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Floor Speech

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Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I am rising right now to speak about the urgency to quickly confirm two bipartisan members to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Time is really of the essence as the term of two voting members, Judge Claria Horn Boom and Judge John Gleeson, will expire this Congress.

For decades, the Senate has come together and confirmed all Commissioners to the Sentencing Commission by a voice vote and, on one occasion, two members by unanimous consent after they had been considered by the Judiciary Committee. This used to be just something easily done. There is no reason to depart from this incredible bipartisan precedent. We must confirm these two nominees today.

Just as a reminder, Congress created the Sentencing Commission in 1984 as an independent Agency, housed in the judicial branch, to reduce sentencing disparities and to promote transparency and proportionality in sentencing. By statute, the Commission must have bipartisan representation amongst its members. It calls for our coming together. This mandate reflects the consensus-driven, evidence-based approach Congress has envisioned in making Federal criminal sentencing fairer and more balanced for the United States of America.

The Sentencing Commission plays a critical role in our Federal legal system. It establishes sentencing policies and practices for Federal courts, and it promulgates and amends the sentencing guidelines, which serve as the cornerstone for every Federal judge when deciding a criminal sentence. It is deeply imperative that the Commission maintain a full slate of voting members to continue this profound work.

Recent history has shown us what happens when the Commission is deprived of its full membership. From 2019 to 2022, the Commission lacked a voting quorum and could not update the sentencing guidelines in response to new Federal criminal statutes, including the big bipartisan work we did to get the First Step Act passed and signed by Donald Trump. Without direction on how to implement the new provisions and criminal penalties, circuit courts split over the proper interpretation of the guidelines, resulting in disparate sentences for people who are dependent solely on which circuit court they were tried in. In other words, there was no equal justice under the law. There wasn't fairness or proportionality.

So, consistent with this Commission's mandate, these nominees have to and will need to continue to function in our bipartisan way--the vision. It is up to us to work in this bipartisan way. Therefore, I ask now to confirm two bipartisan members of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, Judge Claria Horn Boom and Judge Gleeson.

602 and 603; that the Senate vote on the nominations en bloc without intervening action or debate; that if confirmed, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

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Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. That word is difficult to say, but it seems like that happened quicker than even my saying that word. With something so important as this, I was hoping for more of an understanding of why this is being blocked.

Again, perhaps one of the greatest marks of this institution, in my 10 years of experience, has been the times we have come together-- multiple times--to make our justice system more just.

This seems, to me, to be obstructionist to the hopes that we can be a nation that ends this partisanship, that ends this unnecessary partisanship--excuse me--and that ends the sort of tribalism that is making this institution less operative.

We all come here from various parts of our great Nation to get things done, and there seems to be this pattern in the United States of America of our finding less comity, less togetherness.

I love what Martin Luther King said; that we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied with a garment of destiny, in that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

When it comes to the exercise of justice in our country, it is clear, by not having a bipartisan majority sitting on this body, that we create injustice, which, ultimately, hurts our democracy and our highest ideals.

We started this day by pledging allegiance to that flag, where we said with ``liberty and justice for all.'' It pains me today, with the stopping of this unanimous consent, that we are not fulfilling the hopes and aspirations of that pledge.

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