[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 4667-4668]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     NOMINATION OF MERRICK GARLAND

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, my friend also talked about the 
accomplishments of the various committees. My caucus knows how much I 
believe in the committee system. I think it is very important that 
committees work well. We know one committee that is not working well, 
led by the senior Senator from Iowa.
  The senior Senator from Iowa claims that he feels no pressure over 
blocking President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland. If 
that is really true, Senator Grassley must not read the papers from 
Iowa. To date, there have been two dozen Iowa editorials condemning 
Senator Grassley's refusal to consider President Obama's Supreme Court 
nominee, and there are many more letters to the editor. This is only 
Iowa. Around the country there have been scores and scores of 
editorials talking about how wrong it is that the Judiciary Committee 
is taking a vacation.
  In Iowa there was a column published in the Des Moines Register over 
the weekend that was especially discerning. It was authored by veteran 
Iowa political journalist Kathie Obradovich. This is what she wrote:

       Senator Grassley keeps offering new reasons for refusing to 
     give Judge Merrick Garland a hearing and a vote on his 
     appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. He may as well keep 
     trying, as the explanations he's given so far for waiting 
     until after the next presidential election are mostly 
     nonsense.

  I am only going to mention a few of the excuses that the senior 
Senator from Iowa has invented in an effort to avoid his job.
  Senator Grassley won't consider Merrick Garland because he says he 
wants the American people to have a voice. The Senator either is 
ignoring or forgetting or doesn't know that the American people and 
fellow Iowans used their voice twice when they elected and re-elected--
both times overwhelmingly--President Obama. They gave President Obama 
the right to nominate individuals to the Supreme Court as well as all 
the other obligations a President has.
  Secondly, Senator Grassley won't consider Merrick Garland because he 
said he wants a Justice who abides by the law. Try that one on. If the 
senior Senator from Iowa wants a Justice who abides by precedent and 
sticks to the law, he need look no further than Merrick Garland, who 
has developed a reputation on the bench for respecting precedent. 
People who served with him--so-called liberal, conservative, and 
moderate judges--all agree that Merrick Garland is good. In fact, maybe 
there is somebody who can't stand him, but we haven't heard a peep from 
anybody saying what a bad judge he is--not from anyone.
  Senator Grassley says he won't consider Merrick Garland for a third 
reason, because the Supreme Court only needs eight Supreme Court 
Justices. The Supreme Court needs all nine. Yesterday they deadlocked 
on another question, and it appears that the chairman of the Judiciary 
Committee is willing to gridlock our Nation's highest Court just to 
keep Merrick Garland from being confirmed.
  That decision yesterday is a bad decision because what it does is to 
keep in place a lower court ruling that most all academics and people 
who follow the law believe is wrong. It allowed the State of California 
standing to sue another State--basically, the State of Nevada. Under 
their ruling, we are now going to have a free-for-all in the States 
suing each other. From the time we have been a country, that didn't 
take place. There was order in interstate commerce.
  Well, the fourth reason Senator Grassley gives is that it is all 
Chief Justice Roberts' fault. The very person who is blocking the 
Supreme Court nominee is accusing the Chief Justice of making the Court 
political.
  Finally--there are others, but this is enough for this morning--the 
senior Senator from Iowa says he is just doing what Chairman Biden said 
20 years ago. Well, I would suggest--and I am sure his staff has done 
this, if he hasn't--to look at what Vice President Biden did, not a 
partial part of a speech that he gave, because if you looked at that, 
he was exemplary. He brought judges to the Senate floor. He even 
brought nominees to the floor who had been turned down by the committee 
because, as he said yesterday and he has said before: I believe we have 
an obligation for advice and consent that is not completed until it is 
brought to the floor.
  So Senator Grassley should follow Joe Biden's example and process 
more than part of a speech he gave. None of these examples makes sense, 
as the columnist from Iowa said, but yesterday the Judiciary Committee 
chair came up with another one. Listen to this one. This is classic. 
Senator Grassley said he will not consider Merrick Garland's nomination 
because the hearing would be a waste of taxpayer dollars.

       Well, we could have a hearing, we aren't going to have a 
     hearing, but let's just suppose we did have a hearing. . . . 
     So you have a hearing and you spend a lot of taxpayers' money 
     gearing up for it, you spend a lot of time of members, a lot 
     of research that has to be done by staff.

  That is kind of a strange comment. Staff is not paid by the hour. 
They are paid each day. I would hope they could squeeze into their busy 
schedules enough time to look at a Supreme Court nominee. Offering our 
advice and consent on the Supreme Court nomination is what the 
taxpayers want us to do. Look at polls all over America. That is our 
job.
  I find it ridiculous--there is probably a better description--but I 
find it ridiculous that the very Senator who continues to use the 
Judiciary Committee to wage a political war on former Secretary Hillary 
Clinton dares to claim he is trying to save taxpayer dollars. Where is 
he, where is his concern for misusing taxpayer funds while his 
committee continues to waste millions of dollars on partisan opposition 
research of a Presidential candidate? That is not their job.

[[Page 4668]]

  Where was the penny-pinching when the Judiciary Committee used Senate 
funds and Senate staff to investigate former Clinton staffers; for 
example, asking for maternity leave records--maternity leave records--
time sheets, anything they could to try to embarrass Secretary Clinton.
  Where is Senator Grassley's focus on government waste while the so-
called Benghazi Select Committee continues to spend millions and 
millions of dollars on a political hit job with no end in sight? Every 
day the Judiciary Committee has a new excuse, a new justification for 
why it will not do its job. I think we all have news for the Senator 
from Iowa: No one is buying it.
  They are not buying it in Iowa. They are not buying it in Nevada. 
They are not buying it in New York. They are not buying it in Kentucky. 
They are not buying it anyplace. The American people are not buying it. 
His own constituents are leading the pack of people who are not buying 
this. His behavior reminds me of a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem: 
``It takes less time to do the right thing than it does to explain why 
you did it wrong.''
  So the senior Senator from Iowa has spent months trying to explain 
away the obstruction of a Supreme Court nominee. Wouldn't it be easier 
to give him a hearing and a vote? Wouldn't it be easier for him to just 
do his job? Wouldn't it be the right thing to do to just do his job?
  Mr. President, I ask the Chair to announce to everyone what the 
Senate is going to do the rest of the day.

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