Judicial Nominations

JUDICIAL NOMINATIONS

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, my colleague from Michigan is here, and I know she will probably want to speak on the three votes on judges.

The first point I make is, I would much rather be debating the Homeland Security bill than these judges. Where are our priorities in this body? What are we doing? We have had weeks and weeks where many have called for bringing Homeland Security appropriations to the Senate. Instead, we have been debating all the political footballs. I know it is a Presidential election year, I know it is election season, but some things should have a higher calling.

On this particular issue, I make one point before yielding the floor to my colleague from Michigan. Anyone who thinks this is a tit-for-tat game at least misreads the Senator from New York. Were there bad things done on judges when Bill Clinton was President by the Republican-controlled Senate? You bet. But that does not motivate me in terms of what we ought to do in the future.

What motivates me is that in the issue of appointing judges-and I remind the American people that now 200 judges have been approved and 6 have been rejected. My guess is the Founding Fathers, given that they gave the Senate the advice and consent process, would have imagined a greater percentage should be rejected.

I am always mindful of the fact that one of the earliest nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court, Mr. Rutledge, from the neighboring State of the Presiding Officer, South Carolina, nominated by President George Washington, was rejected by the Senate because they didn't like his views on the Jay Treaty. That Senate, which had a good number of Founding Fathers in it-the actual people who wrote the Constitution, many of them became Senators the next year or two-didn't have any qualms about blocking a judge they thought was unfit.

Now all of a sudden when this body stops 6 of 200, we hear from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue: That is obstructionist.

That is not obstructionist. That is doing our job. The Constitution didn't give the President the sole power to appoint judges. It was divided. In fact, for much of the Constitutional Convention the Founding Fathers thought the Senate ought to appoint the judges and only at the last minute did they say the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate.

This President-regretfully, in many instances-has not consulted the Senate. The two Senators from Michigan-they happen to be of a different party than the President but we know they enjoy working with the other party-were not consulted. I know it can be done. We have done it in my State of New York. We don't have a single vacancy in either the district courts or the Second Circuit because finally, after I said I was not going to allow judges to go through unless I was consulted, the White House came and consulted, and there is a happy result. All the vacancies are filled. The judges tend to be conservative, but they are mainstream people. I may not agree with them on a whole lot of issues, but they have all gone forward. In Michigan we have had no consultation.

Today when I vote against these three nominations, I am not just backing up two Senators from Michigan; I am defending the Constitution. That is what all of us who vote this way will do. Because for the President to say on judges, it is my way or the highway, no compromise, is just not what the Founding Fathers intended. It is not good for America. It tends to put-whoever is President-extreme people on the bench instead of the moderate people we need.

I regret that we have come to vote on these judges, but I have no qualms that I will vote and recommend to my colleagues that we vote against all three.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.