Nomination of Amy Coney Barrett

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, as we speak, over 60 million Americans have voted. The Republican majority is ignoring--even laughing--at their wishes.

Despite what the American people want and whom they will vote for, this Republican majority is ramming this nomination through only because they can. Might makes right, in their view. That is so wrong. That is so against the American principle of democracy and rule of law.

So I will move to adjourn so that we consider this nomination after the election that is now ongoing--not before it, not 8 days before it.

Therefore, Mr. President, I move to adjourn and to then convene for pro forma sessions only, with no business being conducted, at 12 noon on the following dates and that, following each pro forma session, the Senate adjourn until the next pro forma session: Tuesday, October 27; Friday, October 30; Tuesday, November 3; Friday, November 6; further, that if there is an agreement on legislation in relation to the COVID pandemic, the Senate may convene under the authority of S. Res. 296 of the 108th Congress; finally, that when the Senate adjourns on Friday, November 6, it next convene at 4:30 p.m., Monday, November 9, and that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed.

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Mr. SCHUMER. I appeal the ruling of the Chair and ask for the yeas and nays.

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, today, Monday, October 26, 2020, will go down as one of the darkest days in the 231-year history of the U.S. Senate.

Let the record show that tonight the Republican Senate majority decided to thwart the will of the people and confirm a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court in the middle of a Presidential election, after more than 60 million Americans have voted.

Let the record show that tonight the Republican majority will break 231 years of precedent and become the first majority to confirm a Supreme Court Justice this close to election day.

Let the record show that tonight the Republican majority will make a mockery of its own stated principle that the American people deserve a voice in the selection of Supreme Court Justices, completing the partisan theft of two seats on the Supreme Court using completely contradictory rationales.

And let the record show that the American people--their lives and rights and freedoms--will suffer the consequences of this nomination for a generation.

This entire debate can be summed up in three lies propagated by the Republican majority and one great terrible truth. The first lie is that the Republican majority is being consistent in following its own standard--what rubbish. After refusing a Democratic nominee to the Supreme Court because an election was 8 months away, they will confirm a Republican nominee before an election that is 8 days away.

What is Leader McConnell's excuse? He claims that the principle of not confirming Justices in Presidential years only applies when there is divided government. But this is what Leader McConnell said after Justice Scalia died: ``The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice.''

That is all he said. He didn't say that the American people should have a voice but only when there is divided government. No, the last bit is ex post facto

If this were really about divided government all along, Republican Senators would not have promised on the record to follow their own standard if the situation was reversed. ``I want you to use my words against me,'' said the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. ``If there is a Republican President in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said, let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination.''

So the claim by the leader that this is consistent with their own principle--please. Rather than accept the consequences of its own words and deeds, the Republican majority is lighting its credibility on fire.

This hypocritical, 180-degree turn, is spectacularly obvious to the American people.

The second lie is that the Republican majority is justified because of Democratic actions on judicial nominations in the past. The Republican leader claims that his majority's actions are justified by all the bad things Democrats did years ago. He claims that every escalation of significance in judicial debates was made by Democrats. But in his tortured, convoluted history lesson, Leader McConnell left out a whole bunch of chapters. He omitted that Republicans bottled up more than 60 judicial nominees by President Clinton, refusing them even a hearing.

He made no reference to the decision by Republican Senators to hold open 14 appellate court seats in the 1990s so that a Republican President could fill them. Instead, a tactic Republicans would revisit under President Obama, when Republicans used partisan filibusters to block his nominees to the DC Circuit, at the time, Republican Senators, including my colleague from Kentucky, amazingly accused President Obama of trying to pack the court by the mere act of nominating judges to vacancies of the Second Circuit. What a hypocritical double standard, which appears to be endemic in Leader McConnell's recounting of history.

And on top of it all, the leader has asked the Senate to play a blame game that dates all the way back to 1987, pointing to a 3-minute speech by Senator Kennedy about Robert Bork as the original sin in the judicial wars. Seriously, that is what he said. Because one Democrat give one 3-minute speech that Republicans didn't like, Leader McConnell can steamroll the minority to confirm a Justice in the middle of an election.

Imagine trying to explain to someone: Sorry, I have to burn down your house because of something one of your friends said about one of my friends 33 years ago. That is how absurd and obnoxious this game has gotten. That is how unjustifiable the majority's actions are, how flimsy their excuses have become.

The leader's final argument boils down to: But you started it--a declaration you would sooner hear in the schoolyard than on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

The third and perhaps the greatest lie is that the Republican majority is confirming Judge Barrett solely on the basis of her qualifications, not based on her views on the issues. My colleagues insist that Judge Barrett should be confirmed on her credentials alone. That is all they talk about. They don't talk about her views on the issues, only qualifications. Well, this canard is about as apparent as a glass door. Everyone can see right through it.

What is the real reason Republicans are so desperate to rush Judge Barrett onto the Supreme Court? Of course, it is not because of her qualifications. If my Republican friends truly believed that the only thing that mattered about a judicial candidate is their qualifications, then Merrick Garland would be sitting on the Supreme Court right now.

If the Republican leader truly believed that judicial appointments were about qualifications, and qualifications alone, Judge Garland would be Justice Garland right now.

Judge Garland was among the most qualified candidates ever--ever--to be nominated to the Supreme Court. No Republican Senator has disputed that. But they didn't want Judge Garland on the Bench. They do want Judge Barrett. They subjected Judge Garland to an unprecedented partisan blockade, but they are erecting a monument to hypocrisy to rush Judge Barrett on the bench.

Why? It is not because she is more qualified than Judge Garland was. What is the difference between Barrett and Garland? The difference is not qualifications but views. We know that. We all know that. Healthcare, a woman's rights, a woman's right to choose, gun safety-- you name it. It is not because the far right wants Judge Barrett's views on the Court, but it is because the far right wants Judge Barrett's views on the Court but not Judge Garland's.

The truth is, this nomination is part of a decades-long effort to tilt the judiciary to the far right, to accomplish through the courts what the radical right and their allies--Senate Republicans--could never accomplish through Congress.

Senate Republicans failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, so President Trump and Republican attorneys general are suing to eliminate the law in court.

Republicans would never dare to attempt to repeal Roe v. Wade in Congress. So they pass onerous laws in State legislatures that they control to drive that right to the point of near extinction and then provoke the Supreme Court to review Roe v. Wade.

The far right has never held the majority on the court to limit Roe v. Wade or Griswold, but if Judge Barrett becomes Justice Barrett, it very well might.

And if you are looking for some hard numbers to prove that the political right considers ideology and not just qualifications, consider this. Under Justice Roberts, there have been 80 cases--80-- decided by a 5-to-4 majority, in which the five Justices nominated by Republican Presidents came down one side and the four Justices nominated by Democratic Presidents came down on the other. Eighty cases--exactly the same majority--calling balls and strikes. And in an amazing coincidence, all the Republican-nominated Justices think it is a strike and all the Democratic ones think it is a ball, or vice versa. It would be the most remarkable coincidence in the history of mathematics if nine Justices, simply calling balls and strikes, exhibited the same split in the exact same configuration 80 times.

We all know what the game is here. So stop pretending. Stop pretending there aren't entire organizations dedicated to advancing far-right judges. Stop pretending that the political right doesn't spend millions of dollars to prop up the far-right Federalist Society and support certain judicial candidates because they only want ``qualified'' judges. No, they want to systematically and permanently tilt the courts to the far right.

So does Judge Barrett have views on legal issues? You bet she does. That brings me to the one great and terrible truth about this nomination. The American people will suffer the consequences of Judge Barrett's far-right, out-of-the-mainstream views for generations.

Judge Barrett came before the Judiciary Committee and refused to answer nearly any question of substance. That is the new game at the hearings. She would not answer questions about healthcare. She would not say whether voter intimidation is illegal. She would not say if she thought Medicare and Social Security were unconstitutional. She could not even offer platitudes in responses to questions about the peaceful transfer of power, and refused to say if climate change was real.

It is not because Judge Barrett isn't allowed to answer these questions. It is because she knows how unfavorable her views on the issues might sound to the American people.

But the thing is, we do know how Judge Barrett thinks. She views certain rights, like the right to privacy, through a pinhole. She was closely affiliated with organizations who advocated the outright repeal of Roe v. Wade.

But she views other rights, like the right to keep and bear arms, as almost infinitely expansive. She once authored a dissent arguing the Federal Government does not have the authority to ban all felons-- felons--from owning guns.

Only a few hours ago, the Republican Senator from Missouri proudly declared from the Senate floor that Judge Barrett is the most openly pro-life judicial nominee to the Supreme Court in his lifetime: ``This is an individual,'' he said of Judge Barrett, ``who has been open in her criticism of that illegitimate decision, Roe v. Wade.'' He was being more honest than most of the talk around here, which says it is only about qualifications.

Judge Barrett has proudly fashioned herself in the mold of her mentor, Justice Scalia, who, before his death, appeared set to declare union fees to be unconstitutional, driving a stake into the heart of the American labor movement. While American workers break their backs to make ends meet and earn ever less of ever growing corporate profits, what might Justice Scalia's former clerk portend for the future of labor rights?

What about voting rights? Judge Barrett has suggested that certain rights are civic rights, including voting rights, and can be restrained by the government, but other rights, like the right to keep and bear arms, are individual rights that cannot be subject to even the most commonsense restrictions.

And, of course, what about healthcare? Judge Barrett has argued that Justice Roberts got it wrong when he upheld the Affordable Care Act. She said that, if Justice Roberts read the statute properly, the Supreme Court would have had to invalidate--her words--the law.

That is the same thing, by the way, that Donald Trump said about Justice Roberts and the ACA. That is the great and terrible truth about this nomination.

Judge Barrett holds far-right views, well outside the American mainstream, and those views matter to the vast majority of Americans. They matter to women facing the hardest decision of their lives. They matter to LGBTQ Americans like my daughter, who only 5 years ago won the legal right to marry who she loves and could lose it just as fast. They matter to little girls like 7-year-old Penny Fyman from West Hempstead, Long Island, born with a neurological disorder, bound to a wheelchair, attached to a feeding tube, who is alive today--alive today--because of the Affordable Care Act.

We are talking about the rights and freedoms of the American people: their right to affordable healthcare, to make private medical decisions with their doctors, to join a union, to vote without impediment, to marry whom they love and not be fired because of who they are.

Judge Amy Coney Barrett will decide whether all of those rights will be sustained or be curtailed for generations. And, based on her views on the issues--not on her qualifications but her views on the issues-- Judge Barrett puts every single one of those fundamental rights-- American rights--at risk.

So I want to be clear with the American people. The Senate majority, this Republican Senate majority, is breaking faith with you, doing the exact opposite of what it promised 4 years ago, because they wish to cement a majority on the Supreme Court that threatens your fundamental rights.

And I want to be very clear with my Republican colleagues. You may win this vote, and Amy Coney Barrett may become the next Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, but you will never, never get your credibility back. And the next time the American people give Democrats a majority in this Chamber, you will have forfeited the right to tell us how to run that majority.

You may win this vote, but in the process you will speed the precipitous decline of faith in our institution, our politics, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. You will give an already divided and angry Nation a fresh outrage, an open wound in this Chamber that will take a very long time to heal. You walk a perilous road.

I know you think that this will eventually blow over, but you are wrong. The American people will never forget this blatant act of bad faith. They will never forget your complete disregard for their voices, for the people standing in line right now and voting their choice, not your choice. They will never forget the lack of consistency, honor, decency, fairness, and principle.

They will never forget the rights that are limited, constrained, or taken away by a far-right majority on the Supreme Court, and history will record that, by brute political force, in contradiction to its stated principles, this Republican majority confirmed a lifetime appointment on the eve of an election, a Justice who will alter the lives and freedoms of the American people, while they stood in line to vote.

Leader McConnell has lectured the Senate before on the consequences of a majority's action. ``You'll regret this,'' he told Democrats once, ``and you may regret it a lot sooner than you think.'' Listen to those words: ``You'll regret this, and you may regret it a lot sooner than you think.''

I would change just one word. My colleagues may regret this for a lot longer than they think.

Here, at this late hour, at the end of this sordid chapter in the history of the Senate, the history of the Supreme Court, my deepest and greatest sadness is for the American people. Generations yet unborn will suffer the consequences of this nomination. As the globe gets warmer, as workers continue to fall behind, as unlimited dark money floods our politics, as reactionary State legislatures curtail a woman's right to choose, gerrymander districts, and limit the rights of minorities to vote, my deepest, greatest, and most abiding sadness tonight is for the American people and what this nomination will mean for their lives, their freedoms, their fundamental rights.

Monday, October 26, 2020--it will go down as one of the darkest days in the 231-year history of the U.S. Senate.

Mr. President, I note the absence of a quorum.

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