Human Trafficking

HUMAN TRAFFICKING

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Hagel). Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I know my colleagues are waiting, so I will try to be brief. I have come to the floor to talk about a resolution Senator Cornyn and I are submitting on human trafficking. Before I get into that, I want to mention a couple of points in reference to my good friend from Arizona. One is a numerical question. He talked about courts of appeals judges who have been approved under previous administrations and then mentioned the 107th Congress of this administration. It is sort of a bit of comparing not apples and oranges but apples and half apples.

I believe if you look at the number for the whole of President Bush's term, it goes up considerably. It might not be quite as high as some of the others, but it is much higher than the 53 percent Senator Kyl mentioned. Senator Kyl is a good friend of mine. I mentioned this to him while he was here.

But the second point I would make-I know my good colleague from Michigan, Carl Levin, will be bringing this up at some length-to me, the issue is not a tit-for-tat issue. They did a lot of wrongs previously when President Clinton was President and they did not let judges come through, and that created the vacancies in Michigan. But I have some sympathy for the Detroit News article Senator Kyl quoted that said there should not be tit for tat here.

Two wrongs don't make a right. It is sort of anomalous for those creating the wrong to say two wrongs don't make a right. But there is a far more important point, and that is this: The reason we have no approval of judges in Michigan is the President has ignored the part of the Constitution that talks about advise and consent. For the vacancies in Michigan, if the President sat down with the Michigan Senators, Mr. Levin and Ms. Stabenow-both reasonable people, people who have engaged in many bipartisan relationships themselves-and said: "How do we work this out?" it would have been worked out in the first 6 months of the President's term.

The idea that, A, previous Senates have created vacancies, and then the President says to the Senators of that State or to the Senators of this body: "It's my way or no way. I'm picking the judges. You have no say," that is what has created the deadlock.

The Constitution calls for advice as well as consent. In States where there has been advice, it has worked. In my State of New York we have no vacancies. Why? Because the administration has consulted with me. My colleague Senator Clinton and I have nominated some judges to vacancies in New York. They have nominated the lion's share, but none of them would meet with this body's disapproval.

I am sure, if the President would simply sit down with Senator Levin and Senator Stabenow, and say: "How do we work this out?" it would be worked out, pardon the expression, in a New York minute. But they do not. They have an attitude:
Here is what we want. You approve them. And if you don't approve every single one, then you are obstructionists.

As has been mentioned over and over again, of the 200 judges this body has dealt with, 6 have been disapproved and 194 have been approved. That is a darn good track record. I am a Yankee fan. The Yankees' percentage is up there around .700, .650 in terms of wins and losses. We are all proud of that. The President is doing a lot better than the Yankees.

The idea that "It's my way or no way" is not going to work. Furthermore, I would argue to my colleagues, it is not what the Founding Fathers wanted. If they wanted the President to appoint judges unilaterally, they would have said so in the Constitution. But they wanted the Senate to have a say.

I remind my colleagues, one of the first judges nominated by President Washington, John Rutledge of South Carolina, was rejected by the Senate because, of all things, of his views on the Jay treaty. And in that Senate were a good number of Founding Fathers, people who had actually written the Constitution, so clearly the Founding Fathers did not intend the Senate to be a rubberstamp.

Certainly they did not intend for the Senate to hold up a majority of judges, but when the President nominates people way out of the mainstream, when the President refuses to sit down and negotiate, these are the results. And I would guess-again, I defer to Senator Levin, who is on the floor-my view is, if the President or his counsel were to pick up the phone and say to Senator Levin: "How do we work this out?" it is still not too late, even as we enter the twilight of this Congress, to get it done.

That is all I will say on that matter. I will leave the rest to my colleague from Michigan.