Emergency Judicial Relief Act

Floor Speech

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I would like to alert my colleagues that I intend to object to any unanimous consent agreement for the consideration of S. 1014, the Emergency Judicial Relief Act of 2011. While the sponsors of the legislation adopted one amendment I offered during debate in the Judiciary Committee, and that amendment improves the legislation, the bill remains deeply flawed and I cannot support it.

I oppose S. 1014 in its current form for a number of reasons, and I will just briefly describe them here. First, I believe strongly that we should analyze critically any expansion of the Federal Government, and first and foremost, determine whether there is a more efficient and cost effective way to allocate taxpayer resources. This is especially true during a time when our Federal debt is at historic levels.

In its current form, this legislation creates 10 new judgeships and converts two judgeships from temporary to permanent. The legislation does not pay for the increased spending by cutting a corresponding amount of Federal spending. Rather, it raises the filing fees imposed on litigants.

The sponsors of the legislation have argued, based on caseload statistics, that these districts have some of the highest caseloads in the country. That may be true if you believe that the caseload statistics accurately describe how busy a particular district is. I am not arguing, today, that these statistics are necessarily inaccurate, but I would simply note that there have been some questions raised over the years regarding how well those statistics describe the caseloads. Regardless, based on those same statistics, there are other districts that are slow and getting slower.

If we conclude that some districts are disproportionately busy, and therefore conclude that we should increase the number of judgeships in those districts, then it only makes sense to offset the increase in judgeships by reallocating judicial resources away from districts that are slow. For this reason, I offered an amendment in the Judiciary Committee that would have reduced the number of judgeships in other districts by a total of 10. I will not take the time here to go through the statistics in each of the districts where I proposed eliminating judgeships. Suffice it to say, in each district slated for a reduction, the caseloads have decreased over the last 5 years, with the exception of 1 district, where the caseload has remained flat. And, even after you reduce the number of judgeships in these districts, they would still have caseloads that are well below the national average, across all 94 districts. If we are going to add judgeships, I believe this is the most appropriate way to do it.

The amendment I proposed in committee would also have delayed the effective date for the creation of the new judgeships until after the next Presidential election. Because none of us knows for certain who will be sworn in as President in January 2013, delaying the effective date would remove politics from the debate. Not only would it remove politics from the discussion, but it is consistent with how this issue was handled in the past. For instance, when the chairman of the committee introduced legislation to create additional judgeships during the 110th Congress, this is the approach he embraced.

Finally, I would note that the sponsors of the bill agreed to adopt a separate amendment I offered in the Judiciary Committee that would extend Whistleblower protection to Judicial Branch employees. This is an improvement. My amendment ensures that Judicial Branch employees are not simply left without redress when they face retaliation for blowing the whistle on fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. While I appreciate the bill's sponsors' willingness to adopt my amendment, and I believe it is an improvement, the underlying legislation remains deeply flawed for the reasons I have discussed. Therefore, I must oppose it. I urge my colleagues to do the same.

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