Securing Growth and Robust Leadership in American Aviation Act--Motion
Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I rise today to speak about the critical role that U.S. attorneys play in keeping America safe from the scourge of drugs--like opioids, fentanyl--gun violence and violent crime.
Why are we on the floor? We are on the floor because one Senator has decided to stop the appointment of U.S. attorneys for the Department of Justice across the United States. He has picked four States--one is a pretty red State, Mississippi; California; Ohio, his own home State; and my State of Illinois--to stop the U.S. attorneys from being approved by the U.S. Senate.
This is a pattern.
The Senator from Alabama, Senator Tuberville, has stopped 300 military officers--career officers--from getting a promotion for more than 6 months. Many of these career officers, women and men, have fought in combat and risked their lives for America. We salute them every Memorial Day. We say that we love our veterans, and I certainly do. I'm sure the Senator from Ohio does too. And yet they are being treated so shabbily here in the U.S. Senate that the leading veterans organization in the United States of America is protesting what this Alabama Republican Senator is doing. He is stopping 300 of the best, highest ranked individuals who will lead our military in the world from being approved in the U.S. Senate for 6 months--more than 6 months.
Does he have a specific complaint about any one of them? No. Just, categorically, this is his political approach: Let's stop all the military from a promotion.
Is that fair to them and their families? I don't think so.
Now let's take a look at this situation. The Senator from Ohio has decided he is upset with the Department of Justice. How upset is he? Here is what he said:
I will hold all [Department of Justice] nominations . . . We will grind [the Justice Department] to a halt.
Grind the Justice Department to a halt, he says.
Well, let's see. Do the people at the Department of Justice, the U.S. attorneys, do they do anything important? Do we really need them?
Well, how about starting with the issue of narcotics: 180,000 Americans died from narcotics last year--180,000. You might know some from your community, your church, your business. And 70,000 died from fentanyl.
Let's talk about fentanyl for a minute. What is this narcotic? Well, it is the new and deadliest narcotic on the streets. Let me tell you a story that breaks my heart, because I know this couple. They had a daughter who graduated from college. She went to a party in Chicago. Marijuana is legal in Illinois. She decides to smoke a joint at a party. It has been laced with fentanyl, and she drops dead on the spot--22 years of age.
Fentanyl is a deadly narcotic. Where does it come from? It comes from Mexico--mainly from Mexico. Two drug cartels are sweeping the United States and into Europe with the sale of fentanyl that is killing people right and left--last year, 70,000 Americans.
Who is trying to fight the scourge of fentanyl? The Department of Justice--the same Agency that this Senator wants to grind to a halt.
Are we going to declare a timeout and call Mexican cartels and say: Don't be selling your fentanyl for a while because we are going to make sure you don't have leadership that you need in your department. How can we do something that irresponsible?
Don't stand up and say you are for law and order, you are for law enforcement, and then turn around and stop the appointment of U.S. attorneys who prosecute the criminals who are responsible for the narcotics sales.
I came to the floor last week and asked unanimous consent for the Senate to take up and confirm these nominations. They are nominations of Todd Gee, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi.
If you think this is partisan, let me tell you the whole story. Todd Gee is from Mississippi with two Republican Senators. Both Republican Senators approved his appointment as U.S. attorney.
Is this political? Both Republican Senators are supporting the nominee that is being held by another Republican Senator. It doesn't make sense.
Tara McGrath--the request was made by the Senator from California just a few moments ago. She wants to be the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California, eminently qualified, no controversy with her nomination.
Rebecca Lutzko--now this is interesting--to be U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, the same State as the Senator who is now objecting to it.
He approved her. She went through the committee. She came out and was reported to the floor, and now she is being held up.
Well, let's take a look here. Does Ohio have a narcotics problem?
Let me make sure we get this right.
Oh, my. In the last year, Ohio had 5,155 drug overdose deaths, the fourth highest overdose deaths in America. And the U.S. attorney who would be fighting these narcotics with the appropriate task force of the law enforcement is being held up by which Senator? The same State. The Senator from Ohio is holding up his own U.S. attorney to prosecute narcotics criminals.
And it is not just drugs. In Cleveland, the largest city in the Northern District of Ohio, the number of homicides is up 30 percent compared to last year. Nearly 90 percent of all overall homicides in Cleveland this year has involved a firearm. The city has seen a 99 percent increase in vehicle grand theft, a Federal crime, so far in 2023.
So to deal with the crime in the streets, to deal with the homicides, the firearm violations and the increase in vehicle grand theft, you count on one major prosecutor. Who is it? The U.S. attorney. So you have a vacancy in the U.S. Attorney's Office. The Senator from Ohio approves the person to fill the vacancy and then stops her nomination on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
I can't follow his logic, unless you are determined to grind the Department of Justice to a halt, even at the expense of the people you represent, the people you were sent here to protect. Don't tell me you are for law and order in your own neighborhood when you stop the nomination of the U.S. attorney for no controversy. It makes no sense.
U.S. attorneys are an integral part of our justice system in overseeing important operations that help protect our communities. They are empowered to prosecute all Federal criminal offenses. They play a critical role in enforcing the law.
In the Northern District of Ohio, for example, the U.S. Attorney's Office led the response to a surge in fatal doses from fentanyl. It brought together doctors, State and local law enforcement, addiction specialists, and other stakeholders and created the U.S. attorney's Heroin and Opioid Task Force. This is in the Northern District of Ohio.
This U.S. attorney is to fill the spot to lead that, but she is being held up on the calendar--by whom? The Senator from Ohio.
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Ohio also recently secured the conviction of a drug trafficker who attempted to traffic 1 kilogram of fentanyl pills, which were made to look like oxycodone, into the State. In addition, the office coordinated with ATF on a 3-month violent-crime-reduction initiative in Cleveland that resulted in the arrest of 59 individuals who have been charged with firearms trafficking, narcotics, conspiracy, and other firearms offenses.
Are these important? They would be important in Chicago. They would be important in Los Angeles. They are important, I am sure, in Cleveland and in other cities as well. These convictions are trying to keep people safe in their homes and communities and to reduce violent crime.
The lead prosecutor--the lead Federal prosecutor--is a U.S. attorney. It is a vacant position we are trying to fill with a person with demonstrated competence to take it over--and who is holding it up but the Senator from Ohio. I don't understand it.
When he ran for office, Senator Vance argued that he would ``fight the criminals and not the cops.'' Well, take a look at what is happening here. In this situation, the people we need to fight these criminals--the prosecutors--are being held up by the Senator before they can be voted on on the floor.
He has pledged to be ``tough on crime'' and to support our brave law enforcement officers. In fact, just this May, he introduced a resolution in the Senate, saying he has ``support for the law enforcement officers of the United States.''
His resolution says:
[T]he Senate . . . highly respects and values the law enforcement officers of the United States and greatly appreciates all that [they] do to protect and serve.
The Senator's resolution then calls on ``all levels of government to ensure that law enforcement officers receive the support and resources needed to keep all communities . . . safe.''
Support and resources are great, but give them the job. The job is still vacant because the Senator is withholding his approval for them to move forward.
I say to my colleagues: Reread the resolution he introduced last May, and take your own advice. Give these U.S. Attorneys' Offices the leadership they need to keep their communities safe.
Now I would like to engage the Senator, if he doesn't mind, in a question.
I listened carefully to what you said earlier in objecting to the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California. What is your position, if you wouldn't mind saying it, in terms of the vote on that nomination?
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Mr. DURBIN. So you want a record vote for each U.S. attorney?
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Mr. DURBIN. Do you understand, before President Biden was elected, that that was common practice--that a unanimous consent request was all that was necessary to approve a U.S. attorney?
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Mr. DURBIN. Is the Senator aware--I am not going to ask this question. I know you know the answer as well as I do.
I will just state, generally, that the people who were involved in the prosecution of former President Trump were attorneys appointed to that position by President Trump.
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Mr. DURBIN. And a special counsel, separate and apart from the Department of Justice, was independently making those decisions.
Your decision to stop U.S. attorneys from taking these jobs means that they will not be in a position to be able to prosecute individuals of either political party who are guilty of criminal wrongdoing. Do you understand that?
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Mr. DURBIN. So I am going to make a unanimous consent request consistent with the statement that you just made. I have listened to it carefully. I don't know if you have been given a copy, but I want to make sure you understand.
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Mr. DURBIN. No, and you are not expected to.
But if individual Senators have an objection to moving forward on a nomination and they know a unanimous consent request is going to be made on the floor, it is their responsibility to be present physically. You can't mail it in.
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Mr. DURBIN. So even if you got your way, even if you got a rollcall vote, which you have asked for twice now, you are still not going to allow us to move to fill these vacancies for U.S. attorneys, even in Ohio?
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Mr. DURBIN. That is what I am going to request right now, so you can decide whether you are going to go along with it or object.
129, 314, 315, and 266; that there be 2 minutes for debate, equally divided in the usual form, on each nomination; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to vote without intervening action or debate on the nominations in the order listed; that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action; and that the Senate then resume legislative session.
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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, there again, I just gave him what he asked for, and he said it wasn't enough. He has to have every other Senator come to the floor and agree to this.
Let me say that this is a unanimous consent request for four U.S. attorneys who have gone through the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Senator Padilla and I serve on. They went through that bipartisan committee, and they have been reported to the floor. This is customary, ordinary. There is nothing controversial about these individuals, but still and all not good enough. He has objected to even having a vote later in the day on the very nominations that he asked for earlier.
You can't have it both ways. If you are going to vote no against these nominees under any condition, make it clear. To say you want to clear it with every other Senator, they have been given notice of this unanimous consent request. They could be here on the floor if they wanted to object personally. To my knowledge, this junior Senator from Ohio is the only one objecting, and it is a shame he is because these U.S. attorneys are needed desperately in California, Mississippi, Ohio, and my home State of Illinois.
And to think that what we are going through is to the point at which a Congressman who is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee came to Chicago to hold a hearing this week to outline how much trouble we have with violent crime. We do have problems with violent crime. We certainly need a U.S. attorney, who is one of the persons up for this nomination, to do her best to make sure that we have a safer community in Chicago.
How can she do it if she can't clear the Senate floor?
I hope the Senator will get it straight as to what exactly he is trying to achieve here. If he wanted a rollcall vote, I just offered to it him, and it wasn't good enough. I am going to be returning regularly to the floor to make this unanimous consent request.
Sadly, during the period of time that we debate this, crime will continue to be committed in Ohio, in Illinois, in Mississippi, and in California that, in many instances, could have been avoided if the Senate, on a regular dispatch approach, decided to move these nominations forward as they have been traditionally.
To say that you want the Department of Justice to grind to a halt in the United States of America, come on. That is the kind of statement you make in a speech, come back later, and say: Well, I didn't mean that exactly. Certainly, no one means that exactly.
We don't want the Department of Justice to stop its fight against narcotics and fentanyl in the United States that are claiming thousands of lives, and slowing down that process here on the Senate floor is just unacceptable.
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Mr. DURBIN. 129 and 266; that there be 2 minutes for debate, equally divided in the usual form, for each nomination; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to vote without intervening action or debate on the nominations in the order listed; that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order; and that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's actions and the Senate then resume legislative session.
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, for those who are following this debate, we had four nominations that were being held. Two were just approved. We will keep working to make sure all four are approved. The two remaining are in the States of Illinois and Ohio. We feel just as intensely about those vacancies as all the others, but we are seizing the moment to order a rollcall vote on the two that have been approved by both sides.
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