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| April 1st, 2008 |
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Media Contact(s): Mark Eddington or Jared Whitley (202) 224-5251 |
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HATCH REBUKES SENATE DEMOCRATS FOR FAILING TO MOVE FORWARD WITH JUDICIAL NOMINEES
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Washington – Senator Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) today on the Senate floor chastised Democrats for their failure to hold up-or-down votes on President Bush’s current nominees to the federal bench and the Department of Justice. A former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Hatch compared the fair way Republicans treated President Clinton’s judicial nominees with the partisan way Democrats have treated President Bush’s nominees.
Hatch offered the following judicial statistics:
• Due to partisan obstruction by Democrats, President Bush has so far appointed 295 life-tenured federal judges, well behind President Clinton’s total of 346 at the same point in his presidency.
• President Bush is the fourth president in a row to face a Senate controlled by the other party during his last two years in office. Under his three predecessors, the Senate confirmed an average of 75 district court nominees during their last two years in office. But 15 months into the current 110th Congress, we have confirmed only 31 district court nominees for President Bush.
• Similarly, under the previous three Presidents, the Senate confirmed an average of 17 appeals court nominees during their final two years in office. So far in the 110th Congress, we have confirmed only six appeals court nominees for President Bush. Just to meet the historical average, we will have to confirm 44 district court and 11 appeals court nominees in the next several months. Hatch said, “If anyone believes that will happen, I have some ocean-front property in the Utah desert I would like to sell them.”
Other highlights from the speech include:
“I have strongly opposed all filibusters against judicial nominees, both Democrats and Republicans. Some of my Democratic friends opposed filibusters of Democratic nominees but heartily supported filibusters of Republican nominees.
I have not taken a partisan approach to judicial confirmations. But I must say that today, this body is failing to do its confirmation duty. At both stages in the confirmation process, in the Judiciary Committee and on the Senate floor, Democrats are failing to meet not only historical standards but also their own standards.”
The prepared remarks follow in full:
Mr. President, the American people sent us here to get things done. One of the most important things is considering and voting on the President’s nominations to the federal bench and the Department of Justice.
We are failing to do our duty.
Let me first address the judicial confirmation process.
The Constitution gives to the President the authority to nominate and appoint federal judges.
The Constitution gives to the Senate the role of advice and consent as a check on the President’s appointment power.
The Senate gives the President advice about whether to appoint his judicial nominees by giving or withholding our consent.
We are supposed to do so through up or down votes.
That is what the Constitution assigns us to do and what the American people expect us to do.
That is what we are failing to do.
For the record, since I was first elected, I have voted against only five of the more than 1500 nominees to life-tenured judicial positions that the Senate has considered here on the floor.
Some of my Democratic friends, including those with far less seniority, have voted against more than three times as many nominees of the current President alone.
I have strongly opposed all filibusters against judicial nominees, both Democrats and Republicans.
Some of my Democratic friends opposed filibusters of Democratic nominees but heartily supported filibusters of Republican nominees.
I have not taken a partisan approach to judicial confirmations.
But I must say that today, this body is failing to do its confirmation duty.
At both stages in the confirmation process, in the Judiciary Committee and on the Senate floor, Democrats are failing to meet not only historical standards but also their own standards.
Democrats have vowed not to treat President Bush’s nominees the way that Republicans treated President Clinton’s nominees.
Democrats are keeping that promise.
In the past ten months, for example, the Judiciary Committee has held a hearing on just three appeals court nominees.
During the same period under President Clinton, the Judiciary Committee held a hearing on twelve appeals court nominees.
Four times as many.
And by the way, every one of those Clinton nominees was confirmed, eleven of them within an average of only 48 days after their hearing, and nine of them without a single negative vote.
When I chaired the Judiciary Committee under President Clinton, we held no less than ten hearings that included more than one appeals court nominee.
While Democrats have controlled this body under President Bush, the Judiciary Committee has not held a single one.
Democrats are certainly keeping their word. They are not treating Bush nominees the way Republicans treated Clinton nominees.
But Democrats are not only failing to meet historical standards in the Judiciary Committee, they are failing to meet their own standards.
When I chaired the committee, Democrats complained about every nomination hearing that did not include an appeals court nominee.
With Democrats in charge under President Bush, the Judiciary Committee has held nearly a dozen nomination hearings without a single appeals court nominee.
There has already been one this year and another will take place on Thursday.
The picture is the same here on the Senate floor, where Democrats are failing to meet either historical standards or their own standards.
President Bush is the fourth president in a row to face a Senate controlled by the other party during his last two years in office.
Under his three predecessors, the Senate confirmed an average of 75 district court nominees during their last two years in office.
More than half of them were confirmed in the final year.
Fifteen months into the current 110th Congress, we have confirmed only 31 district court nominees for President Bush.
Similarly, under the previous three Presidents, the Senate confirmed an average of 17 appeals court nominees during their final two years in office.
So far in the 110th Congress, we have confirmed only six appeals court nominees for President Bush.
Just to meet the historical average, we will have to confirm 44 district court and eleven appeals court nominees in the next several months.
If anyone believes that will happen, I have some ocean-front property in the Utah desert I would like to sell them.
And even if we did the completely unexpected, President Bush would still leave office with a much smaller impact on the federal bench than his predecessor.
President Bush has so far appointed 295 life-tenured federal judges, well behind President Clinton’s total of 346 at the same point in his presidency.
Some around here spin a yarn about a supposed Republican blockade against President Clinton’s judicial nominees.
Some blockade.
It allowed President Clinton nearly to set the all-time judicial appointment record.
Here on the Senate floor, Democrats are not only failing to meet historical standards, they are also failing to meet their own standards.
Eight years ago, when Democrats were in the minority during the last year of President Clinton’s tenure, they were crystal clear about what the judicial confirmation standard should be.
One senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, for example, came to this floor often in 2000, insisting over and over that Democrats had set the proper standard in 1992.
Here is what he said:
I say let us compare 1992, in which there was a Democratic majority in the Senate and a Republican President. We confirmed 11 court of appeals court nominees…and 66 judges in all. In fact, we went out in October of that year. We were having hearings in September. We were having people confirmed in October.
Today, as in 1992, a President Bush is in the White House.
Today, as in 1992, Democrats control the Senate.
Today, Democrats do not have to badger the majority to meet their judicial confirmation standard.
They are in the majority.
All they have to do is meet their own standard.
They are failing to do so.
After all, if the Judiciary Committee is not holding hearings on appeals court nominees now, if the Senate is not confirming nominees now, what makes anyone think we will be doing so in September or October as Democrats once said we should?
We will no doubt hear any number of rehearsed responses, retorts, and rejoinders.
We will hear, for example, that the White House has not sent us a nominee for every existing judicial vacancy.
True, but beside the point.
Lacking nominees for vacancies X, Y, and Z is no excuse for failing to hold hearings and votes on nominees to vacancies A, B, and C.
We have already heard about the so-called Thurmond Rule, supposedly justifying grinding the confirmation process to a halt in this presidential election year.
The Thurmond Rule neither is a rule nor can be attributed to the late Senator Strom Thurmond, a former Judiciary Committee Chairman.
Here is what the Democrats said about the so-called Thurmond Rule in 2000, when a Democrat was in the White House.
“We cannot afford to follow the ‘Thurmond Rule’ and stop acting on these nominees now in anticipation of the presidential election in November.”
Today is only April, but it already looks like Democrats are stopping acting on judicial nominees in anticipation of the presidential election.
That same Democratic leader spoke here on the Senate floor just a month before the 2000 presidential election.
He once again rejected the so-called Thurmond Rule and used 1992 as the judicial confirmation standard, even in a presidential election year.
This is what he said:
“Do you know how long the Democrat-controlled Senate was confirming judges for a Republican President [in 1992]? Up to and including the very last day of the session; not up to and including 6 months before the session ended.”
That was then.
I wonder how long this Democrat-controlled Senate will be confirming judges for this Republican President.
We will continue to hear the cute but misleading phrase pocket filibuster, a blurb created by the Democratic spin machine to somehow blame Republicans for unconfirmed Clinton judicial nominees.
Our constituents may not all know it, but my Democratic colleagues certainly do, that every president has nominees who do not get confirmed for a host of different reasons.
But why let facts get facts get in the way of a good sound bite?
The unconfirmed Clinton nominations include many that President Clinton himself withdrew or chose not to re-nominate.
They include others who were nominated too late in a session to be processed.
They include others who did not have the support of their home-state Senators.
The current Judiciary Committee Chairman insists he is not responsible when nominees lacking support from their home-state Senators do not get hearings.
When he follows this policy, he blames it on Senate tradition and senatorial courtesy.
When a Republican Chairman follows this policy, he calls it a pocket filibuster
When you sort out the real reasons that Clinton nominees were not confirmed, you find that this Democratic sound bite pocket filibuster has a margin of error of about 500 percent.
One of my Democratic friends was recently quoted saying that facts are stubborn things.
They are indeed.
None of this explains, let alone excuse, Democrats’ refusal to holding hearings or votes on judicial nominees who have their home-state Senators’ support.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, for example, is one-third empty.
President Bush has sent us nominees to four of the five vacancies on that court.
One of them, Robert Conrad, has the support of both home-state Senators, our distinguished colleagues from North Carolina.
He has been nominated to a position that has been open for 14 years.
The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts has designated it a judicial emergency position.
This body confirmed him to the U.S. District Court just a few years ago without even a roll call vote, yet he has been waiting for more than 250 days without a hearing.
Steven Matthews likewise has the support of his home-state Senators, our distinguished colleagues from South Carolina.
He has been waiting for more than 200 days without a hearing.
The American people sent us here to do our duty, and that includes giving a hearing and vote to these fine nominees.
I ask consent to put in the record a letter dated February 13, 2008, signed by more than 50 grassroots organizations urging us to do our judicial confirmation duty.
Let me briefly turn from the judicial to the executive branch and, in particular, to the Department of Justice.
My Democratic colleagues helped drive from office several top Justice Department officials and yet are now slow-walking confirmation of their replacements.
On March 11, the Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the nomination of Grace Chung Becker to be Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights.
Grace served as a counsel on my staff when I chaired the Judiciary Committee and has been a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division for the past two years.
She currently heads the division in an acting capacity.
My Judiciary Committee colleagues will remember Grace as a talented, brilliant, and dedicated lawyer, a person of the highest character and integrity.
Grace received her law degree magna cum laude from Georgetown, where she was Associate Editor of the Georgetown Law Journal.
That was after receiving her B.A. magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania and her B.S., once again magna cum laude, from the Wharton School of Finance.
I think I see a pattern here.
After clerking for judges on the U.S. District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia, Grace spent a year in private practice before entering government service.
For the next decade, Grace served in such positions as Special Assistant U.S. Attorney, Assistant General Counsel of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, Special Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of the Army, and Associate Deputy General Counsel of the Defense Department.
At the Justice Department, Grace has been supervising hundreds of lawyers in cases regarding civil rights, housing discrimination, religious land use, education, and fair lending practices.
Grace is a special person.
She is the child of Korean immigrants, whose parents and siblings are all entrepreneurs in New York and New Jersey.
She and her husband Brian have been married for 14 years and have two wonderful children.
Grace is living the American dream and making the most of the opportunities she has found in this great country.
She is dedicated to making those opportunities available to others.
She has served the community on the board of the Korean American Coalition and on the Fairfax County School Board’s Human Rights Advisory Committee.
She has finally had her hearing, but now I hear disturbing reports that she has been given literally hundreds of written questions, many about matters occurring long before her tenure or decisions or policies she had absolutely nothing to do with.
I urge my colleagues to do our confirmation duty, to do what the American people sent us here to do.
That includes giving timely consideration, and up or down votes, to the President’s nominees for the judiciary and the Department of Justice.
I yield the floor.
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