[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 2835-2836]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   FILLING THE SUPREME COURT VACANCY

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, the Republican leader and I have worked 
together in leadership capacities in the Senate for almost 20 years. He 
has been the whip and I was the whip. I was majority leader, he was 
minority leader, and vice versa. My presentations the last few weeks do 
not take away from the fact that Mitch McConnell and I are friends. We 
have worked together for a long time, and we have done our best to move 
the Senate forward. But that does not take away from my need as a 
Senator to pronounce publicly when he and I disagree. So I want to make 
sure the record is reflective of that.
  As each day passes, the Republican leader continues to transform his 
caucus into the party of Donald Trump. That is not good. You can see it 
in the Republicans' rhetoric. The Senators are using increasingly 
extreme and disturbing language in defending their unprecedented 
obstruction of President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, who yet is 
unnamed.
  The assistant Republican leader said the President's eventual nominee 
``will bear some resemblance to a pinata.''

[[Page 2836]]

We talked about, in the past, what a pinata is. He is comparing a 
Supreme Court nominee to a children's party favor that gets smashed 
repeatedly with a baseball bat or something similar to a baseball bat. 
That is nothing more than a thinly veiled threat from Senator Cornyn, 
serving notice on the coming assault on the President's nominee.
  We should not forget that we don't know who this nominee will be. We 
know nothing about this person, whether it is a man or a woman, 
educated at Harvard or Stanford or the University of Utah or the 
University of New Mexico. We don't know. But the Republican leader 
doesn't care who the eventual nominee is. It appears that is the case. 
He doesn't want his Senators to care either. All he cares about is 
appeasing the Trump wing of the party--which is getting pretty big--and 
Trump's radical followers.
  After all, this is the same Republican leader who yesterday again 
refused to distance himself from Donald Trump. He refused to condemn 
his hateful campaign for President. Instead, he pledged to support the 
Republican nominee. It is really shocking to see this transformation. 
Republicans have not always been this irrational and vicious.
  Even Senator Cornyn used to know better. During Justice Alito's 
confirmation hearings, the then-junior Senator from Texas was also 
talking about pinatas as he decried personal attacks on Supreme Court 
nominees. Here is what he said:

       I'm happy Judge Alito survived these unwarranted attacks. 
     I'm also sorry that his family had to be subjected to them, 
     as well. At some point, however, we as a committee will need 
     to come to terms with our confirmation process. The current 
     regime treats Supreme Court nominees more like pinatas than 
     human beings. And that's something none of us should be 
     willing to tolerate.

  The Republican whip gave this pinata talk the day the Senate 
Judiciary Committee approved the Alito nomination. Now that President 
Obama is the one putting forth a Supreme Court nominee, it seems the 
assistant Republican leader is willing to tolerate, even promote, these 
``unwarranted attacks'' he once denounced. Why the change? The answer 
is very simple: The senior Senator from Texas, like every other member 
of his caucus, is simply obeying the Republican leader's orders as he 
leads them to become the party of Trump, the caucus of Trump, the 
conference of Trump. This is the path the Republican leader has chosen 
for his party--a path of demagoguery and lapsed constitutional duties, 
a path which he forged and which led to the rise of Donald Trump. I do 
not understand why so many of my Republican colleagues are blindly 
following this path down a very bumpy road. Where are the moderate 
Republicans--however few there may be--who see that they are being used 
by the Republican leader to appease the Trump wing of the party? Where 
are the voices of reason from within the Republican caucus who will 
take a stand against this unprecedented dereliction of duty?
  Keep in mind, a decade ago the Senator from Texas was decrying a 
Republican nominee being treated like a pinata. Now, fast-forward 10 
years, and he is saying: I am going to make a pinata out of whoever it 
is, even though they don't know who it is.
  I know there have to be some moderate Republicans, or Republicans, 
because outside of this building, there are Republicans urging their 
colleagues to forgo this ludicrous obstruction.
  A person I enjoyed working with right here, a very conservative 
Senator from Mississippi, Trent Lott, was the majority leader, and I 
worked with him very closely. He was a conservative, I repeat, but he 
was very pragmatic. Yesterday or the day before, he lamented his 
party's handling of the Supreme Court vacancy. Here is what he said:

       I probably would've handled it differently. My attitude, 
     particularly on the Supreme Court, was that elections do have 
     consequences, sometimes bad, and I tried to lean toward being 
     supportive of the president's nominees, Democrat or 
     Republican.

  That is how we should do things around here. It was the standard that 
if a President put forward a nominee and that person did not have some 
ethical problems and was basically qualified, we would take care of 
that. There is no better example of that than Clarence Thomas. I didn't 
vote for Clarence Thomas. I wish he hadn't gotten enough votes. But we 
did not stop that matter from going forward. He just barely made it. He 
got 52 votes. But there was no filibuster. He was nominated by a 
Republican President. The President liked him. On paper, he was 
qualified. He was a graduate of Yale Law School. But that isn't how 
they are doing things around here anymore.
  What Trent Lott said--he is not alone. Former Republican Senator from 
Indiana--someone we all liked a lot--Dick Lugar is urging Senate 
Republicans to do the right thing and honor their constitutional duty. 
Here is what he said:

       I can understand their reluctance given the controversy 
     that surrounds all of the debate that has already occurred. 
     But that is not sufficient reason to forgo your duty.

  What Richard Lugar is saying is: Do your jobs. You have a 
constitutional obligation to do that.
  Those are two quotes I just gave from strong Republican leaders 
telling Senate Republicans to do their jobs. So why won't they? Of the 
six nominations made to vacancies that have existed during Presidential 
election years since 1900--more than 100 years ago--each of the six has 
been confirmed by the Senate. That is what the Senate has done in the 
past and should do now.
  I say to my friends across the aisle: Listen to reason. Heed your 
constitutional duties. Listen to what the American people are saying. 
They are not taking a popular stand. It is wrong. Don't fall on your 
sword for Donald Trump and his kind. Don't sacrifice your integrity as 
a Senator. Stand up and do the right thing. Promise to give President 
Obama's nominee a meeting, a hearing, and a vote. That is your job, so 
do it.
  Mr. President, I see no one on the floor. I ask that the business of 
the day be announced.

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