Lynch Nomination
Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, this is the Executive Calendar of the U.S. Senate. This Executive Calendar tells us the nominations that are pending before the U.S. Senate where action is needed. There is one name to be found on this calendar on page 4--a name which has been sitting on this calendar longer than any nominee for Attorney General of the United States of America over the last 30 years. This name has been sitting on this calendar for 20 days, which doesn't seem like an extraordinarily long period of time. However, it turns out that the previous nominees for Attorney General were moved so quickly on this Senate calendar that the last five combined, by Democratic and Republican Presidents, took less time to be confirmed than this one name. What is that name? It is Loretta E. Lynch of New York to be Attorney General--a name that was submitted to the U.S. Senate by President Barack Obama to make history--a name, a nominee to make history. This is the first African-American woman in the history of the United States to be nominated to serve as Attorney General. It is a civil rights milestone that her name has been submitted.
I sat through the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, and it was a packed room. All the TV cameras were there. Loretta Lynch came and sat at the table, with her father behind her, with her family around her, with close friends gathered from all over the United States, and this woman calmly, in a dignified way, gave the most compelling testimony I have heard of any witness before the Senate Judiciary Committee, including those who came before us seeking to be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. She was excellent. No one laid a glove on her. No one raised any concern about her nomination. And then, when the public witnesses were invited to come in from both the Republican and Democratic sides to comment on her nomination, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont asked all of them gathered: Is there any one of you who opposes the nomination of Loretta Lynch to be Attorney General? Not one. Not one.
Yet, here we are now, with this nomination pending longer than any Attorney General nomination in the last 30 years. Why? Why has the Senate Republican leadership decided to target this good woman and to stop her from serving as the first female African-American Attorney General of the United States of America? There is no good reason. There is no substantive reason. She has been an extraordinary prosecutor in New York. She has the support of so many outstanding organizations. The National District Attorneys Association supports Loretta Lynch, as do the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the Major Cities Chiefs Association, the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys. The FBI Agents Association supports Loretta Lynch, and a long list of Republican- and Democratic-appointed former U.S. Attorneys, including Patrick Fitzgerald from my State of Illinois, and former FBI Director Louis Freeh, appointed by a Republican President, and Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson from the George W. Bush administration. The list goes on and on.
The fact is there is no substantive reason to stop this nomination. The Republican majority leader announced over the weekend that he was going to hold this nomination of Loretta Lynch until the bill which is pending before the Senate passes, whenever that may be.
So Loretta Lynch, the first African-American woman nominated to be Attorney General, is asked to sit in the back of the bus when it comes to the Senate calendar. That is unfair. It is unjust. It is beneath the decorum and dignity of the U.S. Senate.
This woman deserves fairness. She seeks to lead the Department of Justice, and the U.S. Senate should be just in its treatment of her nomination. To think that we would jeopardize her opportunity to serve this Nation and to make history is fundamentally unfair.
What is the issue? The issue is this important bill. It is a bill which relates to human trafficking. As chairman of the constitution subcommittee, I have held hearings on this subject and it is heartbreaking to hear how primarily young women have been enslaved and exploited not just around the world but in the United States. I support this legislation. I think we should move it forward. What is holding this up is very simple: one sentence. Out of a 112-page bill, there is 1 sentence on pages 50 and 51 that relates to the issue of abortion.
I needn't tell anyone following this debate how controversial and divisive that issue can be and has been for so many decades in the United States. The fact is that issue has nothing to do with human trafficking. It should be debated at another moment, another time, on another bill. But, sadly, this 1 sentence in this 100-page bill is holding it up from being considered on the floor.
If the senior Senator from Texas, who is the lead sponsor on this bill, would come to the floor and simply remove this one sentence, this bill would pass. It would pass this afternoon, overwhelmingly. There is no question about it. He knows it. We have told him that. We have offered that to him, but he refuses.
So this good bill language is on the calendar, the Senate is mired in controversy, and Loretta Lynch sits on the calendar for another day.
It has been 130 days since President Obama announced the nomination of this woman to serve as our Attorney General. That is more than three times the period of time it took for us to confirm Attorney General Ashcroft. It is more than 2 1/2 times as long as it took to confirm Attorney General Mukasey and twice as long as it took to confirm Attorney General Holder.
It is time for us to give Loretta Lynch an opportunity to continue to serve America and to make civil rights history by allowing this African-American woman to step forward and serve. It is time to stop holding her hostage to a political debate on the floor of the U.S. Senate that has nothing to do with her obvious qualifications to serve this Nation.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
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