Nominations

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I have great respect for the Senator from Tennessee. He is my friend. We have worked together successfully and I hope we will in the future, but I would take exception to his conclusions about the current status of the Senate.

I have been in the Senate--now my 17th year. I have seen this institution change dramatically--dramatically--in 17 years. We have faced more gridlock, more wasted time than I ever imagined could occur in this great institution. It has become commonplace for us to face filibuster after filibuster after filibuster.

People at home who would turn on C-SPAN to watch the Senate Chamber would have to get close to their television screens and look to see if there was any evidence of life on the floor of the Senate. Are those people actually moving? Are they awake? We go on for 30 hours at a time doing nothing around here. Why? Because we are facing a record number of filibusters from the other side of the aisle.

Time and again, when we have important issues come up, they ground to a halt for 30-hour periods of time. We are lucky to do one or two things of substance a week. Oh, there are exceptions. A couple weeks ago we did an immigration bill.

I thought it was one of our better moments. But it was a rare moment in the Senate.

Too often now we are facing filibusters on the President's nominees. Make no mistake, President Barack Obama won the election on November 6 last year. Some on the other side of the aisle are in complete denial of that reality. Winning that election, this President has a responsibility to lead this Nation. He wants to put together a team to lead. He brings the names to the Senate for confirmation, but time and again they are facing filibusters from the Republican side of the aisle.

There is one that even precedes the last election. Richard Cordray, who was Attorney General of the State of Ohio--an extraordinarily gifted public servant--was chosen by President Obama to head up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This is the only consumer protection bureau in the Federal Government. It is an important agency. We created it with the Dodd-Frank financial disclosure reform bill. For more than 2 years--more than 2 years--Mr. Cordray's nomination has been held on the floor of the Senate by the Republican minority. That is unacceptable and it is fundamentally unfair.

No one has ever raised a question about this nominee's competence or about his integrity. Yet they will not approve him because they do not like the notion of a consumer protection agency. That is it. So to stop the agency from functioning they are going to stop this appointment by President Obama--for 2 years.

The National Labor Relations Board sits down in judgment of labor practices across America for the safety of our workers, the organization of workers. It is an important agency. But in the words of former Senator Dale Bumpers, there are some on the other side of the aisle who hate the National Labor Relations Board like the Devil hates holy water. They do not want to see it exist, but they can't abolish it. They know that. So they stop it from having a functioning majority. They stop nominees the President submits to fill the vacancies at the National Labor Relations Board time and time again.

The same thing is true when it comes to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives as well. This is an agency opposed by many in the gun lobby. So since the time we have said that agency shall be filled by senatorial appointment, there has never ever been a person appointed.

It is the approach of those on the other side of the aisle to stop agencies from doing their work. This has to come to an end. I don't want to see this happen in the Senate, this confrontation over rules, but I don't want to see the current situation continue either.

Earlier this year Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader from Nevada, met with the Republican leaders, sat down and worked out a bipartisan agreement to avoid what we are facing right now. He was criticized by many Democrats who said: Come on, Harry, they are just leading you along; they are not going to work with you. You will find out, if you don't change the rules of the Senate, you are not going to get the job done.

But Harry Reid said: I would rather try to do it on a bipartisan basis by agreement. He made that effort, and it didn't work. Today we find ourselves in the situation with key executive appointments being stalled and held up.

Listen to this: Gina McCarthy was nominated by President Obama to head the Environmental Protection Agency. What is her background? Her background was serving as head of the EPA in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts--the State of the Presiding Officer--under Governor Romney. She was Governor Romney's cabinet official for the EPA in Massachusetts. She not only has credentials, she is clearly bipartisan in her approach. So her name came before the regular Senate process. What did the other side do? They submitted a few questions for her to answer. No, not just a few, they broke all Senate records. They gave her a list of 1,100 questions to answer before they would consider her nomination. That is what we are up against--clear tactics to delay and stall even good people from serving, holds on nominees that go on indefinitely. These sorts of things have to come to an end. If we are going to end the obstruction in this Senate, if we are going to give to the President the power and the authority to lead this Nation, as he was elected to do, the Senate can no longer stand as a blockade and obstruction to that exercise of authority granted to the President by the people of the United States of America. That is what this is about.

A number of my Republican colleagues have reached out to me in the last few days saying: Is there a way to avoid this? There is. There is. If we come to the point where we can sit down and work this out together, resolve these nominees, all the better. It would be a good day for the Senate if it could be achieved. But the notion we are going to walk away from these Presidential nominees or other key nominees in the future isn't fair. I invite my Republican colleagues to vote no if they disapprove of the President's nominees. That is their right and it is their duty. But to stop the Senate from even coming to a vote on these nominees has gone on for way too long.

I urge my colleagues to try to find some way to resolve this issue. But if we can't, let's end the obstruction in the Senate and make sure the rules reflect the reality that a President should have the executive appointments he needs to lead this Nation.

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

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