Nomination of Amy Coney Barrett
Floor Speech
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Mr. CRAMER. Mr. President, 2 years ago, I was a candidate running for this job, running against a Democratic incumbent. The top issues of the race throughout the summer were things like the sanctity of human life, and most important in the minds of the voters--at least based on our polls--were law and order. The idea that a sanctuary city, much less several of them, could exist to protect violent criminals as long as they were here illegally was an absurd notion to Dakotans. They were good issues for me as a candidate.
That all changed just a little over 2 years ago, when Senate Democrats waged an attack on President Trump's nominee to fill the vacancy that occurred by the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Kennedy. By ``attack,'' I don't mean engage in a vigorous debate about Brett Kavanaugh's political and judicial philosophy or his background. Rather, they waged an attack on Brett Kavanaugh himself, on his character, his reputation, and his family--and not with facts but with fabrications.
My opponent, North Dakota's junior Senator, joined the smear campaign and changed the priorities of our campaign quickly from sanctuary cities to, suddenly, the Supreme Court of the United States. That happened just 2 years and a couple of weeks ago. As much as anything-- as much as any reason, as much as any issue--the Supreme Court is why I am here today. I do not mean just today. I mean it is why I am a U.S. Senator.
So, when President Trump nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill the vacancy created by the death of Justice Bader Ginsburg, I knew there could be no amount of political harassment that would cause me to shrink from this obligation. The suggestion that I or my colleagues would squander this--the right and the responsibility under the Constitution--and consider waiting until after an election that may create an opportunity for someone with whom my constituents don't agree to be nominated to the Court would be a dereliction of my duty and would rightly enrage the people who sent me here for exactly this moment. I refuse to shrink.
So let's talk about the nominee, Judge Amy Coney Barrett. By all accounts, she is a brilliant jurist. I don't think anybody has really questioned her scholarship, her intellect. Certainly, you couldn't argue as to her demeanor. She has, on national display, demonstrated a demeanor that we should probably all aspire to but, certainly, for somebody who aspires to be on the highest Court in the land. Oh, by the way, I love the fact that she was educated in middle America. With all due respect to my conservative jurist friends and acquaintances and even those I don't know from someplace other than middle America, it is awfully nice to see one get to the top.
My conversations with Judge Barrett were like, I think, everybody's. They were pleasant, and they were serious. In some cases, they were, maybe, even a little bit intense, but my conversation didn't focus on hardly any of the things I have been hearing about with relation to her nomination--in fact, none of them have I heard about in this Chamber today, and we have heard about lots of them. Mine didn't even really focus on the hot-button issues of the day. My discussions focused on my inquiry of her--about her sense and her philosophy and her thoughts on federalism. What is the appropriate role of States in this cooperative federalism--this wonderful experiment that is the United States of America? This is a system designed by the States. The Federal Government was created by the States. The Federal Government didn't create the States. No, the States created the Federal Government. It is foundational.
I, of course, like the Presiding Officer, was a State-elected official. I was never the Governor, but I was probably, in many respects, qualified in a way, today, that never occurred to me at the time, which was that I was a regulator. I was a State regulator who had been elected by the people of my State to regulate things like rates of gas and electrical utilities, to cite things like pipelines and transmission lines and powerplants and wind farms, and to oversee the Federal Communications Act and its application in North Dakota. From that perch as a State regulator for nearly 10 years, by far, the greatest problems and the greatest obstacles to doing my job were the mandates coming from Washington, DC, and its trying to impose its mediocrity on North Dakota's excellence.
So, when I came to Washington, I set out to change some of that. I wanted to try to change our bureaucracy a little bit and find somebody in this place who understood and respected the role of the States in this cooperative federalism, because what I saw and what I continue to see is a big bureaucracy that is trying to run right over--roll right over--the States of this country. I think that the overriding issue of the role of States and of federalism gets to the heart of lots of these other smaller issues, of lots of these more granular issues.
Now, whether it is the waters of the United States and what is a navigable water--that is one of the big ones, right? The Clean Power Plan and its imposition on local and State regulation is another, and how the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission deals with grid reliability. Maybe it is something even more granular like cross-State emissions. Who knows? There are lots of them--lots and lots of them--in areas where it has really been the courts themselves. Whether it is the Supreme Court or the appellate court or the district court, it has really been the courts--the judiciary--that have been the only thing standing between an overbearing Federal Government and the rights of States.
So my discussions with Judge Barrett centered around her views on federalism. I gave her some examples, some North Dakota examples. I even laid the blame on Congress, and we deserve a lot of it, for sure. We have passed broad authorizations for the bureaucracy and then let them fill in the blanks. We have to stop doing that. We need to be more proscriptive. In the meantime, I want to be sure that we have a Supreme Court that understands the sovereignty of States.
I mean, right now, North Dakota is engaged in several pieces of litigation with our own Federal Government, and this is under Trump's Department of Justice. I just wish the lawyers at the Department of Justice would take on the bad actors in the political class with the same zeal with which they take on my State. By the way, there are much bigger things they could be taking on when they take on the political class, if they would just do it, than the little things, where they should be negotiating settlements with the State of North Dakota. I just wish they had the same zeal for that. That would be much more worthy of the title of ``justice.''
Yes, I am very pleased with Judge Amy Coney Barrett's philosophy and demeanor, but I was really grateful for her answers on the issue of the role of States in a cooperative Federalist system like ours. Yet, at the end of the day, judicial philosophy, intellect, and where one went to college is all just shored up by the fact that she is a person of incredible virtue--yes, a virtue that is grounded in faith. That is, after all, where most virtue comes from. In fact, I suspect that some of those virtues that used to be more universal in our country are part of why the left despises her so much.
As for me, I am just glad that she is willing to do it. I am glad that her family is willing to stand with her and do it. I am glad that she has the virtues of faith that underpin the intellect and the experience and the demeanor. In fact, perhaps, it is why she has all of those other things. For those reasons and several others, it is going to be a pleasure--it is even going to be an honor--to stay the night tomorrow night, if that is what we have to do, to cast the vote for Judge Amy Coney Barrett to become the next Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States.
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