Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise to join my colleagues in honoring our friend and colleague who is often regarded as the dean of the women in the Senate, Barbara Mikulski.

Earlier this week Senator Mikulski added to her already long list of accomplishments the distinction of being the longest serving female Member of Congress in the history of the United States of America.

Senator Mikulski's life is a story of the American dream. Raised in a working-class immigrant family in the east Baltimore neighborhood of Highlandtown, Senator Mikulski learned at a young age about the struggles of working families and ethnic Americans and the value of paying it forward.

She helped at her father's grocery store, which opened early in the morning so that steelworkers could buy lunch before their morning shift. She delivered food to seniors and families when parts of her neighborhood were set on fire after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. At one point she even rode on the top of a tank to deliver the groceries.

Senator Mikulski's roots helped shape her role today as a mentor, fighter, and true public servant. She worked as a social worker for Catholic Charities, helping at-risk children and counseling seniors on Medicare. She had her start in politics as a community organizer and social worker.

In 1970--one side of Barbara Mikulski her colleagues have certainly seen is her dogged determination--she organized Marylanders to stop a 16-lane highway project that would have threatened Fells Point and another neighborhood in Baltimore. She got the job done. Many people say that work helped to save Fells Point and the Inner Harbor, two of the showcase areas in the great city of Baltimore. She gave a speech at Catholic University to a Catholic conference on the ethnic American. It caught the attention not only of people in Baltimore but far beyond its reach as she talked about her family story and the story of millions just like her.

One year later, she ran for and won a seat on the Baltimore City Council--the first step in her now 41-year career in public service.

Over the course of the Senate's 223-year history, there have only been 38 female Members; the first, Rebecca Latimer Felton, of Georgia, was appointed for political reasons to fill a vacancy, and she served only a single day in 1922.

Senator Mikulski has so many firsts in her story of public service. She was the first woman elected to the Senate in her own right--the first--and not because of a husband or father or someone who served before her in higher office. She was the first woman Democrat to serve in both Chambers of Congress--the first. Last year, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame for her trailblazing political career, including, with this recognition today, becoming the longest serving woman Senator in the history of our Nation.

Given her years of experience, it is no wonder other Members of Congress have turned to her for guidance, men and women alike.

I can recall so many meetings of our Democratic caucus when, after a long debate involving many people saying many things, Barbara Mikulski would stand and, in a few terse words, get it right. At the end of the day people would say: That is what we ought to do. She has this insight based on her life experience and her ability to try to peel through the layers of the political onion and get to the heart of the issue.

Following the election of a number of esteemed women into the Senate, a lot of reporters deemed 1992 as ``The Year of the Woman.'' Senator Mikulski's response was so typical and so right. This is what she said:

Calling 1992 the ``year of the woman'' makes it sound like the ``year of the caribou,'' or the ``year of asparagus.'' We are not a fad, a fancy, or a year.

That was typical Barbara. Senator Mikulski rises above and beyond all that. From her first days in the Senate in 1987, she has fought an uphill battle to address the most important issues of national importance.

First and foremost for her is her family, next is her great State of Maryland. She is a fearless advocate, and I know the Presiding Officer knows that better than most as her colleague from that great State.

She has supported educational initiatives, veterans causes, interstate commerce, access to health care and women's health and fair pay.

The Chair knows the answer to this question, but some of those listening to the debate might not. What was the first bill that the newly elected President Barack Obama signed in the White House with a public ceremony? It was a bill Barbara Mikulski pushed hard for, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, so women going to work all over the United States--not just in the Senate--would get a fair shake when it comes to the compensation for the jobs they did. It was President Obama's first bill. When he signed it, the very first pen he handed over to Senator Barbara Mikulski. I was there and I saw it.

Championed by Senator Mikulski, the long-awaited and much needed bill clarifies time limits for workers to file unemployment discrimination lawsuits, making it easier for people to get the pay they deserve regardless of race, age or gender.

I wish to start here--but I don't know where I would end--to talk about the important issues she has worked for. Let me talk about health care for a minute. When we set out to pass this historic affordable health care act, Barbara was assigned the job to make sure it connected with the families and workers across America in a very real way, to make sure that at the end of the day we weren't talking to ourselves or engaged in political gibberish but passing a law that could literally change a life for the better. She led that effort and made invaluable contributions to the substance of that bill.

We knew those provisions would be important and that they would work because we knew where Barbara Mikulski came from and we knew where her political heart resides. While it is a milestone to celebrate Senator Mikulski's distinction as the longest serving woman in the Congress, there is a much greater cause for celebration; Senator Mikulski's decades of service to this Nation is an admirable feat for any man or woman.

I extend my congratulations to my colleague and friend Senator Mikulski for this milestone. Thank you for what you have done for the Senate, for the State of Maryland, and for our great Nation.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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CAMERAS IN THE COURTROOM

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, by this time next week, the Supreme Court will have finished hearing oral arguments in the case challenging the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. How important is this Supreme Court case on health care reform? Well, health care is such an important issue that Congress spent 1 year drafting and debating a bill that the Court is going to consider next week.

Health care has been a critical issue for so long in our country that in the last century, nine different Presidents have spent time, energy, and political capital fighting for reform. It is so important that the Supreme Court reserved 6 hours for oral argument over the course of 3 days to consider the act's constitutionality. The last time the Court dedicated that kind of time to any one case was in 1966--if I am not mistaken, that was 46 years ago--when it considered Miranda v. Arizona. Not even the health care case is important enough for the Supreme Court to justify breaking its antiquated tradition of allowing cameras to televise the proceedings, so the American people are not going to have a chance to see and hear these historic arguments for themselves as they take place.

I cannot predict the outcome of the case, but I can tell you what to expect just outside the doors of the Supreme Court. It is a scene we have seen over and over again for decades. Thousands will gather outside the Court. Many are going to camp overnight, sleeping on the sidewalk in the hopes of getting about 1 of 200 seats available to the public. The vast majority of those wanting to see the Supreme Court argument on one of the most important cases of our time will be told: No, you are not allowed to come inside the Court. We don't have room for you. In a democratic society that values transparency and participation, there cannot be any valid justification for such a powerful element of government to operate largely outside the view of the American people.

For too long the American people have been prevented from observing open sessions of the Supreme Court. Except for the privileged few, the VIPs, the members of the Supreme Court bar or the press, the most powerful Court in our land--some might argue in the world--is inaccessible to the public and shrouded in mystery.

I am pleased to stand in the Judiciary Committee with Senator Grassley, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, asking that the Senate pass our bipartisan bill that would require televising open Supreme Court proceedings. With the benefit of modern technology, the Supreme Court proceedings can be televised using unobtrusive cameras and the Court's existing audio recording capability. Our bill respects the constitutional rights of the parties before the Court and respects the discretion of the Justices.

The Court can decline to televise any proceeding where the Justices determine by a majority vote that doing so would violate due process rights of one or more parties.
In our view--Senator Grassley and myself--this is a reasonable approach that balances the public's need for information and transparency, the constitutional rights of those before the Court, and the discretion of the Justices.

It is no secret that Senator Grassley and I have strong disagreements about the actual law that is going to be considered by the Court. We have taken to the floor many times to explain our positions. Despite our disagreement on the substance of the health care bill, Senator Grassley and I agree on a bipartisan basis to stand united in full support of S. 1945, which would finally bring transparency and open access to Supreme Court proceedings.

We are not the only Members of this body who believe these proceedings would produce greater accountability. In past years the Cameras in the Courtroom Act enjoyed bipartisan support. The last sponsor of the act before he left the Senate was Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. This version of the bill, very similar to his own, has the support of Senators Cornyn, Klobuchar, Schumer, Blumenthal, Gillibrand, Harkin, and Begich. As Senator Grassley would note, Democrats and Republicans from both Chambers have written to the Supreme Court asking it to permit live televised broadcasts of the health care reform arguments.

In November, Senators Blumenthal, Schumer, and I wrote a letter to the Chief Justice making a request to open the Supreme Court for this historic argument and let America hear the arguments made before the Court and the questions asked by the Justices in open court. Chief Justice Roberts responded to our request last week, and it sounds as though he sent the same letter to Senator Grassley. The Chief Justice informed us that the Supreme Court has respectfully declined to televise the health care arguments, but that the Court would graciously offer an alternative.

Here is the alternative: The Court will post the audio recordings and unofficial transcripts to the Court's Web site a few hours after the arguments are over. For that gesture, I guess we can congratulate the U.S. Supreme Court for entering the radio age. America entered the radio age 90 years ago. The Supreme Court is catching up with a delayed broadcast-audio only. But I think America deserves better.

Decisions that affect our Nation should be accessible by the people who are affected by those decisions and they should be produced in a way that Americans can both see and hear. The day of the fireside chat is gone. The day of radio transmissions exclusively is gone. Television--and increasingly even the Internet--is the dominant medium for communicating messages and ideas in modern America. It is not too much to ask the third branch of government at the highest level to share the arguments before the Court with the people of America. Understand, there will be hundreds of people present and watching this as it occurs. It is not confidential or private. It is only kept away from the rest of America because this Court doesn't want America to see the proceedings.

The Supreme Court is an elite institution in our government. Every member of the Supreme Court went to one of two Ivy league law schools. Most of the clerks before the Court come from one of seven law schools. None of the current Justices has run for public office. None of the current Justices has tried a death penalty case. And the lawyers who appear before the Supreme Court are part of a small and exclusive club. Perhaps this limited exposure is why many on the Court don't seem to fully appreciate the impact its decisions have on everyday America, and why the American people deserve to have more access to the Court's public proceedings. Since the Supreme Court is the final

word on constitutionality, on issues that impact the lives of every American, the American people should have full and free access to its open proceedings on television.

Let's be clear about one thing: Our bill only applies to court sessions that are already open to the public. Supreme Court Justices should be able to consult with each other, review cases, and deliberate privately. No one in this bill, or otherwise, is calling for those private deliberations to be televised. I believe that televising private deliberations or closed sessions of the Court would cause harm to our judicial system. Our bill does not require that and I would not support that. Open sessions of the Court, however, where members of the public are already invited to observe are a different matter. They should be televised in real time and widely available.

Some who oppose our bill say that the elite cadre of seasoned lawyers with the rare opportunity to argue before the highest Court in the land will grandstand in front of the cameras, risking their professional reputations and even their clients' cases. Some say that the Court's Justices, who have been subjected to the most rigorous vetting process known to man and the most widely covered confirmation hearings, will shrink from the camera's glaring lens. I don't buy it. The experience of the State and Federal courts that have allowed the open proceedings to be televised proves these fears are unfounded.

While the Federal courts of appeals have not permitted cameras to broadcast all appellate proceedings, there was a 3-year pilot project in 1990 that assessed the impact of cameras in the Federal courts. Listen to what happened as a result of the pilot program. At the end of the day 19 of the 20 judges most involved concluded that the presence of cameras in the Federal courts ``had no effect on the administration of justice.''

Don't take my word for it. Kenneth Starr, former Solicitor General and independent counsel, supports our bill and said this:

This fear seems groundless ..... The idea that cameras would transform the [Supreme Court] into ``Judge Judy'' is ludicrous.

For more than 30 years State courts have broadcast their proceedings and, in fact, what they found hasn't detracted at all from the pursuit of justice. Every State in our Nation permits all or part of the appellate court proceedings to be recorded for broadcast on television or streaming on the Internet. Expanding access to the Supreme Court by televising its proceedings should not be controversial. Public scrutiny of the Supreme Court proceedings produces greater accountability, transparency, understanding, and access to the decision-making in government. Congressional debates have been fully televised for more than three decades.

There are people who follow the C SPAN broadcast religiously. I know. I meet them regularly. As I said in the Judiciary Committee, people will come up to me and say: One of your colleagues looks a little bit under the weather. Does he have the flu? Is he sick? By observing C SPAN or following the floor of the Senate and knowing each of us, they think on a more personal basis. They hear these statements, they listen to the debates, and they feel better informed about their government. Wouldn't the same apply across the street in the Supreme Court?

Opponents of our bill say the public will be misinformed because all they see are brief clips of the Court's proceedings that could be misconstrued. As I said, this argument sounds a lot like an editorial from a few years ago, and it said:

Keeping cameras out [of the Supreme Court] to prevent people from getting the wrong idea is a little like removing the paintings from an art museum out of fear that visitors might not have the art history background to appreciate them.

In 1986, Chief Justice Burger wrote the following words in the Supreme Court's Press-Enterprise Company v. Superior Court opinion. These words are as true today as they were in 1986:

[P]eople in an open society do not demand infallibility from their institutions, but it is difficult for them to accept what they are prohibited from observing.

The time has long since come for the Supreme Court--for the highest Court in our land--to open its doors and allow the American people to finally observe its proceedings.

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Mr. DURBIN. Reserving the right to object, it is my understanding the Judiciary Committee staff has been working on a package of important Judiciary Committee bills, including the very bill Senator Sessions has asked unanimous consent to move to--a bill which I quite likely will support.

Would the Senator be willing to modify his request to include the passage of other bills which are part of that package and have similarly important elements to them in terms of keeping America safe? They include the following: Calendar No. 246, S. 1792, the Strengthening Investigations of Sex Offenders and Missing Children Act; Calendar No. 233, S. 1793, the Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act; and discharging the Judiciary Committee from further consideration of S. 1696, the Dale Long Public Safety Officers' Benefits Improvements Act; agreeing to a substitute amendment which is at the desk, and passing the bill, as amended?

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