On May 10, Senator Hatch delivered on the Senate floor a tour de force rebuttal to the Democrats unprecedented campaign against President Bush's judicial nominees. He didn't go on the attack and return Democrat name-calling with like-minded sophomorisms. No, he explained Senate traditions, long upheld by Democrats to show who's really abusing the rules in this fight.
In case you have a Dem friend (I have so few these days) who still insists that Republicans are on some mad power grab here, print this out and use it to good effect. The entire speech is recommended, here are some highlights:
- Nominees Waiting Four Years: Yesterday marked the fourth anniversary of President Bush's first judicial nominations, a group of 11 highly qualified men and women nominated to the United States Court of Appeals. As I sat in the East Room at the White House on May 9, 2001, I hoped that the Senate would at least treat these nominees fairly. But many of our Democratic colleagues instead chose to follow their Minority Leader's order, issued days after President Bush took office, to use whatever means necessary to defeat judicial nominees the minority does not like. While the previous three presidents saw their first 11 appeals court nominees confirmed in an average of just 81 days, today, 1461 days later, three of those original nominees have not even received a vote, let alone been confirmed.
- Constitutional Checks and Balances: Any civics textbook explains that what we call checks and balances regulate the relationship between the branches of government. The Senate's role of advice and consent checks the president's power to appoint judges, and we exercise that check when we vote on his judicial nominations. The filibuster is about the relationship between the majority and minority in the Senate, not about the relationship between the Senate and the president. It actually interferes with being a check on the president's power by preventing the Senate from exercising its role of advice and consent at all.
- Are These Nominees Extremists? What our Democratic colleagues call extreme, the American Bar Association calls qualified. In fact, all three of the appeals court nominees chosen four years ago who have been denied confirmation received the ABA's highest well qualified rating. The same Democrats who once called the ABA rating the gold standard for evaluating judicial nominees now disregard it. Did 76 percent of Californians vote to keep an extremist on their Supreme Court when they voted to retain Justice Janice Rogers Brown? Did 84 percent of Texans and every major newspaper in the state support an extremist when they re-elected Justice Priscilla Owen to the Texas Supreme Court? Mr. President, the Associated Press reported last Friday that the Minority Leader reserves the right to filibuster what he calls extreme Supreme Court nominees. That is quite an escape hatch, if you will, since the minority already defines any nominee it does not like as extreme. This is simply a re-packaged status quo masquerading as reform. If Senators want to dismiss as an extremist any judicial nominee who does not think exactly as they do, that is their right. That is, however, a reason for voting against confirmation, not for refusing to vote at all. As our former colleague Tom Daschle said: I find it simply baffling that a Senator would vote against even voting on a judicial nominee.
- Filibuster Necessary to Protect Debate? These filibusters are about defeating judicial nominations, not debating them. The minority rejects every proposal for debating and voting on nominations it targets for defeat. In April 2003, my colleague from Utah, Senator Bennett, asked the current Minority Leader how many hours Democrats would need to debate a particular nomination. His response spoke volumes: [T]here is not a number in the universe that would be sufficient. Later that year, he said: We would not agree to a time agreement of any duration. And just two weeks ago, the Minority Leader summed up what has really been the Democrat's position all along: This has never been about the length of the debate. He is right about that, this has always been about defeating nominations, not debating them. If our Democratic colleagues want to debate, then let us debate. Let us do what Democrats once said was the purpose of debating judicial nominations. As my colleague from California, Senator Boxer, put it in January 1998, let these names come up, let us have debate, let us vote.
- Are We Changing Senate Rules? On January 4, 1995, the Senator from West Virginia, Senator Byrd, described how in 1977, when he was Majority Leader, he used this procedure to break a filibuster on a natural gas bill. I have genuine affection and great respect for the Senator from West Virginia. Since I would not want to describe his repeated use of the constitutional option in a pejorative way, let me use his own words: "I have seen filibusters. I have helped to break them. There are few Senators in this body who were here [in 1977] when I broke the filibuster on the natural gas bill.I asked Mr. Mondale, the Vice President, to go please sit in the chair; I wanted to make some points of order and create some new precedents that would break these filibusters. And the filibuster was broken back, neck, legs, and arms.So I know something about filibusters. I helped to set a great many of the precedents that are on the books here." He certainly did, and using the constitutional option today to return to Senate tradition regarding judicial nominations would simply use the precedents he put on the books.
- Republicans Did NOT Filibuster Left Wing Judges: In a letter dated February 4, 1998, for example, left-wing groups urged confirmation of Margaret Morrow to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. They urged us to bring the nomination to the Senate, ensure that it received prompt, full and fair consideration, and that a final vote on her nomination is scheduled as soon as possible. Groups signing this letter included the Alliance for Justice, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and People for the American Way. As we all know, these left-wing groups today lead the grassroots campaign behind these filibusters that would deny this same treatment to President Bush's nominees. Their position has changed as the party controlling the White House has changed. Let me make it easy for the hypocrite patrol to check out my position on the Morrow nomination. In the February 11, 1998, Congressional Record, on page S640, three pages before that letter from the left-wing groups appears, I opened the debate on the Morrow nomination by strongly urging my fellow Senators to support it. We did, and she is today a sitting federal judge. The same Democrats who today call for filibusters called for up or down votes when a Democrat was in the White House. In 1999, my good friend from California, Senator Feinstein, a member of the Judiciary Committee, said of the Senate: "It is our job to confirm these judges. If we don't like them, we can vote against them." She said: "A nominee is entitled to a vote. Vote them up; vote them down." Another committee member, Senator Schumer, properly said in March 2000 that "the President nominates, and we are charged with voting on the nominees." I have already quoted the Senator from California, Senator Boxer, in 2000 said that filibustering judicial nominees "would be such a twisting of what cloture really means in these cases. It has never been done before for a judge, as far as we know ever." She was right, it had never been done before.
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