Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President; toady we vote on our 13th judicial nominee in just 29 legislative days. In this session of the Senate, we have confirmed more judicial nominees than in the same time period for any of the previous four Presidents.

I like to keep my colleagues up-to-date with our cooperation and progress on judicial nominees. We continue to process nominees at a fast pace in committee. We held our fourth nominations hearing yesterday and have heard from 17 judicial nominees this year. The Judiciary Committee met this morning and reported an additional district court nominee. We have now reported 23 nominees, nearly 40 percent of the 58 judicial nominations made by President Obama this year. The committee has taken some step forward on 55 percent of the judicial nominees. We have delivered on our promise to move consensus nominees.

Even with our fast pace, the current vacancy rate remains high. But with 94 vacancies in the Federal courts, the President has only put forward 44 nominees for those vacancies. That is 50 vacancies without a nominee. For seats designated judicial emergencies, 57 percent of those vacancies have no nominee.

As I have said in the past, the burden is on the President to nominate consensus individuals for current vacancies. Yet, for the second time, President Obama has sent up a nomination to a seat which is not vacant. I think we can all agree the Senate's time and resources are valuable. My priority continues to be carefully reviewing nominations for vacancies which require our immediate attention.

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