Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, we have all heard the sad news. While we were back in our districts last week, our Assistant Parliamentarian, Michael Phillip Beaver, passed away unexpectedly at the very young age of 39. Family and friends gathered this morning to celebrate his life.
Born in Mount Pleasant, he was the son of Linda Susan Beaver and William R. Beaver. He was a graduate of Saint Vincent College, where he studied political science with a minor in graphic design, and he earned his juris doctorate from the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. He was a member of the Ohio and the California State Bar Associations.
Most recently, he served here in this Chamber as the Assistant Parliamentarian. Prior to that, he served as the deputy legislative counsel for the State of California. Aside from being a brilliant attorney, Michael was passionate about hockey and music. He was a talented cook, an avid gardener, and a gifted artist.
He was a loving husband to his wife, Gilda, and was a caring, fun, and patient father to his two young boys, Bradley Dastan Beaver, age 3, and Connor Milad Beaver, age 2.
It is hard to believe that an unexpected medical condition could end his life so soon at the age of 39. He was contributing so much to the United States and so much to his family. We will greatly miss him here as I know he will be missed by a very wide expanse of family and friends and community.
Mr. President, I come to the floor to address one aspect of our ``we the people'' Nation. In writing the Constitution, our forefathers put those words, ``We the people,'' in supersized font, so even if you are far away and you can't read the fine print, you know the mission statement of our Constitution. It was all about, as President Lincoln summarized, a ``government of the people, by the people, [and] for the people,'' always intended to be the opposite of governments by and for the powerful.
Yet what have we seen in 2017? Much of the year was spent on a healthcare bill designed to destroy healthcare for some 22 to 30 million Americans. That is not government by the people or for the people; that is government by and for the powerful.
We saw a tax bill that borrowed $1.5 trillion from the people of the United States--which our children will have to repay--and gave it to the wealthiest Americans. That is not government by and for the people; that is government by and for the powerful.
We saw the theft of a Supreme Court seat for the first time in our history--a Supreme Court seat sent when it was vacated by the death of Antonin Scalia from one Presidency to the next, more than a year in the future in order to sustain a 5-to-4 Court decision called Citizens United, which allows a powerful America to spend unlimited sums, contaminating our political system with hundreds of millions of dollars, corrupting this Nation. That is not government of, by, and for the people; that is government of, by, and for the powerful.
Now we see the ongoing effort to pack the courts. Although I have heard complaints from some of my Republican colleagues about the slow pace of nominees, we see that the pace is very fast compared to the pace that existed for President Obama. For the first 14 circuit court nominations, they waited under President Obama an average of 251 days, but under President Trump, in less than half the time at 125 days--a breakneck pace--we have seen more nominees confirmed. If we compare from the start of the Presidency to this far into the Presidency under President Obama, we had a total of 21 nominees--9 circuit court nominees, 11 district court nominees, and 1 Supreme Court nominee, totaling 21. We see that under President Trump there are confirmations for 15 circuit court nominees, 17 district court nominees, and the filling of a Supreme Court seat, a stolen seat. There are 33--12 more-- and more than 50 percent faster. So the argument that anything is being slow-walked is completely false.
We see all kinds of efforts, though, to rush nominees through without proper consideration. Last year, we had cloture votes on four circuit court nominees in a single week. We had cloture filled on three nominees within hours of being reported out of committee--and not reported out of committee unanimously but with divided votes. We know that when something comes out of the committee, there needs to be time for the rest of the body to be able to exercise their efforts to understand the background of that nominee. Often new information is turned up. For example, with Brett Talley--nominated for the district court--after he came out of committee, then it became known that he had written controversial commentaries defending the KKK, and he had belittled the Sandy Hook tragedy where little children were slaughtered. We found that out after he came out of committee. Yet cloture is being filed right after nominations come out of committee. We even had an individual who was rated ``not qualified'' by the American Bar Association. That, my colleagues, is rare.
The tradition of bipartisanship and cooperation involving the blue slip goes back a long way--since about 1917, a little more than a century. Senator Thomas Hardwick objected to President Wilson's district court nominee. He wrote on a blue slip of paper, saying: ``I object to this appointment--the same is personally offensive and objectionable to me, and I can not consent to the confirmation of the nominee.'' Thus began the blue-slip tradition of courtesy and respect for the viewpoint of Senators from a variety of States.
Under President Obama the blue slips were honored, whether they came from a Democrat or from a Republican. In fact, 18 of President Obama's nominees were blocked by Republican blue slips because they were honored by the Democrats.
In 2009, we had a letter from my Republican colleagues, and it said about the practice of observing senatorial courtesy that ``we, as a Conference, expect it to be observed, even-handedly and regardless of party affiliation.'' Isn't the sentiment expressed in 2009 appropriate for 2018?
Let me state that in the history of these 100 years, not a single nominee has been approved over the objection of two Senators from the relevant State. The former Republican chairman, Senator Hatch, said:
Weakening or eliminating the blue slip process would sweep aside the last remaining check on the President's judicial appointment power. Anyone serious about the Senate's constitutional ``advice and consent'' role knows how disastrous such a move would be.
I would like to know how many folks in this Chamber are still serious about the Senate's constitutional advice and consent role.
Chairman Grassley said in 2015:
This tradition is designed to encourage outstanding nominees and consensus. . . . I appreciate the value of the blue-slip process and also intend to honor it.
He did honor it while President Obama was in office, but now, apparently, the world is a different place. Look what is happening on the Senate floor this week. We have a nominee, Michael Brennan, whose views on women's rights, civil rights, education, criminal justice, sexual discrimination, and judicial precedent are out of the mainstream. His nomination has moved forward despite the opposition and over the objections of a home State Senator. This is a seat, by the way, that is open because the blue-slip process was honored. The objection through a blue slip was honored under President Obama.
There are more extreme nominees coming through. So if we think back to that point made by Senator Grassley that ``the tradition is designed to encourage outstanding nominees and consensus,'' we are seeing that the decision not to honor it is doing the reverse.
There is Kurt Engelhardt, a nominee for the Fifth Circuit. His record on the district court is deeply troubling, particularly when it comes to cases regarding sexual harassment, discrimination, civil rights, discriminating against women in the workforce who choose to have children--a right that should be open to every American woman without fear of losing one's job. Yet, last night, this body voted for cloture and is sending his nomination to a final vote.
We have Joel Carson, nominee for the Tenth Circuit, who has spent most of his career deeply embedded in advocating for fossil fuel interests. That is a huge conflict of interest for being able to weigh in as a judge on any issue regarding energy.
Then we have the case in Oregon. The chairman of the Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing for Mr. Ryan Bounds tomorrow, despite the fact that Senator Wyden and I have not returned our blue slips. Should this nomination come forward to this floor and be confirmed, this will be the first time in the history of the blue slips that the combined objections of both home State Senators have been ignored.
One might ask: Why is it that Senator Wyden and I feel so strongly about this particular nominee? Well, first, the White House didn't consult with us. They brought him in for an interview and decided they were going to nominate him without consulting the home State Senators. Any Member of this body who wants to stand up for consultation would stand against this nomination. Oh, the White House says that they consulted. They have a very strange definition of consultation. I think they mean it to say that they informed us about their decision. We asked the White House to stand aside until our committee back in Oregon had completed its work, but they chose not to. That is not consultation.
There are the inflammatory writings of this individual regarding the rights of workers, people of color, and the LGBTQ community. The Alliance for Justice said in their report on this nominee, Mr. Ryan Bounds, that his ``writings reveal strong biases that call into question his ability to fairly apply the law and maintain confidence in the justice system's ability to dispense even-handed justice to all.''
Shouldn't that be the heart of the nomination process, that we make sure we are sending forward individuals who add to the integrity of our judicial system, not individuals who take away from it?
During his interviews with our committee out in Oregon--this committee continued its work, even though the President nominated him without waiting for the committee to finish its work. The committee asked him if he had controversial writings or events in his life that he needed to disclose, and he said that he did not. He did not disclose them. This is not an ancient failure of integrity; this is an immediate, recent past failure of transparency and integrity.
The letter we received from the chair of Oregon's Federal Judicial Selection Advisory Committee states:
I am writing to you as Chair of the [Oregon] Federal Judicial Selection Advisory Committee. I have reviewed a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal titled ``Give Amnesty for College Writings.'' The piece concerns Ryan Bounds, a candidate for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals vacancy, and specifically states that our committee recommended him. The piece notes Mr. Bounds' writings, but fails to point out Mr. Bounds never disclosed those writings to the committee at any point in the interview process. Since that time, I have heard from four members of the judicial selection committee specifically with regard to this omission. I can say with confidence that those four committee members as well as myself would not have ranked Mr. Bounds as we did had we known about these deeply troubling writings.
Mr. Bounds' writings themselves are objectionable not only for the views they express, but for the intemperate and demeaning tone that he uses to express his opinion. Equally, if not more disturbing, Mr. Bounds failed to disclose these writings when specifically asked by the committee about his views on equity and diversity. Although he felt free to volunteer details about his life going back to childhood, he misled the committee in response to this important inquiry. For this reason, five of the seven committee members no longer recommend Mr. Bounds.
That is what we heard from the Oregon committee.
We have a responsibility to the institutions of governance of the United States of America, with the fundamental principle embedded in those three words: ``We the People''--government of, by, and for the people. We have seen a series of significant bills where it is the exact opposite of this: bills designed to destroy healthcare for millions of Americans, bills that put us deep in debt in order to deliver the proceeds to the richest Americans. It is perhaps the biggest bank heist in the history of the world.
Now we see an effort to sully the integrity, to damage the legitimacy of our courts. That is unacceptable, and we need to rethink our course and honor our responsibility to strengthen, not undermine, the beautiful architecture of our ``we the people'' Nation.
Thank you.
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