[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 5349-5350]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       NOMINATION OF NEIL GORSUCH

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, later today, due to the threat of an 
unprecedented partisan filibuster, I will file cloture on the 
nomination of Judge Gorsuch to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme 
Court. It should be unsettling to everyone that our colleagues across 
the aisle have brought the Senate to this new low, and on such an 
impressive nominee with such broad bipartisan support.
  Judge Gorsuch is independent, he is fair, he has one of the most 
impressive resumes we will ever see, and he has earned the highest 
possible rating from the group the Democratic leader called the ``gold 
standard'' for evaluating judicial nominations. No one seriously 
disputes his sterling credentials to serve on the Court. Yet, in the 
Judiciary Committee, Democrats withheld support from him. On the floor, 
Democrats said they will launch a partisan filibuster against him--
something Republicans have never done. No one in the Senate Republican 
conference has ever voted to filibuster a Supreme Court nominee. Not 
one Republican has ever done that.
  Later today, colleagues will continue to debate the nomination of 
Judge Gorsuch. They will discuss how completely unprecedented it would 
be for Democrats to actually follow through on this filibuster threat 
to actually block an up-or-down vote for this nominee even though a 
bipartisan majority of the Senate supports his nomination and what the 
negative consequences would be for the Senate if they succeed. I will 
be listening with interest. I hope Senators in both parties will listen 
as well.
  ``There has never been,'' as the New York Times and others reported 
last week, ``a successful partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court 
nominee.'' Never in the history of our country. Not once in the nearly 
230-year history of the Senate.
  The last time a Republican President nominated someone to the Supreme 
Court, Democrats tried to filibuster him too. That was Samuel Alito in 
2006. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed. Even former President Obama, 
who as a Senator participated in that effort, now admits that he 
regrets joining that filibuster effort.
  Democrats are now being pushed by far-left interest groups into doing 
something truly detrimental to this body and to our country. They seem 
to be hurtling toward the abyss this time and trying to take the Senate 
with them. They need to reconsider.
  Perhaps they will recall their own words from the last time they 
flirted with a partisan Supreme Court filibuster. Back then, the 
current top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee said she opposed 
attempts to filibuster Supreme Court nominees. ``[Just because the 
nominee] is a man I might disagree with,'' she said, ``that doesn't 
mean he shouldn't be on the court.'' She said the filibuster should be 
reserved for something truly outrageous.
  Yesterday, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee announced her 
intention to filibuster the Supreme Court nominee before us because she 
disagreed with him. It is totally the opposite of what she said before. 
It is just the kind of thing she said the filibuster should not be used 
for.
  This is emblematic of what we are seeing in Democrats' strained 
rationale for their unprecedented filibuster threat. It seems they are 
opposed to Judge Gorsuch's nomination because far-left interest groups 
are upset about other things--the way the election turned out, mostly--
and threatening the careers of any Democrat who opposes blind 
resistance to everything this President does.
  Democrats have come up with all manner of excuses to justify opposing 
this outstanding nominee. They asked for his personal opinions on 
issues that could come before him and posed hypotheticals that they 
know he is ethically precluded from answering. They cherry-picked a few 
cases out of thousands in which he has participated. They invent fake 
60-vote standards that fact checkers call bogus. They are, to 
paraphrase the Judiciary chairman, a ``no'' vote in search of a reason 
to vote that way. What they can't lay a glove on is the nominee's 
record and independence--the kinds of things that should actually be 
swaying our vote--and that is really quite telling.
  If Democrats follow through on their threat to subject this widely 
respected judge to the first partisan filibuster in the history of the 
Senate, then I doubt there is a single nominee from this President they 
could ever support--ever. After all, the Democratic leader basically 
said as much before the nomination was even made. But it is not too 
late for our friends to do the right thing.
  You know, we on this side of the aisle are no strangers to political 
pressure. We can emphathize with what our Democratic colleagues might 
be going through right now. But part of the job you sign up for here is 
to do what you know is right in the end.
  When President Clinton nominated Stephen Breyer, I voted to confirm 
him. When President Clinton nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I voted to 
confirm her. I thought it was the right thing to do. After all, he won 
the election. He was the President. The President gets to appoint 
Supreme Court Justices. When President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor 
and Elena Kagan, I led my party in working to ensure they received an 
up-or-down vote, not a filibuster.
  We were in exactly the same position in which our Democratic friends 
are today. No filibuster. No filibuster. We thought it was the right 
thing to do. It is not because we harbored illusions that we would 
usually agree with these nominees of Democratic Presidents--certainly 
not. We even protested when then-Majority Leader Reid tried to file 
cloture on the Kagan nomination. We

[[Page 5350]]

talked him out of it and said it wasn't necessary. Jeff Sessions, the 
current Attorney General, was the ranking member of the Judiciary 
Committee at the time. Jeff Sessions talked Harry Reid out of filing 
cloture because it wasn't necessary. We didn't even want the pretext of 
the possibility of a filibuster on the table.
  Well, that is quite a different story from what we are seeing today, 
but this is where our Democratic colleagues have taken us. Will a 
partisan minority of the Senate really prevent the Senate's pro-Gorsuch 
bipartisan majority from confirming him? Will they really subject this 
eminently qualified nominee to the first successful partisan filibuster 
in American history? Americans will be watching, history will be 
watching, and the future of the Senate will hang on their choice.

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