Nomination of Amy Coney Barrett

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, before I get into the substance of my remarks, I will briefly redress the Republican leader.

He came on the floor and, with his typical vitriol, made all kinds of accusations. The bottom line is McConnell is angry. Why? Because we Democrats have exposed that he has defiled the Senate as an institution more than any person in this generation and many generations, because we Democrats have exposed the hypocrisy of holding up Merrick Garland because it was 8 months before an election and rushing through Amy Coney Barrett because it is ``something we can do.''

The bottom line is Leader McConnell, of course, doesn't like hearing these things, but they are the truth, and they will live on in history. The man who defiled the Senate, the man who created one of the greatest hypocritical acts in the history of the Senate, sits in that chair.

Now, the Republican majority is steering the Senate toward one of the lowest moments in its long history, and the damage it does to this Chamber may very well be irrevocable.

After thwarting the constitutional prerogative of a duly elected Democratic President to appoint a Supreme Court Justice because it was an election year, the Republican majority is rushing to confirm a Justice for a Republican President 1 week--1 week--before election day.

Four short years ago, all of our Republican friends argued that it was principle--that is the world they used, ``principle''--to let the American people have a voice in the selection of a Supreme Court Justice because an election was 8 months away.

Those same Republicans are preparing to confirm a Justice with an election that is 8 days away. What a stench of hypocrisy.

In the process, the majority has trampled over every norm, rule, or standard that could possibly stand in its way. It ignored health guidelines to conduct in-person hearings in the middle of a pandemic after Republicans Members of the committee themselves had contracted COVID.

It has broken longstanding Senate precedent. Never in the history of the Senate has a Supreme Court nominee--a lifetime appointment--been considered so close to an election. The Presiding Officer of the Senate confirmed this yesterday in response to this Senator's inquiry. Never in the history of the Senate has a Supreme Court nominee been confirmed after July of an election year.

Before even we arrived at this sordid chapter, the Republican majority broke the rules of the Senate to change the rules of the Senate, lowering the number of votes required for a Supreme Court nomination so that Republicans could confirm whomever they wanted.

They changed the rules of the Senate again to limit the amount of time the Senate spends considering judicial nominations so they could pack the courts with their rightwing appointees even faster.

It is a hallmark of democracy that might does not make right, but the Republicans are blatantly ignoring this principle. Here, in Leader McConnell's Senate, the majority lives by the rule of ``because we can.'' They completely ignore the question of whether they should. Morality, principles, value, consistency are all out the window.

Here, now, we have the culmination of this Republican majority's systemic erosion of rules and norms in pursuit of raw political power: a Supreme Court nominee who will be confirmed on a party-line vote after the rules were changed to allow it, in complete contradiction to the supposed principle that the same party so vehemently argued only 4 years ago, 8 days before an election in which the American people will choose exactly whom they want to pick Supreme Court Justices for them.

This idea that because now the Presidency and the Senate are in one party, the rule doesn't apply--they never said that when they blocked Merrick Garland. It is fakery. It is, again, part of the house of lies that is being built by the majority to rush a Supreme Court Justice like this.

It is absurd. It is outrageous. It is a stain on this body and an indelible mark on this Senate majority that will live in history. The Senate Republican majority is conducting the most rushed, most partisan, and least legitimate process in the long history of Supreme Court nominations, and Democrats will not lend an ounce of legitimacy to that process.

Today the members of the minority on the Judiciary Committee have boycotted the markup of Amy Coney Barrett. The rules of the Judiciary Committee require that two members of the minority be present in order to conduct a markup.

True to form, Chairman Graham decided to break the rules to move forward with a vote on Judge Barrett anyway--steamrolling over the rules of the Judiciary Committee, just like Republicans have steamrolled over principle, honesty, fairness, consistency, and decency in their mad rush to confirm a Justice before the election. To steamroll over rules--that is the mark of an autocratic society, not the mark of a democracy, and the Republican majority is going along with that kind of autocracy, the same kind exhibited by President Trump. It is a shame that the principles of the Republican Party are out the window.

Today, the Democratic seats on the dais in that committee room remained empty. In their place were reminders of what is ultimately at stake in this nomination--the fundamental rights of the American people. In their place were photographs of Americans whose lives would be devastated if Judge Barrett delivers the decisive vote to strike down the Affordable Care Act, ripping away healthcare from tens of millions of Americans and eliminating protections for 130 million Americans with preexisting conditions.

You could imagine, alongside their faces, the faces of women who cherish the right to make their own private medical decisions; the faces of LGBTQ Americans who want to marry whom they love and not be fired for who they are; the faces of American workers who are breaking their backs to make ends meet, who need their union to help them get a better wage; the faces of young people who know the planet is in peril in their lifetimes.

I hope that when Republican members of the committee took their seats this morning, they looked at those faces. They ought to think about what this nomination means for them. I hope they actually took one moment to think about what it says about their sham of a process that Democrats were forced to take the extraordinary step of refusing to participate.

While they may realize it or not--or they may not even care--the Republican majority's monomaniacal drive to confirm this Justice in the most hypocritical of circumstances will forever defile the Senate and curtail the fundamental rights of American people for generations to come.

To every one of my colleagues: History will remember what you have done. Democrats will play no part in it.

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