Schumer Defends Senate Rules
SCHUMER DEFENDS SENATE RULES
Schumer to GOP: Vaporize your nuclear strategy on judges
Schumer: GOP's temper tantrum needs a timeout; 98.4 percent judicial confirmation rate is darn good
Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for holding this hearing today. I especially want to thank you for holding this hearing because it's being done through the regular order of the Senate and its rules. Say what you want about Senator Frist's proposal - and there's a lot to be said about it - but it's a proposal to change the rules through the normal course of business. It may be a radical proposal, but it's not nuclear.
We've heard a lot of talk around here these past few weeks about breaking the rules to change the rules. We've heard several of our colleagues on the other side suggest that if they don't get their way on every single nominee, they're going to "go nuclear" and change the rules by fiat.
When you go nuclear, it's bad for everyone. You vaporize every bridge - bipartisan or otherwise - in sight.
When President Bush said he wanted to "change the tone" in Washington, I don't think he was talking about nuclear options that would blow up bipartisanship in the United States Senate.
Let's be clear about what we're fighting about here. 129 of President Bush's nominees have come to the Senate floor. We have confirmed 127 of them. That's a 98.4% success rate. Our friends across the aisle are saying that 98.4% isn't good enough.
It's like they're saying, "If we don't win all the time, we're going to pick up our marbles and go home." It reminds me of a spoiled child throwing a temper tantrum. Maybe we're due for a "time out" so everyone can get some perspective here.
Except when it comes to national securitywhere I agree only 100% will do -- 98.4% is about as good as it gets.
In school, it's worth an A+. Get 98.4% of your SAT questions right, and you've got a pretty good shot of going to any college in the country. In basketball, the highest single season free throw percentage in history is only 95% -- we've got that beat by plenty. In short, it's hard to find anything where a 98.4 winning percentage is cause for complaint. It hardly merits the outrage we're seeing from across the aisle.
And let's be clear what we talking about here. This isn't some piddling little thing we're doing. We're talking about fulfilling our constitutional duties as a co-equal branch of government. That constitution is sacred to me. It's almost a holy document.
Here we are, serving in the United States Senate, over two centuries after the founding of this Republic, upholding the
values of the greatest and longest living constitutional democracy in history. We have awesome responsibilities.
When it comes to our duties to advise and consent, our role is especially important. We are not here to rubberstamp. We are here to advise the President and to closely evaluate his nominees. When they are legally excellent, diverse, and ideologically moderate, I have voted for them. In fact, I've supported 120 of the 129 nominees we've considered - I've only opposed the most extreme.
Almost all of the President's nominees have been legally excellent - these are bright, talented people we're talking about here. And this President has done a good job on diversity as well.
But when it's come to ideology, that's where we've run into problems. I don't like judges too far left or too far right.
Ideologues - on both ends of the spectrum - tend to be extremists and activists - they tend to be judges who don't interpret law, but make law. That's a bad deal for the Judiciary, for our system of government, and for the millions of Americans who are directly affected by their rulings.
We are not abusing the filibuster rule here. We are using it in a narrow and targeted way to protect fairness in America.
Women, workers, and the environment are most particularly endangered by the judges we are fighting against and I, for one, don't intend to lay down and be steamrolled when so much is at stake.
Our Constitution does not ratify majority rule in all circumstances. If it did, we wouldn't have an electoral college and we'd be here today talking about the Republicans' right to filibuster President Gore's nominees.
Our Senate rules mirror the Constitution in not ratifying majority power 100% of the time. For example, if a majority of this Committee were to reject the Frist resolution, it would never reach the floor, even though a majority of senators there might support it.
We are not the House. The Senate is supposed to be the cooling saucer for a reason.
The American people are counting on us to be independent guarantors of fairness, balance, and justice in our courts. If we change this rule, especially by the most extraordinary means necessary, we are damning the Senate to rubberstamp status.
It's not only a bad idea, it's dangerous. I hope my colleagues will think carefully before they try to do this and, ultimately, I hope you will join us in rejecting it.