[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Page 2585]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   FILLING THE SUPREME COURT VACANCY

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, we now have a new rule called the Biden 
rule, which I guess was invented this morning. What happens when my 
friend the Republican leader, as he did yesterday, talks about what 
Senator Biden has said is that he never completes the little 
presentation Senator Biden made. Senator Biden did not say there 
wouldn't be any nominations. Here is what he said in ending his 
presentation. At the end of his speech in 1992, Senator Biden said:

       Compromise is the responsible course both for the White 
     House and for the Senate. If the President consults and 
     cooperates with the Senate or moderates his selections absent 
     consultation, then his nominees may enjoy my support as did 
     Justices Kennedy and Souter.

  That is what this is all about. Senator Biden never said there 
wouldn't be any nominations approved, and that was evident in the oval 
office yesterday. Vice President Biden told the story of a Republican 
President calling him down--he was chairman of the Judiciary 
Committee--and said: OK, we are having some problems here. I have 10 
names on a piece of paper. I want you to look at it and give me your 
rough estimate. I will not bind you to this, but which of these do you 
think would work?
  These were people that a Republican President presented to the 
Democratic chair of the Judiciary Committee saying: Give me your 
impression of these people. So they went over them--yes, yes, yes, no. 
They had 10 names.
  That is the same thing that happened yesterday in the White House. 
President Obama said: Do you have any names for me? Give them to me. I 
will be happy to take a look at them.
  So there is no Biden rule, unless the Biden rule is that we will 
continue doing what we have always done here in the Senate. And what is 
that? We approve in any Presidential election year--in a Presidential 
election year we always take care of a nomination. We have never in the 
history of the country not done that, until now.
  Now, the other thing is we keep talking about a lot of political 
things, but we have an obligation based on the Constitution of the 
United States to do something about these nominations we get from the 
President. We have a constitutional duty to do our jobs, and that duty 
is to give advice and consent to the President when he sends a 
nomination up here, which we will have in a matter of a week or so.
  And we do it quickly. We don't spend months and months doing this. 
The Republicans' unprecedented call to block any nominee is more of the 
obstruction that we have had here too often. This has never ever been 
done before.
  As for my friend the Republican leader to talk about statements I 
made and the senior Senator from New York made, of course we made 
statements. It didn't affect what we did around here. I hoped people 
listened. I hoped it slowed down what President Bush was going to do. 
But the fact is President Bush did what he wanted, and he, in the 
process, was able to present nominations to us and we looked them over.
  Now we have a new standard. We are not going to meet with whomever 
this person is. We don't know who it is, but we are not going to meet 
with him. We are not going to hold hearings, and we are not going to 
vote. That is wrong.

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