Sports Medicine Licensure Clarity Act of 2017

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I like the majority leader. We get along quite well. He even laughs at my jokes, which sometimes aren't very good. We are very proud we are working on the appropriations bills together in a bipartisan way, as this place ought to work. But sometimes his comments are so absurd and so filled with double standard, innuendo, and hypocrisy that you don't know whether to laugh or cry.

He has been on the floor every day saying that Democrats are causing delay. Democrats are causing delay? First, to say that Democrats are causing delay, coming from the same man who delayed the nomination of Supreme Court Justice nominee Merrick Garland for over 300 days without a shrug of his shoulders--give me a break. The leader delayed for 10 months when he thought it was right to do, and he can't wait for a week to get an honest report out of the FBI? What a double standard. How galling. Accusing Democrats of needlessly delaying a Supreme Court nomination is galling and hypocritical coming from a leader who delayed the nomination of a Supreme Court Justice for over 300 days, until his party had a chance to win the White House. So no one--no American-- should accept his admonishments about delay. He is the master of delay.

Second, he blames Democrats for these delays. As the leader well knows, Democrats are not in charge. We can't set the calendar. These things have been delayed because people on his side of the aisle who had sincere concerns about having a fair process said they will not go forward unless the process is made fairer.

Even the initial hearing where Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh testified was because a member of the Judiciary Committee on the Republican side said he didn't want to go forward until he heard from them. It had nothing to do with Democrats. Did we agree that should happen? Of course. And so did most people who are fairminded. But it wasn't caused by us.

On the reopening of the FBI investigation into these new allegations, the background check investigation, I would ask Leader McConnell, who caused that? Who caused this delay? It is not the Democrats. We don't have the ability to do it. It was three Members on his side who sincerely were seeking better truth because they heard two arguments, they weren't sure which was right, and they saw that without some kind of independent investigation, it would tear the American people apart in ways for which we will pay a price years down the road no matter what the outcome of the vote on Judge Kavanaugh.

Democrats didn't cause the delay, and he knows it. It was the inability of all of the Republicans to be unified--with justification, because the truth should be sought after in a more sincere way for a nomination to the highest Court of the land.

Leader McConnell has said: We are going to ``plow right through'' the recent allegations. Fortunately, some Members on his side of the aisle didn't want to plow right through. They didn't want to delay unnecessarily. One week--give me a break--compared to 10 months, leaving the Scalia seat open? Who are we kidding? Who are we kidding? Who is making this a political argument? Let's ask.

One final point. The leader kept accusing the people who came forward of engaging in political smear campaigns, of being in the mud. I want to ask the leader to answer a direct question: Does he believe or not believe Dr. Ford? Yes or no. I happen to believe her. He refuses to answer that one way or the other because he knows that Dr. Ford had tremendous credibility. Instead, he calls her names. He uses it as Democrats--but she came forward on her own.

By the way, one of the first things she did was she called the Washington Post and spoke to the reporter who later wrote the story. That was long before any Democrat knew what was going on. She felt a sincere need to come forward.

To call her political--which is what, by ricochet, the leader is doing--is so unfair and is so wrong. To call all three of these women who came forward, whether or not you believe them, political actors is treating women in the same way that unfortunately too many women, as we have learned over the last few years, have been treated in the past. That doesn't mean allegations shouldn't be proven. That doesn't mean there shouldn't be a discreet, fair process to try to get to the bottom of it, which is what the FBI investigation is. That doesn't mean all men are guilty before proven guilty. It means there deserves to be a fair hearing even if it takes 1 week--1 week compared to 10 months of delay.

Finally, the investigation itself should only take a week. That is for sure. No Democrat has called for it taking more than a week. We are not moving the goalpost. But it should be thorough. It should not be limited by the Senate Judiciary staff, who was initially calling the shots, and they have been biased to begin with. When the Democratic staff asked to be on the phone with the counsel to the President, Mr. McGahn, the Republican staff refused. That is not bipartisan. That is not fair. That is not evenhanded.

Fortunately, yesterday the President said the FBI should go forward. They can interview many people in a week. When there has been a crime situation that called for it or a terrorism situation that called for it, from what I understand, they have interviewed hundreds in a week. So a list of 20 people to be interviewed in a week, when the FBI has thousands of agents, many of them well trained in the art of figuring out how to interview somebody, is not unreasonable. It is only fair.

We hope there are still no limitations on the FBI investigation. We hope there are no limitations because that would jaundice the whole process, and that is not what those who called for it on either side of the aisle had asked for. We had asked for it to be full and fair and open, and then everyone would make his or her judgment. That is all people are asking for.

On that issue, I once again call on President Trump and the White House to release in writing what White House Counsel Don McGahn has instructed the FBI to pursue. Until then, we have to take President Trump's off-the-cuff comments with, perhaps, grains of salt. We have to be shown that what he said is actually being implemented.

Let me read a few quotes.

``The Supreme Court must never, never be viewed as a partisan institution.'' That is what Judge Kavanaugh said in his 2006 confirmation hearings.

Here is one more from a speech Judge Kavanaugh gave in 2015: ``First and most obviously . . . a judge cannot be a political partisan.'' I think most Americans would agree with that. I certainly do.

A lodestar in our consideration of judicial confirmations should be whether the nominee is independent and within the ideological mainstream. The Judge Kavanaugh we saw last Thursday did not meet the standard laid out in his past statements. His prepared statement to the committee--prepared; if you will, malice aforethought--accused sitting U.S. Senators of a phony smear campaign, lambasted ``left-wing opposition groups,'' and portrayed the recent allegations--the allegations of Dr. Ford, Ms. Ramirez, and the third person who came forward, Ms. Swetnick--as ``revenge on behalf of the Clintons.'' Frankly, Judge Kavanaugh's testimony was better suited for FOX News than a confirmation hearing for the august U.S. Supreme Court. But that is in character with Judge Kavanaugh's long history of working for the most partisan legal causes--Ken Starr, Bush v. Gore, all the myriad controversies of the Bush era.

It would be one thing if Judge Kavanaugh discarded his partisan feelings once he donned the black robes of a jurist. Unfortunately, he has been on the bench for many years, and in Thursday's hearing, he revealed that his bitter partisan resentments still lurk right below the surface.

It should give us all pause to consider what it means to elevate such a partisan world view to the Supreme Court, whether it be a Democratic or Republican partisan view, where rulings must be made on the legal merits, not--not--on the side of the aisle which most benefits.

The greatest issue against Judge Kavanaugh, the one that really brothers most people, is his credibility. Is he telling the truth? That issue supersedes all the others.

There may be some who say: Well, what happened in high school shouldn't count. It is many years later. People grow. People change.

I think what happened to Dr. Ford--she seems credible to me--is something you can't predict. It is not what men do. Some may say that, but we are looking at what Judge Kavanaugh said at age 53, not what he did at age 18. We are looking at his credibility now as a grown adult. If you believe Dr. Ford, then Judge Kavanaugh is not telling the truth.

If this were the only instance, it would be one thing. That is bad enough, but there are many more. Over and over again, it is hard to believe what Judge Kavanaugh swore under oath at the committee hearing.

Just yesterday, NBC News reported that either Judge Kavanaugh or people close to the judge were in communication with his Yale classmates to get them to rebut allegations by Deborah Ramirez, later published in the New Yorker.

Beyond the unseemliness of a Federal judge pressuring former classmates to support his nomination, it seems that Judge Kavanaugh was at least very misleading to the Judiciary Committee about Ms. Ramirez's story. When asked by Senator Hatch when he first heard of Ramirez's allegations, he answered ``in the New Yorker story.'' That is when he first heard. Based on the NBC reports, if they are correct, that was not truthful.

It would be one thing if that were one isolated incident, but, again, there are far too many misstatements, far too many inaccuracies, far too many mischaracterizations. He pled ignorance to many Bush-era controversies, only for emails to be released showing he was aware of them all and played a role in many. He offered explanations for high school yearbook quotes. And it is not the quotes themselves or what they indicated; it is that his explanations sort of defy belief. And, of course, based on the accounts by his high school and college classmates, he has grossly mischaracterized his relationship with alcohol.

The common thread is that Judge Kavanaugh repeatedly tiptoes around the truth. He doesn't tell the truth in many instances, it seems, to paint his nomination in a favorable light.

We want a Supreme Court nominee, whatever their politics and whatever their party origins, to be a shining example of someone who tells the truth without doubt and without equivocation. If you say ``Well, maybe he is telling the truth, and maybe he is not,'' then he doesn't belong on the Supreme Court, and I think most Americans are saying that.

Again, even if you want to discount--as some people do--what happened when he was 15 in high school and 18 in college, you cannot discount what he is saying and professing at age 53 when it flies in the face of being truthful. That is the key question here.

There is demeanor. He sure didn't show the demeanor of a judge at the hearing. There is partisanship. He brought out the most raw form of partisanship, so unbecoming of someone on the appeals court, let alone the Supreme Court, and he did not show any semblance to always being 100 percent honest and truthful, which is what we need in a Supreme Court Justice.

So, again, even if you feel that what happened when he was 15 and 18 shouldn't matter, what happens when he is 53 does matter, and his credibility is in real doubt--doubt enough, I think, for most Americans to say that this man does not belong on the Supreme Court, and there ought to be somebody--many people--who would be a whole lot better.

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