Supreme Court Nominations

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, on another matter, I have already talked a lot about history this week, but before we shift focus to President Trump's nominee, we need to review Senate history one more time.

As we await the hurricane of misrepresentations and bad-faith attacks that seem almost guaranteed to pour out, we need to understand, in very clear terms, why our colleague from New York is a uniquely non-credible messenger when it comes to the Senate's role in judicial confirmations.

It was Senate Democrats who began our modern challenges with their treatment of Robert Bork in 1987, but the acrimony really got going in the early 2000s when a group of Senate Democrats took the almost-never- used tactic of filibustering nominations and turned it into a constant routine for the first time ever.

So who was the main driving force behind these tactics? Let's consult some New York newspapers from the year 2003:

Schumer decided [to] put ideology on the front burner in the confirmation process. . . . ``I am the leader (of the filibuster movement), and you know, I'm proud of it,'' said the senator from Brooklyn.

Mr. Schumer urged Democratic colleagues . . . to use a tactic that some were initially reluctant to pursue, and that has since roiled the Senate.

Throughout President Bush 43's two terms, our colleague built an entire personal brand out of filibustering judicial nominees. Talented, hard-working people's careers were destroyed, like the brilliant lawyer Miguel Estrada, a close friend of now-Justice Elena Kagan, who says he is ``extraordinary'' and ``thoughtful'' and would have made ``an excellent addition to any Federal court.'' People like that, literally, were destroyed by Democratic tactics.

This version of the now-Democratic leader said filibustering judges was an essential part--an essential part--of the Senate. He said that if Republicans ever used the nuclear option to ``change the rules in midstream'' because ``they can't get their way on every judge . . . it'll be a doomsday for democracy.''

But of course, in the very next Presidential administration, the Democratic leader leapt at the chance to press that doomsday button himself. Democrats could not abide by President Obama's being constrained by the same rules they had imposed on President Bush. They had no patience to taste their own medicine. So the Democratic leader suddenly decided that ``the old rules need to be modified.'' He voted to use the nuclear option to lower the bar.

So there actually has been one consistent principle all this time. For the Democratic leader, two things qualify as a crisis when it comes to the courts. The sky is falling when a Democratic President does not get to confirm every last judge he or she wants, and the sky is falling when a Republican President gets to confirm any judge.

Six months ago, our colleague walked across the street to the Supreme Court steps, stood in front of a crowd, and yelled:

I want to tell you, Gorsuch! I want to tell you, Kavanaugh! . . . You will pay the price! You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions!

That is the Democratic leader in front of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Just last night he said this:

I tell the American people, everything you need and want, just about everything, will be taken away inexorably, month after month, year after year, decision by decision, by this new court.

That is the argument. That is, apparently, the argument. ``Everything you need and want will be taken away.'' Is this a discussion among Senators or an overdramatic line from a bad movie?

The American people do not need any more revisionist history lectures, any more threats, or any more performance outrage from the side that launched this unfortunate fight and escalated it time after time after time.

There is one right path before us. It does right by the judiciary, the Senate, the yet-unnamed nominee, and the American people. It is a fair hearing, a fair process, and a fair vote. That is what the American people ensured in 2018 after the Democratic leader explicitly asked for a referendum on this approach to the judiciary. He got that referendum in 2018. The people decided. They shrunk his minority even further.

Americans took care to ensure Senate Democrats could not stand in the way of a fair process. So that is exactly what the Senate will provide.

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