' This is a critically 
important perspective that she will bring to the court.
  As an aside, it strikes me as especially fitting that Ms. Kelly, a 
career public defender, has been nominated for the Federal bench this 
year as we observe the 50th anniversary of Gideon v. Wainwright. As we 
all know, that landmark decision recognized that every person accused 
of a crime, no matter how poor, is guaranteed the right to counsel. At 
its core, Gideon is the promise of justice for all, including our most 
vulnerable citizens. This is an ideal to which Ms. Kelly has dedicated 
her entire legal career.
  Jane Kelly is superbly qualified to serve as the U.S. Court of 
Appeals

[[Page 5857]]

judge for the Eighth Circuit. I urge all of my colleagues to support 
her nomination and confirmation.
  Madam President, I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SESSIONS. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I want to share a few remarks on the 
nomination of Sylvia Mathews Burwell to be the Director of the Office 
of Management and Budget. I suspect she will be confirmed momentarily. 
She was raised in a small town in West Virginia and seems to have some 
good West Virginia values. She is smart, able, and has a winning 
personality for sure.
  This is, perhaps, properly utilized, the toughest, most important job 
in the U.S. Government. The primary responsibility of OMB is to assist 
the President in overseeing the preparation of the budget, but also to 
help formulate spending plans to deal with agency programs, policies, 
and positions in setting funding priorities to make tough choices that 
are necessary to keep our financial house in order. It is a tough 
position.
  We could have elected a President such as Governor Romney, who was a 
manager, a tough, proven executive. That was his strength. President 
Obama's strength is in message, traveling the country and advocating 
his positions, leaving it even more critically important than normal, 
it would seem to me, to have a very strong Office of Management and 
Budget leader. Ms. Burwell certainly seems to have the integrity to do 
the job.
  I am worried about her lack of experience. She served as the 
president of the Global Development Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates 
Foundation. She served as the head of the Walmart Charitable 
Foundation, she served in the Office of Management and Budget for a 
time--Chief of Staff, I believe, to the Secretary of Treasury--and at 
the National Economic Council. Her most recent experience has not been 
in directly trying to rein in a government that is out of control.
  The Web site of OMB says as part of its mission:

       It reports directly to the President and helps a wide range 
     of executive departments and agencies across the Federal 
     Government to implement the commitments and priorities of the 
     President.

  It is a big job.
  I would say that in failing to nominate someone like a proven 
executive, a proven Governor, or a former Cabinet member who can look 
these Cabinet members in the eye and say: No, Secretary, this is not 
going to be within our budget; this isn't within our plans--you are 
going to have to see if you can do this. We have a nominee who will 
really have to rise to the occasion to be able to defend common sense 
and spending because our Cabinet people get ideas and visions. They 
want to do all kinds of things, particularly in this administration. 
Sometimes you have to say: We don't have the money. We would like to do 
that, but we do not have the money.
  The President's budget that OMB is required to produce and that he 
has submitted so far has not been impressive. That is an 
understatement. They have not exemplified the leadership and management 
that we would expect in a President.
  For instance, the 2013 budget, the one that was introduced last year, 
increased spending by $1.5 trillion above the Budget Control Act 
spending levels to which we all agreed. That is not good.
  The President signed the Budget Control Act. It limited spending from 
increasing from $37 trillion at current law baseline. He was going to 
$47 trillion. The Budget Control Act reduced the increase to just $45 
trillion instead of going up to $47 trillion. It imposed the 2012 
budget limits. Yet the President's budget proposed a deficit of $2.7 
trillion above the agreed-upon baseline, so we had a good number of 
problems with that budget. Of course, the budget, those two budgets, 
failed in the Senate 99 to 0 and 97 to 0. It got not a single vote, and 
it didn't get a single vote in the House because it's an irresponsible 
budget. Ms. Burwell will be replacing the OMB Director who put together 
those budgets.
  I see my colleague and able chair of the Budget Committee here. I 
thought I would have 10 minutes. What is the agreement at this point?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time expires in 30 seconds, all time 
remaining under Republican control.
  Mr. SESSIONS. The Republican time has expired.
  I will say I intend to support Ms. Burwell's nomination. We will give 
her a chance. I hope she will rise to the occasion. I think she has the 
ability. She certainly is a delightful person with whom to meet.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I would ask unanimous consent to speak 
for 5 minutes on the nomination of Sylvia Mathews Burwell.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Baldwin). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I thank Senator Sessions, and I rise 
today to speak in support of Sylvia Mathews Burwell, whose nomination 
to be the next Director of the Office of Management and Budget was 
approved last week with strong bipartisan support by our Senate Budget 
Committee.
  As we all know, our country does face serious fiscal and economic 
challenges we have to work together to address. The American people are 
looking to us to end this constant artificial crisis and political 
brinkmanship that is threatening our fragile economic recovery. They 
want us to come together around fair solutions that work for our middle 
class, help the economy grow, and tackle our deficit and debt fairly 
and responsibly. It is time we stop governing from crisis to crisis and 
return stability and regular order to our budget process.
  That is why I am so pleased we have such an exceptional and qualified 
nominee in Sylvia Burwell to lead OMB. I know she is the right person 
to come into this leadership role at this important time for our 
country. She is no stranger to OMB or to tackling important fiscal 
issues.
  In the 1990s, she was a critical part of President Clinton's economic 
team. She served as Deputy Director of the Office of Management and 
Budget, Deputy Chief of Staff to the President, and Chief of Staff to 
the Secretary of the Treasury. In those roles, she worked very closely 
with Jack Lew, Erskine Bowles, Robert Rubin, and the rest of President 
Clinton's economic team to help produce three out of four budget 
surpluses in a row. During her tenure, our government took a fair, 
credible, and sustainable approach to our Federal budget. That gave 
businesses the confidence to hire new workers and invest in their 
growth.
  Her leadership and hard work in the 1990s helped to create broad-
based economic growth that worked for the middle class and turned our 
debt and deficit problems around. Sylvia's firsthand experience 
creating a balanced and responsible approach to deficit reduction makes 
her uniquely qualified to lead OMB at this important time for our 
country.
  Since the 1990s, Sylvia has dedicated her life to helping people all 
over the world. As the president of the Global Development Program and 
the chief operating officer at the Gates Foundation, she worked to 
improve the lives of millions across the globe. Under her leadership, 
the foundation invested in important programs to help combat poverty 
and produce clean water and improve literacy, and provides emergency 
relief to those who need it the most.
  Most recently, as president of the Wal-Mart Foundation, she led the 
Foundation's charitable giving and focused on critical issues such as 
hunger relief and women's economic empowerment.
  Not only do Sylvia's achievements in the foundation of philanthropy 
worlds demonstrate her vast experience managing large global budgets, 
but they

[[Page 5858]]

also speak volumes of her values and demonstrate her deep lifelong 
commitment to serving others.
  Sylvia grew up understanding the value of hard work and public 
service. Her parents have been community leaders in West Virginia for 
over half a century. Her father is a long-time optometrist and her 
mother, the Honorable Cleo Mathews, served as the mayor of her hometown 
of Hinton, and later served on the West Virginia State Board of 
Education for a decade. As my colleague Senator Manchin said when he 
introduced her to our Budget Committee, it is easy to see public 
service is a part of Sylvia's DNA.
  As the Director of OMB, Sylvia will help set our Nation's priorities 
and make tough decisions about our Federal spending. So I am glad 
Sylvia knows budgets are about more than abstract numbers and partisan 
back and forth. As a second generation Greek American, Sylvia 
understands the importance of the promise of American opportunity. She 
knows budgets are a reflection of our values and our priorities, and 
they are about families across the country whose lives and futures are 
impacted by the decisions we make.
  Not only is Sylvia an expert on domestic economic policy and a 
dedicated public servant, she has a demonstrated track record of 
working across the aisle to get things done. During her time in 
Washington in the 1990s, she reached across the aisle and negotiated 
the balanced and fair budgets with Republicans in Congress. She knows 
working to find common ground is the key to solving our fiscal 
challenge--a point made clear by her during her confirmation hearing in 
front of our Senate Budget Committee this month.
  So I am pleased her nomination passed our committee on a voice vote 
with strong bipartisan approval. Republicans, including Senator 
Sessions, who here on the floor praised Sylvia as someone who is, by 
all accounts, well-liked and an able leader committed to public 
service.
  Madam President, I support this nomination, I urge my colleagues to 
vote yes, and I yield back the remainder of my time.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, today I come to the floor to speak in 
support of the nomination of Mrs. Sylvia Mathews Burwell, to be 
Director of the Office of Management and Budget, OMB. Her previous 
experience as Deputy Director of OMB during the Clinton administration, 
as well as her work with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and her 
current position as president of the Walmart Foundation in my opinion, 
make her well qualified to be the Director of OMB.
  With our country now facing a $16.8 trillion dollar debt, which is 
more than $53,000 per person, the Director of OMB is perhaps the 
toughest job in Washington, and I am confident that Mrs. Burwell is up 
for the challenge. In addition to the unsustainable debt, $85 billion 
in draconian, across-the-board sequestration cuts to defense and 
nondefense programs in fiscal year 2013 have now started to hollow out 
our military. I hope to work with Mrs. Burwell to remedy these cuts 
that are devastating to our national security.
  Although Mrs. Burwell and I will not always agree on how we tackle 
our country's urgent fiscal challenges, I am confident that she will 
commit to finding bipartisan solutions to these real problems. 
Solutions that will provide greater program efficiency and transparency 
and will put our country back on a path of fiscal stability so that 
future generations will not be forced to pay for the irresponsible 
spending decisions we continue to make here in Congress. Again, I am 
pleased that the President put forth such a qualified nominee, and I 
look forward to working with her.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time has expired.
  The question is, Will the Senate advise and consent to the nomination 
of Jane Kelly, of Iowa, to be United States Circuit Judge for the 
Eighth Circuit?
  Mr. SESSIONS. I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. 
Cowan), the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Lautenberg), and the Senator 
from Massachusetts (Ms. Warren) are necessarily absent.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator 
from North Dakota (Mr. Hoeven).
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 96, nays 0, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 108 Ex.]

                                YEAS--96

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Baldwin
     Barrasso
     Baucus
     Begich
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Boxer
     Brown
     Burr
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Chambliss
     Coats
     Coburn
     Cochran
     Collins
     Coons
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Enzi
     Feinstein
     Fischer
     Flake
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hagan
     Harkin
     Hatch
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Heller
     Hirono
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johanns
     Johnson (SD)
     Johnson (WI)
     Kaine
     King
     Kirk
     Klobuchar
     Landrieu
     Leahy
     Lee
     Levin
     Manchin
     McCain
     McCaskill
     McConnell
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Paul
     Portman
     Pryor
     Reed
     Reid
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rockefeller
     Rubio
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shaheen
     Shelby
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Thune
     Toomey
     Udall (CO)
     Udall (NM)
     Vitter
     Warner
     Whitehouse
     Wicker
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--4

     Cowan
     Hoeven
     Lautenberg
     Warren
  The nomination was confirmed.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, there is now 2 
minutes, equally divided, prior to a vote on the Burwell nomination.
  Who yields time?
  Mr. REID. I yield back all time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time is yielded back.
  The question is, Will the Senate advise and consent to the nomination 
of Sylvia Mathews Burwell, of West Virginia, to be Director of the 
Office of Management and Budget?
  Mr. REID. Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. 
Cowan), the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Lautenberg), and the Senator 
from Massachusetts (Ms. Warren) are necessarily absent.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator 
from Idaho (Mr. Crapo).
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 96, nays 0, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 109 Ex.]

                                YEAS--96

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Baldwin
     Barrasso
     Baucus
     Begich
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Boxer
     Brown
     Burr
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Chambliss
     Coats
     Coburn
     Cochran
     Collins
     Coons
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cruz
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Enzi
     Feinstein
     Fischer
     Flake
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hagan
     Harkin
     Hatch
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Heller
     Hirono
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johanns
     Johnson (SD)
     Johnson (WI)
     Kaine
     King
     Kirk
     Klobuchar
     Landrieu
     Leahy
     Lee
     Levin
     Manchin
     McCain
     McCaskill
     McConnell
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Paul
     Portman
     Pryor
     Reed
     Reid
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rockefeller
     Rubio
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shaheen
     Shelby
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Thune
     Toomey
     Udall (CO)

[[Page 5859]]


     Udall (NM)
     Vitter
     Warner
     Whitehouse
     Wicker
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--4

     Cowan
     Crapo
     Lautenberg
     Warren
  The nomination was confirmed.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the motions to 
reconsider are considered made and laid upon the table, and the 
President will be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

                          ____________________