Hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee - Chairman Grassley's Statement on 'Executive Business Meeting'

Hearing

Good morning. On today's agenda we have five nominees who are ripe for a vote as well as two
bills. The two bills, S. 247, the Expatriate Terrorist Act and S. 356, the Electronic
Communications Privacy Act, will be held over.

The five nominees on the agenda are:

- Ron Russell, Utah
- Inga Bernstein, Massachusetts
- Stephanie Gallagher, Maryland
- Suzanne Mitchell & Scott Palk, Western District of Oklahoma

First, I'd like to remind everyone that it's National Police Week. The Senate on Tuesday passed
my resolution commemorating National Police Week and honoring law enforcement officers
around the country who lost their lives in the line of duty. I thank the ranking member and the
other members of this Committee who cosponsored it.

This Committee has been hard at work on important issues for the law enforcement community
throughout this Congress. It seems the least we can do for those who sacrifice so much to help
keep us safe. For example, in March 2015, we passed the Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu
National Blue Alert Act. This legislation created a national, voluntary network to share
information about imminent and credible threats to law enforcement officers. The President
signed it into law a few months later.

And just a few weeks ago, this Committee held an oversight hearing examining the Justice
Department's handling of Public Safety Officers' Benefits claims. Witnesses at the hearing
testified that families of fallen officers were forced to wait years in limbo status because
bureaucrats in the Department couldn't decide their claims on time. These systematic delays
have persisted since 2003, despite multiple OIG and GAO audits and the Attorney General
recommending corrective action.

In 2007, Sen. Leahy even chaired a Committee hearing to examine this problem. During the first
two months following that 2007 hearing, the Justice Department doubled its rate of processing
these claims. However, for claims handled during the ensuing 5 years, the Inspector General
again found significant delays and lack of documentation.

At last month's Committee hearing, an Iowan testified that he had been waiting for over 3.5
years without a decision. Two days after the hearing, he was informed that his claim had been
approved. This record tells me that the Justice Department can process the other 693 pending
death benefit claims in a timely fashion, if properly motivated. So, yesterday, Senator Gillibrand
and I introduced a bill that would permanently increase the level of transparency surrounding this
program. Because public scrutiny seems to the only thing that has motivated the Department
over the past 13 years, to get the job done on time.

The bill's not on the agenda for today, but I wanted to give everyone a heads-up about it. It's
called the Public Safety Officers' Benefits Improvement Act of 2016, and it's narrowly tailored
to address specific problems that have been identified over the past 13 years. I look forward to
working with you all to get that bill done, as our way of saying thank you to the men and women
who made the ultimate sacrifice in protecting our communities.

Last week I was asked about the application of the Leahy-Thurmond rule and I said I'd look into
it and discuss it a bit this week in Committee. As we all know, over the years, there's been a lot
of discussion and frankly, disagreement about the Leahy-Thurmond Rule, what it means, and
when it traditionally goes into effect.

During the last four presidential election years, the last confirmation vote of a circuit court
nominee occurred before the summer recess. And the last confirmation vote of a district court
nominee occurred in the fall of that year.

And I'd note that while there have been nominations hearings held as late as September, my
good friend then-Chairman Leahy made clear a number of times that those hearings were "an
exception under the Thurmond Rule" and "an accommodation" to other Senators on the
Committee.

For example, at the September 9th, 2008 hearing he said, "This is extremely late in a presidential
election year for such a hearing and serves as an exception under the Thurmond Rule." And at
the September 23rd, 2008 hearing he said, "I am holding this exceptional hearing late in a
presidential election year as an accommodation to Senator Specter."

When the Committee reported those nominations to the full Senate, he repeated that the "hearing
was an exception to the Thurmond Rule," and noted "we expedited our proceedings earlier this
week and again today as a courtesy to Senator Specter."

Now, I know we had a lot disagreement about that at the time. Some on our side, including me,
argued that we shouldn't impose the practice. But the fact of the matter is, we did impose it and
it's been the general rule. Going back a little further, in 2004, during George W. Bush's
presidency, there was one hearing in September that included a judicial nominee.

I'm not going to make any guarantees on the number of nominees who will be confirmed or how
many nominees will get hearings for the rest of this year. But going forward, like I said last
week, I suspect there will be more judicial nominees confirmed by the full Senate. In fact, we
had a vote on a district court nominee earlier this week, even though that nominee was opposed
by a majority on our side.

Before I move on, I'd note that we've been hearing over and over that since a nominee was voted
out on a voice vote that there's no opposition. But, just because a nominee moves out of
Committee on a voice vote, doesn't mean that Senators don't have concerns regarding the
nominee, and may actually vote against the nominee on the floor. I think the confirmation vote
we had earlier this week makes that clear.

In this Committee, we're continuing to process judicial nominees and hold hearings. In fact,
including yesterday's nominations hearing, we've now held hearings for the same number of
judicial nominees as Chairman Leahy had at this point in 2007 and 2008.

At the end of the day, because there is not a hard and fast rule, the best way I know how to
proceed is to look to what has been done in the past, and roughly follow the examples of my
predecessors. Based upon prior practice and past statements, the Leahy-Thurmond rule will kick
in when the Senate recesses in mid-July. But remember, then-Chairman Leahy has made
exceptions, as he called them, to the rule in order to accommodate members of this Committee,
so, there can always be limited exceptions.

Because it's Police Week, I'll also take this opportunity to mention that the full Senate yesterday
approved the POLICE Act, a bill reported by this Committee only last week. I congratulate
Senator Cornyn, the sponsor of this bill, for this accomplishment, and note that it is yet another
bipartisan measure successfully reported by this Committee and passed by the Senate this year.

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