Judicial Understaffing Delays Getting Emergencies Solved Act of 2024
Floor Speech
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Mr. IVEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to S. 4199, the JUDGES Act.
I appreciate the comments that have come from the Republican side this morning, Chairman Jordan in particular. We have had a chance to pass bipartisan legislation out of that committee. In fact, a couple of those bills have been mine, cosponsored with Republican Wesley Hunt. I know we can get it done. I know we can work in a bipartisan fashion and get legislation out of the committee when we choose to do so.
Mr. Speaker, the idea behind this bill was to take the politics out of judicial nominations and selections. I think it is pretty clear. I think everyone would agree that this system has been broken for some time.
The Republicans point to the Bork nomination. On the Democratic side, we look at what happened with Merrick Garland and his Supreme Court nomination, which was blocked. He had to wait almost a year and wasn't even given a hearing during that time.
Then, after that, Justice Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed by the Senate in about a 3-week period, if I recall correctly, even though that happened just before the election and President Biden would have been in place to make the selection for the Supreme Court at that time.
This bill was aimed at trying to get around that and take the politics out of the selection process by having the decision made with respect to the passage of the legislation before we knew who the President was going to be. I thought that was a good way to go. I didn't cosponsor this bill, frankly, because I was a little worried that we would end up in exactly the place where we are today.
After the election was held, even though this bill came out of the Senate Judiciary Committee in June and was passed unanimously in the Senate in August, the House Judiciary Committee had several markups in September and August, so we could have taken the bill up then, but it never happened.
In fact, it didn't happen until after the election and President Trump was selected. Guess what happened then. Now that we are at the eleventh hour, we didn't even bother to have the committee markup process happen. My colleagues brought it straight to the floor and are now asking us to vote for it today on this expedited basis now that Republicans know who is going to win.
Mr. Speaker, we know how to do bipartisan legislation. Mr. Issa, the gentleman on the other side, I know has done excellent bipartisan legislation, working with members of this committee on the Democratic side, and he has a long history of doing that. I think we can replicate that again.
Today, I ask that we not pass this bill. I ask my colleagues to vote against it. Let's go back to the drawing board. Let's take another crack at making sure that we do this in a bipartisan way.
I agree that we need more judges. In fact, the courthouse that I practiced in, D.C. Superior Court, is short 10 judges. We need them there. We need them in other courts that I practiced in. We need them all over the country, but let's do it in the right way.
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Mr. IVEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding additional time.
Mr. Speaker, we know how to do this the right way. The American people want us to do it the right way. We know the judicial nomination selection process has been broken for some time. This could be a way to take a step in the right direction for fixing that.
Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to vote ``no'' today, and let's get back to the drawing board and find a way to work together in a bipartisan fashion, yielding an apolitical result.
Elections have consequences. Mr. Trump is going to have his chance to put nominees on the court, for sure, but let's try to do it in a way that looks out over time and makes it more equitable over time so that we can have a balanced judiciary that the people believe in and have confidence in and don't feel that it is political and partisan.
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