Interior, Environment, Financial Services, and General Government Appropriations Act, 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, both parties used to agree that the thorough review of a Supreme Court nominee's record was essential to fulfilling our constitutional advice and consent obligations as Senators.

When Elena Kagan was nominated 8 years ago, even though Democrats were in the majority and Republicans were in the minority, Chairman Leahy joined with Republicans to request all of Elena Kagan's records from her time in the White House. Now the shoe is on the other foot. We are in the minority; they are in the majority. But rather than applying the previous, bipartisan standard, the Republican majority is refusing to join with Democrats in requesting Brett Kavanaugh's complete record.

At issue is Brett Kavanaugh's time as Staff Secretary in the Bush White House. Republicans argue we don't need to see papers from that part of his career; Democrats argue we most certainly do. Republicans are being hypocritical and sophistic.

In both cases, we said that we needed all of the papers. Why? Because this is such an important job, and we ought to see the complete record of whoever the nominee is.

Now they are saying: Well, counsel is OK, but Staff Secretary isn't, and Kagan wasn't a Staff Secretary. So what? So what?

The relevant standard is all of the records, no matter what jobs they had, and Republicans are trying to come up with a difference for reasons that people are asking why. Are they hiding something? Is Kavanaugh hiding something? What did he do when he was Staff Secretary that he doesn't want the American public to see?

The Republicans say that the job of Staff Secretary wasn't so important, merely a paper pusher. Bull. The Senate doesn't need to see anything from that period, they say, because the job was unimportant. Second, they say that his years as a judge should preclude him from having to provide paperwork from his earlier work as a top White House official.

The Republicans keep moving the goalposts. They keep changing the standards to suit their needs to accomplish their goal--a hard-right, anti-middle-class, anti-choice, anti-healthcare Supreme Court. That is their goal. They can't accomplish it here; they can't accomplish it in the House; they can't even accomplish it with President Trump because those are elected branches of government, and the public pushes back. But with judges, they can, so they keep moving the goalposts and changing the rules time and again.

Their arguments don't withstand scrutiny. Let's take the first one: The job of Staff Secretary wasn't so important. That is a laugher. Brett Kavanaugh himself has said that ``my three years as Staff Secretary for President Bush--were the most interesting and in many ways among the most instructive.'' If he feels they were most instructive, why shouldn't the American people see what instructed him? By his own account, during his time in the White House and as Staff Secretary, Judge Kavanaugh attended meetings with world leaders from the Pope to Vladimir Putin. He participated ``in the process of putting legislation together,'' and he talked to the President of the United States about how he should pick someone for the Supreme Court. In fact, Judge Kavanaugh said his time as Staff Secretary made him a ``better interpreter of statutes.''

Over and over again, Judge Kavanaugh has said that this was an important position and it critically informed who he is as a judge and who he will be, should he be confirmed--I hope he isn't--to the Supreme Court. So the argument the Republicans have made that Staff Secretary isn't an important job is virtually laughable and a coverup for their fear of letting all the records out.

The second argument we are hearing is that it is gratuitous and unreasonable to ask for documents from Brett Kavanaugh's career before he became a judge. Well, they have amnesia on the other side. Nine years ago, when this body was considering the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, Senate Republicans on the Judiciary Committee requested all of the paperwork from her tenure at the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.

Sotomayor was a judge for 15 years--3 longer than Judge Kavanaugh-- and still Republicans, just 9 years ago, said they needed ``minutes from the board meetings'' that Justice Sotomayor attended as far back as 29 years before her confirmation hearings. Here is what Senator Sessions said in 2009:

The [Puerto Rican legal defense fund] documents may provide insight into [Sotomayor's] judicial approach. . . . The American people have a right to know this important information about President Obama's nominee.

Guess what. Senator Leahy, then chairman, joined Sessions in requesting those documents. Democrats have been very open about their nominees--our nominees--and we have let the full records come out. We are not afraid of who they are. But when the Republicans are in charge, they come up with all of these elliptical, sophistic, and fundamentally hypocritical arguments about why that record shouldn't be made available. We have never heard those from Democrats. It is just unfair.

So when my friends from the other side say that we don't need all of Kavanaugh's documents because White House Staff Secretary isn't an important job, we ask: Isn't it a more important job than being part of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, from which you demanded records? Of course it is.

It seems each time Democrats demonstrate that our request is 100 percent consistent with the Senate's bipartisan precedents, we hear some new, strained, contorted rationalization from Senate Republicans as to why a new, partisan approach is called for now and why the Senate should avert its gaze from Judge Kavanaugh's work as one of the most senior officials in the White House. Republicans keep moving the goalposts in what I can only characterize as a flimsy and transparent attempt to mask their own hypocrisy.

Again, there is an obvious, looming question: What are Republicans trying to hide in Judge Kavanaugh's record? What don't they want the public to see? Why are they making such hypocrites of themselves in coming up with these solipsistic arguments that when they were in the minority and President Obama nominated people, they should get all the records, but not now?

If there is nothing to hide for Judge Kavanaugh, then let the sunlight shine. Let the records come out.

My Republican friends seem to think that some Democrats have announced their opposition to Judge Kavanaugh, and that means the full Senate doesn't deserve to have access to his records. Frankly, it is rich to hear this from the Republican leader. People are rolling their eyes. He refused to consider any nominee by President Obama--it didn't matter who it was--mere hours after we received the news of Justice Scalia's death. It was one of the most shameful chapters in the Senate. I know there is gloating on the hard right: Wasn't that a brilliant move?

It is going to go down in history as one of the low points of the Senate, and Senator McConnell will have to bear that on his shoulders. I say that even though he is my friend.

I say to my Republican colleagues: This is not about Democrats. This is not about individual Senators and how they might vote. It is about the American people. We have an open government. The American people deserve a chance to hear the full record, make their judgments, and let their elected representatives know now, before the nominee is voted on and in November.

When Elena Kagan's documents were requested by the Senate, they were almost immediately posted online for everyone to see, and they are still there. You can look them up. This isn't about how some of my Democratic colleagues may vote on Judge Kavanaugh; this is about hiding critical information about a Supreme Court nominee from the American people.

This is simple. Senate Democrats are following a bipartisan precedent; Senate Republicans are not. Republicans are playing a partisan game in hopes of withholding and hiding relevant information from the Senate and the public.

I will make one final plea to my colleagues on the other side, who seem to think the whole thing is just a political game and that there is nothing deep or sincere about the foundation of this Republic. This is not a game. This is a nomination for a lifetime appointment to a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States. It is one of the most important votes any of us will ever cast. The American people expect and deserve that the Senate take its constitutional duty seriously. I hope our Republican colleagues will stop their partisan, self-serving games and let the Senate do its job. Healthcare

Madam President, on healthcare, a year ago this week, the Senate defeated a partisan attempt by President Trump and Senate Republicans to repeal the healthcare law. Since that ignominious defeat, where John McCain showed such courage and looked so much better than so many of my other colleagues across the aisle in what they are doing now, the Trump administration and congressional Republicans have sabotaged our healthcare system, raising costs on American families, driving up premiums, reducing the quality of care. For what reason? There seems to be hardly any reason, other than political spite.

President Trump is an expert on political spite. We all know that. Our Republican colleagues just march blithely behind him. They hate the Affordable Care Act so much that they are willing to take a torch to our healthcare system, even though it hurts millions of average Americans.

The Trump administration is trying to gut protections for Americans with preexisting conditions through the courts. The administration has directed the Justice Department not to defend the constitutionality of preexisting conditions and at the same time is pushing Judge Kavanaugh onto the Bench.

Remember, President Trump said that his ``judicial appointments would do the right thing, unlike Judge Roberts on health care.'' Make no mistake about it, America, Judge Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court puts the future of protections for preexisting conditions in the spotlight.

I would like every Republican Senator to go home and defend that. Go home and defend that they want to repeal protections for preexisting conditions; go home and defend that they want to put on the Bench a nominee who is likely to do so because President Trump said so.

In a recent Kaiser poll, voters ranked continuing preexisting conditions as the most important healthcare issue in the upcoming campaign. By 58 to 27, voters said that since President Trump and congressional Republicans have made changes in the law, they are now responsible for any problems with our healthcare system moving forward.

Almost a year after the Republican healthcare bill went down, those numbers should be a stark warning to my Republican colleagues. The American people do not want endless political sabotage. They want lower costs, better quality, more stability, and, above all, they want to keep the protections for Americans with preexisting conditions.

Republicans go down the road of sabotage at their own peril. I urge my colleagues, instead, to join Democrats in defending preexisting conditions in court, as Senator Manchin, Senator Casey--who has been such a leader on healthcare, whom we will hear from in a minute--and other Democrats have asked us to do.

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