[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3642-3643]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   AMERICA'S SMALL BUSINESS TAX RELIEF ACT OF 2015--MOTION TO PROCEED

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I move to proceed to H.R. 636, the 
vehicle we will use for FAA reauthorization.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will report the motion.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 55, H.R. 636, a bill to 
     amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to permanently extend 
     increased expensing limitations, and for other purposes.


                   Recognition of the Minority Leader

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Democratic leader is 
recognized.


                       Defend Trade Secrets Bill

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I understand why my friend the Republican 
leader is doing everything he can to shine a bright light on the 
Judiciary Committee. It is kind of hard to do that considering 
everything that is going on today. The bill that we will vote on at 
5:30 p.m. would have passed with unanimous consent, and everybody knows 
that. We don't need to take up the Senate's time on a bill that would 
pass just like that. We are doing it because it focuses less attention 
on the inadequacy of the Judiciary Committee. The Defend Trade Secrets 
Act was easily reported out of committee. There were no problems. It 
was a bill on which everybody agreed. There may be some reasons for it, 
but I don't see why the Judiciary Committee should be given a few pats 
on the back. The problem is that the committee does not deserve any 
pats on the back at this stage.


                          Judicial Nominations

  Mr. President, as U.S. Senators we have a constitutional obligation 
to consider nominees to important positions. That is one of our 
constitutional responsibilities. Judges play an essential role in our 
society, and we should give qualified nominees the fair shot they 
deserve. Sadly, the Republican Senate has refused to do its job. They 
have a new standard: Unless the judge-to-be passes the test on the 
National Rifle Association, as stated by the Republican leader on 
national TV, they can't vote for him.
  The Judiciary Committee has been hammered--and that is an 
understatement--day after day in the State of Iowa, the home State of 
the chairman of the committee. This is a headline from the largest 
newspaper in the State, the Des Moines Register: ``Grassley leads 
slowdown of judicial confirmations.'' Here is what this headline is all 
about:

       The Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee and 
     its Chairman, Senator Grassley, have fallen far behind any 
     comparable Senate in confirming judicial nominations.

  Reading directly from the Des Moines Register article:

       Even before the current controversy over consideration of a 
     Supreme Court justice, action on federal court nominations 
     has slowed markedly since U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley took 
     control of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
       Since Republicans won a Senate majority in 2014, the number 
     of President Obama's nominees winning confirmation to the 
     bench has fallen compared with previous years and long-term 
     averages, as have the number advancing out of Grassley's 
     Judiciary Committee, according to data from the Congressional 
     Research Service and the federal judiciary.

  The article also quotes Professor Sheldon Goldman, an expert on 
judicial confirmations from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He 
said: ``With Republicans taking over the Senate, the strategy has been 
to obstruct, delay and slow-walk these nominees at every stage of the 
process.''
  Statistics from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service 
confirmed Professor Goldman's assertion. Under Chairman Grassley's 
leadership, the Judiciary Committee is grinding the nomination process 
to a halt. The number of judicial nominations confirmed in this 
Congress is the worst. To date, this Republican-controlled Senate has 
confirmed only 16 judicial nominations. That is one judge a month.
  Contrast that with the last years of George W. Bush's Presidency. We 
had a Democratic Senate and we had a Republican President. Then-
Democratic Chair Leahy and his Senate colleagues confirmed 40 judges--
40 confirmations compared to 16 under Chairman Grassley. The numbers 
speak for themselves.
  But to better understand the dysfunction of Senator Grassley's 
committee, we have to consider the slow pace at which he and 
Republicans are reporting judicial nominations. We have to go back more 
than six decades to find a Senate Judiciary Committee that was less 
productive than Chairman Grassley's committee is today.
  Republicans will doubtless claim that their committee has stopped 
working because it is the last year of Obama's Presidency. That is 
simply nonsense. In 1988--President Reagan's last year--the Senate 
Judiciary Committee reported circuit and district court nominations as 
late as October. The Senate considered President Reagan's, President 
Clinton's, and President George W. Bush's judicial nominations in the 
eighth year of their terms, and many other Presidents were treated the 
same way.
  The Republican leader is on the record advocating for the 
confirmation of judicial nominees in a President's last year in office. 
This is what the Republican leader said in July of 2008: ``Even with 
lameduck Presidents, there is a historical standard of fairness as to 
confirming judicial nominees, especially circuit court nominees.'' 
Those are the Republican leader's own words. Yet now he refuses to 
extend that ``historical standard of fairness'' to President Obama's 
nominees. Why are Republicans changing the rules for President Obama's 
nominees?
  Given that the chairman of the Judiciary Committee refused to attend 
to the judiciary, how is the Republican Committee spending its time? We 
know Chairman Grassley's committee is refusing to consider President 
Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Chief Judge Merrick Garland. We know 
Chairman

[[Page 3643]]

Grassley's committee is refusing to adequately report district and 
circuit court nominees.
  This much is clear: The Republican Judiciary Committee is not doing 
its job. Instead, the senior Senator from Iowa is taking his marching 
orders from the Republican leader and has instituted a blockade of 
judicial nominations at every level. The once proud and powerful 
Judiciary Committee, established hundreds of years ago, has become a 
mere shadow of its former self. He has turned the once powerful and 
independent Judiciary Committee into an extension of the Republican 
leader's office.
  This is the same gridlock the Republican leader has imposed upon the 
Senate for the last 8 years. Since his party assumed the majority in 
the Senate last January, the Republican leader's carefully orchestrated 
obstruction of judicial nominations has accelerated to historical 
levels and judicial emergencies have tripled.
  My friend--we have served together in the Senate for decades--can 
come to the floor all the time to speak about the success of the 
Senate. No matter how many times you say a falsehood, it is still 
false.
  Senator McConnell once declared himself the ``proud guardian of 
gridlock.'' Senator Grassley has become his most willing disciple. It 
is disappointing that the senior Senator from Iowa has surrendered his 
committee to the Republican leader.
  The lack of progress on judges should alarm Members of the Senate--
even Republican Senators. Take, for example, the nomination of a man by 
the name of Waverly Crenshaw, who was recommended by Senators Alexander 
and Corker to be a district judge in the Middle District of Tennessee. 
Mr. Crenshaw is a superb nominee who has broken barriers all of his 
life. He is currently a partner at a well-renowned law firm in 
Nashville where he became the first African-American partner in 1990. 
The senior Senator from Tennessee said that Mr. Crenshaw would be ``an 
excellent federal district judge.'' I agree. He was reported out of the 
Judiciary Committee unanimously in July of 2015--almost 10 months ago.
  The vacancy in the Middle District of Tennessee is a judicial 
emergency, meaning there are more cases than the judges on the court 
can handle. The junior Senator from Tennessee said: ``I know there is a 
tremendous load of work in the Nashville office that needs to get done, 
and we've talked a great deal with the other judges there and know this 
position needs to be confirmed.''
  Last month, the Senators from Maryland asked to bring the Crenshaw 
nomination to a vote, but the assistant Republican leader objected. 
Both Senators brought this forward. The objection was the same. The 
senior Senator from Texas said it will lead to ``chaos'' to schedule a 
vote on Mr. Crenshaw.
  Chaos is exactly what the Republicans are bringing to the judiciary. 
From the Supreme Court, to the circuit courts, to the district courts, 
our entire judicial branch of government is under siege by this 
Republican Senate. After they have crippled the judiciary, the 
Republican leader and Chairman Grassley want to hand it over to Donald 
Trump. That would be disastrous. That is not what the American people 
want. They want Republicans to do their constitutional duty and give 
these judges due consideration. That is not asking too much.
  So I say to the chairman of the Judiciary Committee: Stop blocking 
these nominees. Do what other Judiciary chairs have done for 200 years 
and move the process forward. These nominations are important. Or, put 
simply, do your job. This--a historic slowdown of judicial 
confirmations--isn't your job, and it is not what the people of Iowa 
sent you here to do, as indicated by the Des Moines Register: 
``Grassley leads slowdown of judicial confirmations.''
  Mr. President, I see no one here wanting to speak. Would the Chair 
announce the business for the rest of the day.

                          ____________________