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| June 11th, 2007 |
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Media Contact(s): Peter Carr (202) 224-9854,
Jared Whitley (202) 224-5251 |
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GONZALES RESOLUTION IS POLITICAL
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Washington - Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) today blasted the no-confidence resolution (S.J. Res. 14) against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales with the following speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
Mr. President, this afternoon the Senate will decide whether to end debate on proceeding to Senate Joint Resolution 14, which expresses the sense of the Senate that the Attorney General no longer holds the confidence of the Senate or the American people.
I rise to oppose this so-called no confidence resolution on both procedural and substantive grounds and will urge my colleagues to vote against ending debate.
To paraphrase Shakespeare, whether or not this joint resolution amounts to sound and fury, it signifies nothing. It is nothing more than a bit of political theater which should be rejected out of hand. Let me make two points about its form and two points about its substance before offering a few comments about the controversy from which it arose.
The first point I want to make about its form is that this measure would express the sense or opinion of the Senate through a joint resolution.
As opposed to regular Senate resolutions that require only Senate passage, joint resolutions are legislative vehicles requiring passage by both houses and signature by the President. We use joint resolutions to propose constitutional amendments and some other legislative business, but this legislative vehicle is simply the wrong way to conduct non-legislative business such as expressing the opinion of one house.
In a report dated today, the Congressional Research Service concludes that the form of this measure as a joint resolution is inappropriate for what it purports to do. I think this is significant and the reason for this conclusion is obvious.
If this joint resolution should somehow pass the Senate -- which I certainly expect it will not -- it will be sent to the House. How on earth can the House vote on the sense of the Senate? What could a House vote about the Senate’s opinion on this matter possibly mean? By a negative vote, would the House be saying that what the Senate has expressed as its own opinion is really not the Senate’s opinion? This makes no sense whatsoever.
In fact, the House already has its own resolution regarding the Attorney General’s service and it is a regular House resolution. The sponsors of Senate Joint Resolution 14 either do not understand or have disregarded how the legislative process is supposed to work. I suspect it is the latter, using this political ploy to force the President’s involvement. Either way, this body should reject it out of hand.
The Senate has not used a joint resolution in the past on the rare occasion when it has sought to criticize executive branch officials.
Resolutions in the 109th Congress to censure the President or condemn remarks by a former Cabinet secretary were Senate resolutions. The resolution to censure the President introduced in the 106th Congress, offered by one of the cosponsors of today’s joint resolution, was a Senate resolution. Resolutions in the 81st and 82nd Congresses demanding the resignation of Secretary of State Dean Acheson were Senate resolutions. The resolution to censure and condemn President James Buchanan in 1862 was a Senate resolution.
Our only attempt to censure the Attorney General, back in 1886, was through Senate resolutions. This unprecedented use of a joint resolution would distort our legislative procedures, and I urge my colleagues to reject it.
The second point about the form of this measure is that it purports to be a no confidence resolution.
Parliaments take no-confidence votes for an obvious reason. In a parliamentary system of government, the legislative body’s confidence or support is necessary for the head of government and Cabinet ministers to serve.
For an equally obvious reason, the so-called no confidence resolution before us should be rejected. This is not a parliament.
In our presidential system of government, the separation of powers means that the chief executive is elected separately from the legislature, and Cabinet officials such as the Attorney General serve at the pleasure of the President.
Under the Constitution, the Senate’s consent was required for the Attorney General’s appointment, but our confidence is not required for the Attorney General’s continued service. The Attorney General serves at the pleasure of the President, not at the confidence of the Senate.
The separation of powers has been a casualty throughout the controversy concerning the removal of U.S. Attorneys that gave rise to this misguided resolution. As with the Attorney General -- and with very few exceptions -- U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President.
The U.S. Attorney statute says that they are subject to removal by the President. Neither the Constitution nor this statute say anything about the confidence of the Senate for the continued service of officials the President has authority to appoint.
The separation of powers, a principle fundamental to our constitutional system itself, is becoming a casualty of partisan politics. The brand new Congressional Research Service report I mentioned earlier could not identify a single resolution like this one even being offered in the past and this should not be the first.
No matter what its substance, a joint resolution is inappropriate for expressing the sense of the Senate about this issue. No matter what its form, a resolution expressing a lack of confidence in an executive branch official is inappropriate in our system of government.
Mr. President, let me now address two points regarding the substance of this inappropriate joint resolution.
The first point is about the real purpose behind its words. Even though expressing a lack of confidence in an executive branch official is irrelevant in our system of government, we all know that the real purpose behind this resolution is to pressure the Attorney General to resign.
On the one hand, if its sponsors want to call for the Attorney General’s resignation, they should be honest and do so. On the other hand, Senators certainly do not need a resolution – especially one as fundamentally flawed and inappropriate as this one – to call for the Attorney General’s resignation.
As a number of this resolution’s sponsors have already done, with the rapt attention and constant repetition of a compliant media, Senators can demand the Attorney General’s resignation any time they choose.
My second point about the substance of this misguided joint resolution concerns its actual content, the words themselves. This joint resolution does not condemn or criticize the Attorney General for anything he has done or said. It does not call for his censure. And, just to repeat, this joint resolution does not call for the Attorney General’s resignation.
In the past, the Senate has considered resolutions doing each of these, albeit through regular Senate resolutions properly suited to the task. But this joint resolution before us does not even contain a single whereas clause offering any indication of the basis or any reason for what it says. Rather, this joint resolution speaks vaguely of holding confidence as if this were an all-or-nothing proposition, as if this were some kind of pass-fail test.
Even when Parliaments take no-confidence votes, those votes are at least limited to the confidence of Parliament itself. This joint resolution purports to speak about all the confidence of all the American people.
But what could a yes or no vote on such a resolution possibly mean? Would a no vote mean that no American has any confidence in the Attorney General about anything? Would a yes vote mean that every American has complete confidence in the Attorney General about everything?
Because neither one of those can possibly be true, a resolution worded this way is either seriously misguided or nothing but a publicity stunt. It is not focused on his job performance, or his leadership of the Justice Department, but is focused the Attorney General himself.
A resolution asking for a yes or no vote on something as vague and misdirected as confidence in a person attempts to reduce the multi-faceted and complex to the unilateral and simplistic. In doing so, this misleading joint resolution turns a bit of political theater into a theater of the absurd. The Senate should not even consider such a resolution evoking the image of Caesar listening for the chants of the crowd before giving a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down.
Rather than purporting to speak for the American people, I think we should let the American people speak for themselves.
I found 16 opinion polls by nationally recognized polling outfits during March and April asking Americans whether the Attorney General should resign.
These polls did not ask a vague, squishy question such as do you have confidence in the Attorney General? No, these polls asked the real question behind the joint resolution before us today: do you think the Attorney General should resign? An average of 39 percent of Americans said yes. Only one poll showed a bare majority responding in the affirmative and, considering its margin of error, even that one might not show majority support for this result at all.
Frankly, Mr. President, I am a little surprised that the percentage of Americans who say the Attorney General should resign is not higher. My Democratic colleagues and many of their media allies, after all, have been working very hard week after week after week to persuade our fellow citizens that the Attorney General should go. Daily front-page news coverage, Senate and House hearings, protests and lobbying by activists, blogs, columns, editorials; the Attorney General’s critics have been pulling out all the stops for six months now.
And while the joint resolution before us suggests that this aggressive coordinated effort has deprived the Attorney General of everyone’s confidence about everything, only a little over a third of Americans think he should resign.
The Pew Research Center examined news coverage during the week in March when the Attorney General gave a much-criticized press conference. They found that the story about dismissed U.S. Attorneys was the most reported story in the national media, with coverage jumping eight-fold from the previous week. In spite of that Herculean media effort, however, only about eight percent of Americans said this is the story they followed most closely.
These national polls are far better suited to measure what the American people think than the joint resolution before us and my Democratic colleagues might want to consider another nugget of public opinion.
A USA Today/Gallup poll showed that while 38 percent of Americans believe that the Attorney General should resign, 40 percent of Americans believe that Democrats in Congress are spending too much time on this issue.
Let me repeat that. More Americans say Democrats spend too much time on this issue than believe the Attorney General should resign.
One reason might be that there is so little to show for the effort. Just a few weeks ago, one of my distinguished Democratic colleagues said during a press conference that Democrats just know that U.S. Attorneys were fired last year for improper reasons.
How do Democrats know this? Because they have any evidence for that conclusion? No, my Democratic colleague had to admit that “we don’t have a smoking gun.” That is Washington political code for just take our word for it because we can’t prove it.
Just a couple of weeks before that, another distinguished Democratic colleague told a gaggle of reporters after a Judiciary Committee hearing that he just knows someone in the White House ordered that those U.S. Attorneys be removed. How does he know this? Because he has any evidence for that conclusion? No, he too had to admit that “of course we don’t know that.”
It is truly ironic that this controversy involves prosecutors. Prosecutors must have evidence to bring charges. Prosecutors must have evidence for a conviction. I just wish that some of my Senate colleagues felt such an obligation either to prove their allegations or move on to more important matters.
Mr. President, we have been investigating and probing the removal of those U.S. Attorneys for six months. Dozens of staff in the Senate, the House, and the Justice Department have done little else since the 110th Congress began. We have seen hearing after hearing, interview after interview, thousands of pages of documents, and even hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to hire outside law firms as reinforcements. Democrats continue to authorize subpoenas not only for people who have not refused to testify, but for people who have agreed to testify, and even for people who have already testified.
And after all that, my Democratic colleagues have to admit that they have no smoking gun, they cannot prove the accusations they continue to repeat. There are plenty of innuendos, caricatures, and characterizations. But repeating talking points, soundbites, and cliches is no substitute for evidence.
This summer, Americans will see sequels of several movies in the theaters. Here in the Senate’s political theater, we have already seen several sequels of the same movie. Last week’s Judiciary Committee hearing, for example, was Part Five on the hiring and firing of U.S. Attorneys. Every one of these sequels has the same ending. It is no wonder more Americans believe that enough is enough than believe the Attorney General should resign.
Before I close, Mr. President, let me say a few words about the controversy that was the impetus for this misguided joint resolution.
As I said earlier, U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President. With very few exceptions, he may remove them for whatever reason he chooses. The President has the authority to remove a U.S. Attorney to allow someone else to serve in that position or because that U.S. Attorney’s performance is, in some general or specific way, inadequate.
Each of the U.S. Attorneys removed last year had served his or her four year term and had no right to serve longer.
That means the real issue is whether these U.S. Attorneys were removed for genuinely improper reasons, such as interfering with an ongoing case. After all this time, all this effort, and all this taxpayer money, there is no evidence for that conclusion.
I must candidly say, at the same time, that the process by which this administration set out to evaluate U.S. Attorneys and replace some of them was bungled from the start.
Proper respect for the office of federal prosecutor and for the individuals who occupy it would, it seems to me, require a more rigorous, disciplined, organized process than apparently was used here. The Attorney General has said as much, and said he should have been more involved. I also think the individuals who were asked to resign deserved better, more respectful treatment.
But there is a high burden of proof for those who say that a badly executed and explained process, even a poorly conceived and mismanaged process, was instead a nefarious partisan political scheme to subvert the justice system. Continuing to make such claims without coming close to meeting that burden appears to many designed instead to serve partisan political goals.
As I close, Mr. President, I ask my colleagues to consider one more set of polls.
During the same two months, March and April, as they were asking about the Attorney General’s resignation, national polling outfits also asked Americans if they approve of the way Congress is doing its job.
While an average of 39 percent of Americans believe the Attorney General should resign, an average of 56 percent of Americans disapprove of how we are doing our job. Far more Americans disapprove of Congress than believe the Attorney General should resign.
I wonder whether spending so much time on fishing expeditions that yield no fish and wasting time on inappropriate, misleading resolutions like the one before us today only add to Americans’ disapproval of our job performance.
In a statement last Friday, the main sponsor of this joint resolution said that the vote on this resolution is really about loyalty.
I suppose he meant loyalty to the President, as if that were the only reason to oppose using the wrong vehicle for a misleading statement that has no relevance to our system of government.
In a way, I agree that this is about loyalty, but I think it is about loyalty to the Constitution, to the integrity of the legislative process, to this body as an institution, and to a fair and honest debate about these issues.
If my colleagues are loyal to those things, they will see that this bit of absurd political theater serves no real purpose and will only add to most Americans’ already negative view of how we are doing our job.
I urge my colleagues to reject it.
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