Judicial Nominations
JUDICIAL NOMINATIONS -- (Senate - April 21, 2005)
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Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I respect the Senator and I appreciate what he has to say about wanting to move the agenda. That is something I am very concerned about because of the Highway Bill, as well as the Energy Bill. Those are things that are lined up and need to be done. They are unfinished business from the last Congress. My concern from all this, and the Senator from Nevada has been here long enough, obviously, to know this, the Senate does set its rules and procedures. That is part of the Constitution. Back in 1980, of course, the Senate did the same things we are talking about doing here when the Democrats had control under Senator Byrd.
But more important, this needs to be based on facts. The facts are on our side in this debate. If you look back--the Senator from Nevada talked about historical precedents. The reality is what I said earlier is absolutely accurate, and that is there has not been a judicial nominee with majority support in the history of this Nation, up until the last Congress, who was denied an up-or-down vote in the Senate by a filibuster or by using the Standing Rules of the Senate to prevent that from happening. That simply is a fact.
It is also a fact that in the instance he referred to back in 1968, the Fortas nomination to the High Court, it was President Johnson's selection for Chief Justice. That was, I should say, a bipartisan attempt. It was a judge who did not have majority support in the Senate, and furthermore it was a judge about whom they were raising ethical issues.
The nominees we are referring to here are people of high quality. They are people who have been rated by the American Bar Association as being highly qualified to serve on the bench. They are not extreme, as the Democrats have suggested. They are judges who have been voted on in their States and won overwhelming majorities. These are people who deserve to be voted on in the Senate. This is about the tradition, it is about the precedent, it is about the history of the Senate, and it is about the Constitution. And it is about the responsibility, as Senators, that we have to see that these judicial nominees who are presented by the President for confirmation, for the Senate to perform its advise and consent role, are dealt with in an appropriate way.
I hope the Senator from Nevada will work with our leadership to try to fashion a way in which these judges can be voted on in the Senate. If they are not, we are setting an entirely new precedent for the future of how these judicial nominees are going to be considered in the Senate because this is unprecedented in the history of this Nation, what has happened in the last session of Congress, and what is being suggested by the Democrats in the Senate at this time. And that is that they will shut this institution down and keep other legislation from moving forward simply because they want to dictate to the majority and to the President of the United States about the kind of judges he ought to be submitting to the Senate for confirmation.
I have a couple of other colleagues here who want to speak to this issue, but it is important that this debate be about the facts. I hope we can have an opportunity to debate these judges. Then I hope we have the opportunity to vote on them.
I yield to the Senator from Louisiana.
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