Further Floor Discussion on the Nomination of Miguel A. Estrada

Mr. SCHUMER. Two questions. I want to follow up again on what the Senator from South Dakota said in the dialog with my colleague from Illinois. First, I know the Estrada judge issue has gotten a lot of attention in the newspapers. When I go back to my State of New York, virtually no one asks me about it—very few people. I get lots of people asking about the war and also about the economy and jobs. Is that particular to New York because we had September 11 or is the same thing happening in South Dakota?

Mr. SCHUMER. If my colleague will yield for another question, we have seen in the newspapers the talk that the Democrats are filibustering, that Democrats are preventing the Senate from going forward to other issues, whereas the Republicans are eager to go to other issues.
    
The real truth on this floor is, first of all, that we have asked just now to go to economic issues, that last week when the Republican leadership—they run the show—decided to bring up this omnibus budget, the Estrada nomination did not stand in the way. We did it. We voted in one fell swoop for the entire Federal budget, and, in fact, last week this floor, because the Republican leadership chose to do so, actually voted on three other judges who I believe passed unanimously, if not close to unanimously. And the filibuster, in a sense—in a very real sense—is not being conducted by the Democrats but rather, led by my capable and good friend from Utah, by the Republicans, and we would be happy to move on to other issues that are pressing, that are on people's minds, and maybe come back to this issue at some point when we get the requested material.
    
Just to rephrase my question, who is really preventing us from moving forward? Who is filibustering? Why are we staying on this issue? Is that the Senator's choice as the leader of the Democrats or is that the choice of our good friend from Tennessee as leader of the Republicans?

Mr. SCHUMER. If my colleague will yield for just one final question, might it not be fair to say that it is not the Democrats filibustering to prevent Estrada from coming forward for a vote but, rather, the Republicans are filibustering until they get the vote on Estrada, which they have so far refused to call for? Is that an unfair characterization?

Mr. SCHUMER. I know. I ask my colleague, does Miguel Estrada talk about how he feels about the 1st amendment, or the 2nd amendment, or the 11th amendment, or the commerce clause, or the right to privacy, or all the major issues that he will rule on for the rest of his life if he becomes a judge? And if he does not, other than to say, "I will follow the law"—and we all know judges follow the law in different ways—then why isn't what is good for the goose good for the gander?
    
In other words, when it was a Democratic nominee—and this is not tit for tat. My colleague, who cares about the judiciary, said he needed extensive questions. We didn't get that opportunity because, as my colleague well knows, Mr. Estrada just said, on every issue asked, "I will follow the law."

Mr. SCHUMER. Why shouldn't we be accorded the same right, as he espoused in his speech in 1997, to get all the details to this appointment to the second highest court of the land, which is going to have a lifetime—Mr. Estrada has a job now; but this is a different job—a lifetime appointment that will affect everybody? Why is the one different than the other?