Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act --Continued
Floor Speech
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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I want to talk about judicial nominations. I come to the floor many days to talk about judicial nominations. Most of my remarks at those times as well as this time are to respond to some of the claims made by my colleagues from the other side of the aisle. If you listened to some of my colleagues over the last couple of days, you would think the sky is falling on the issue of judicial nominees. They act as if the Senate is treating President Obama's judicial nominees differently than nominees have been treated in the past. This is simply not true.
A fair and impartial look at the numbers tells a far different story. The fact of the matter is that President Obama's nominees are being treated just as well, and in many cases much more fairly, than the Democrats treated President Bush's nominees. I want to take a few minutes to set the record straight.
Let me start by taking a brief look at 17 cloture motions that the majority has filed. Seven of those nominees were reported out of the Judiciary Committee within the last month and three of them were reported just last week. That is without precedent. To our knowledge the majority, Republican or Democrat, has never filed cloture on district court nominees within a month of them being reported out of the Judiciary Committee. That accounts for 7 of the 17.
What about the other 10 nominees? What our colleagues fail to mention is that they could have gotten a majority of those nominees confirmed at the end of the last session, just before recessing at Christmastime. Our side cleared quite a few nominees and we offered to confirm them as a package the end of last session. However, the President refused to offer assurances that he would not bypass the Senate and make so-called recess appointments.
I made a mistake when I said when the Senate adjourned just prior to Christmas, or recessed just prior to the session. We did neither. We stayed in session during the period of time from December 18 until January 24. In other words, the President was not in a position to make recess appointments because we were not in recess.
And of course, the President does not have the power, under our Constitution, to determine whether or not the Senate is in session. Only the Senate can make a determination of when we adjourn. The President of the United States cannot do that. But he presumed that he could and he went ahead and made what he called "recess appointments.'' So he shredded the Constitution once again.
In regard to what we are talking about here, it was the President who chose not to confirm those nominees at the end of last session because he refused to give us assurances that he would not make recess appointments. The bottom line is this, if the President believes we should have confirmed more nominees last fall, he should look to his own administration for that explanation.
That is the background of the 17 cloture motions before the Senate. Let me comment on something I read in one of our daily newspapers that covers the Congress. A famous reporter said, in the second paragraph of a report I read today, that the Republicans are filibustering nominations. I told the writer of that article that you can't filibuster anything that is not before the Senate and these nominees were not before the Senate until the leader of the majority filed these cloture motions.
Wouldn't you think, if you believed you needed to stop debate, that you would at least let debate start in the first place? But no. The game that is played around here is that, in order to build up the numbers, you claim the minority is filibustering, when in fact they are not filibustering.
I wish to take a step back and address some of the claims I've heard from the other side. I cannot believe some of the comments I am hearing, so I believe it is important to set the record straight. First of all, everyone around here understands that it takes a tremendous amount of time and resources for the Senate to consider Supreme Court nominees. For that reason, when a Supreme Court nomination is pending before the Senate, the Judiciary Committee considers little else. During President Obama's first 3 years in office, the Senate considered not one but two nominations to the Supreme Court. Those nominations occupied the Judiciary Committee for approximately 6 months. The last time the Senate handled two Supreme Court nominations was during President George W. Bush's second term. During President Bush's entire second term we confirmed only 120 lower court nominees. Under President Obama, as you can see from the chart we have here, we have already confirmed 129 lower court nominees. I think that is a pretty explicit picture of how the other side's arguments do not hold water.
For repetitive purposes, but to drive a point home, we have confirmed 129 of President Obama's judicial nominees in just over 3 years. That is more than were confirmed under George W. Bush's entire second term of 4 years. Again, the comparison between President Obama's first 3 years to President George W. Bush's second term of 4 years is the appropriate comparison. These were the only two time periods in recent memory when the Senate handled two Supreme Court nominations during such a short period of time--obviously consuming a great deal of time of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Even if you compared the number of President Obama's nominees confirmed to President Bush's first term, it is clear that President Obama has fared very well. More specifically, even though the Senate did not consider any Supreme Court nomination during President Bush's first term, we have confirmed approximately the same number of President Obama's lower court nominees as we did President Bush's, relative to the nominations President Obama has made.
In other words, although fewer lower court nominees have been confirmed under President Obama, the President made approximately 20 percent fewer judicial nominations during his first 3 years than President Bush did during his first term of 4 years. I think it is pretty simple, isn't it? You cannot complain that we have not confirmed enough judges, if they have not been sent up here in the first place.
As a practical matter, if the President believes he has not gotten enough confirmations, then he should look no farther than the pace at which he has been making nominations. Maybe he should have spent less time on the 100 or so fundraisers he has been holding all over the country recently and more time making judicial nominations. Or, at least he should have his political party in the Senate give us a little leniency, and quit complaining about nominations not being approved. The fact of the matter is this: If a backlog exists, then it is clear that it originates with the President. The Senate cannot confirm anybody the President has not sent up here in the first place.
If you need even more evidence that the President has been slow to send judicial nominees to the Senate, all you need to do is examine the current vacancies. My colleagues have been on the floor talking about the so-called vacancy crisis. What my colleagues fail to mention is that the White House has not even made nominations for over half of the vacancies. To be specific, of the 83 current vacancies, the White House has not submitted nominations for 44 of those vacancies. Once again, the Senate cannot confirm anybody who is not sent up here. How can my friends on the other side of the aisle complain about a vacancy crisis when the President has not sent up a nominee for over half of the vacancies?
As a result, it is clear if there is a vacancy crisis, once again the problem rests with the White House. If the President believes there are too many vacancies in the Federal courts, he should look no further than his own administration for an answer.
What about the other side's claim that nominees are waiting longer to get confirmed than they have in the past? Once again, this is not true. The average time from nomination to confirmation of judges during the Obama administration is nearly identical to what it was under President Bush. During President Bush's Presidency, it took on average approximately 211 days for judicial nominees to be confirmed. You can see from the chart that, during the first 3 years of President Obama's Presidency, it has taken 218 days for his judicial nominees to be confirmed. I am sure this will be news to many of my colleagues. If you had listened to the other side you would think that we have somehow broken new ground. We have not, obviously. We are treating President Obama's nominees virtually the same as President Bush's nominees.
It is not our primary concern to worry about whether one President is being treated differently than the other. We just proceed with our work. But the numbers you see here are the result of our work. And the fact of the matter is that the numbers are not much different than for other Presidents. To suggest we are treating President Obama's nominees a whole lot differently is intellectually dishonest. The fact of the matter is that the Senate has been working its will and regularly processing the President's judicial nominees in much the same way it has in the past.
Given that the President's nominees have received such fair treatment, why would the majority leader then choose to take the unprecedented step of filing 17 cloture motions on district court nominees? Why would the majority leader choose to manufacture controversy that does not exist--because there is no doubt in my caucus, even if there are a few votes against some of these nominees, there is very little doubt that most if not all of these 17 nominees are going to be approved by the Senate. These votes are a stunt. They are a smokescreen. They are designed to accomplish two goals. First, as even Democrats concede, the President cannot run for reelection on his own record so these votes are designed to help the President's reelection strategy by somehow portraying Republicans as obstructionists. But how can you obstruct when there are 83 vacancies, and the White House has failed to nominate someone for over half of those slots?
How can you be considered as obstructionist when these judges will be approved just as we have already approved seven?
Second, the other side simply does not want to talk about the extremely important things and very real problems facing this Nation. Look at any poll, go to any town meeting, and what people in this country and my State of Iowa are concerned about is the economy and jobs. With 8.3 percent unemployment, why wouldn't they be expecting us to work on jobs? There is a small business tax bill that passed the other body. How come we are not taking that up? It is ready to take up. It would probably pass here without much dissent.
Why aren't we taking up a budget this year? It has been 4 years without taking up a budget. This is budget week for most years in the Senate. We are spending more time on deciding judicial nominees who are not going to be filibustered to stop a filibuster that doesn't even exist when we ought to be taking up and spending about the same amount of time on a budget, but no budget for 1,040-some days.
The American people are sitting at home listening to the debate. They want to know how we are going to get the unemployment rate down. They are not concerned about whether the Senate will confirm one of the President's district court nominees this week rather than next week. They are not concerned about this debate we are going to have over the next couple of days. They want to know what we are doing to help their father, mother, brother, and sister get back into the workforce. Given the millions of Americans who remain out of work, why aren't we considering and debating the jobs bill the House just passed?
Why aren't we tackling the energy crisis? With $4 gas in this country, we ought to be talking about drilling here and drilling now. We ought to be talking about building a pipeline. We ought to be talking about, how can we stop sending $833 million every day overseas to buy oil? We ought to be talking about extending the energy tax extenders that have sunset as of December 23.
Unlike the so-called vacancy crisis, the energy crisis is not manufactured. It is real. The rising cost of gasoline matters to millions and millions of Americans. If they are fortunate enough to have a job in this economy, millions of Americans are trying to figure out how they can afford to get to work with the rising cost of gasoline. Rather than spend time working on the energy crisis, which is all too real for millions of Americans, we are spending time on this manufactured controversy of somehow a vacancy crisis, somehow a filibuster against judges. And not one of these judges has had one speech given on the floor of this Senate against them, and probably won't.
What is even worse, this is the week we are supposed to be debating a budget, but you'd need a high-powered microscope to find any budget the majority has put together. The majority has failed to produce a budget, so they manufactured a so-called crisis on nominations to throw up a smokescreen to hide their failure.
I will have more to say on this subject when we move forward on this debate, but for now I conclude that a fair and impartial examination of how the Senate has treated President Obama's nominees reveals that, contrary to what you hear from the other side, the President's nominees are being treated more fairly. Rather than waste time on the so-called crisis that everyone realizes is entirely manufactured, we should be focusing on those issues that matter deeply to the American people. And according to what I hear at my town meetings, what I hear and read in the papers about what polls show, what candidates for Presidents are talking about--even the President of the United States--is about jobs, about the economy, and tackling our energy crisis.
I urge my colleagues to reject these cloture petitions that have no legitimacy for existing in the first place so we can get back to the business of the American people--the economy and jobs.
I yield the floor.
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