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| May 23rd, 2008 |
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Media Contact(s): Mark Eddington or Lindsey Stimpson, (202) 224-5251 |
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DEMOS RENEGED ON PLEDGE TO CONFIRM APPEALS COURT NOMINEES, HATCH SAYS
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WASHINGTON -- Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) is scolding Democratic leaders for reneging on their promise to confirm three appeals court nominees by the Senate’s Memorial Day recess.
“My friends on the other side of the aisle knew how to keep their commitment but instead they chose the path of greatest resistance, the path with the greatest chance of failure. And failure is exactly what is happening,” Hatch said during his speech on the Senate floor Thursday.
The senator also took leaders of the Majority party to task for misrepresenting the facts when they compared how President Bush’s nominees are being treated today and how President Clinton’s nominees were treated.
“A few days ago, the current Judiciary Committee chairman said the judicial confirmation process reminded him of the fairy tale Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” Hatch says. “Sometimes it reminds me instead of an episode of the sitcom “Seinfeld” about Bizarro World. That is the world where up is down, right is left, where everything is not as it seems.
“In the Bizarro World of today’s judicial confirmation process, a plan almost certain to fail is called a commitment, 84 is called 75, senatorial courtesy is called a pocket filibuster, being more productive is called being less productive, and due diligence is called obstruction.”
Sen. Hatch’s complete remarks follow:
Mr. President, I need to make a few remarks in the ongoing effort to conduct something that resembles a fair and productive judicial confirmation process. It looks obvious that the commitment by leaders on the other side of the aisle to confirm three more appeals court nominees by the Memorial Day recess is not going to be met. Failure was not inevitable.
There was a clear path to keep that commitment, with nominees who had long ago been fully vetted, nominees who have been pending for up to two years, highly qualified nominees who have the support of their home-state Senators. My friends on the other side of the aisle knew how to keep their commitment but instead they chose the path of greatest resistance, the path with the greatest chance of failure. And failure is exactly what is happening.
These days we often make comparisons between how President Bush’s nominees are being treated today and how President Clinton’s nominees were treated. Here is one more comparison to consider.
In November 1999, Majority Leader Trent Lott promised to hold a vote by May 15, 2000, on two of President Clinton’s most controversial judicial nominees, Richard Paez and Marsha Berzon to the Ninth Circuit. These nominees were opposed by hundreds of grassroots groups. Their records caused a great deal of angst among many Senators on this side of the aisle. The Majority Leader did not make his commitment in vague, fuzzy terms. He named names, picked dates, and stated objectives. He made a commitment, and he kept it. We took a cloture vote to ensure there would be no filibuster and confirmed those controversial nominees on March 8, 2000, a week earlier than promised.
It is a very different situation today.
I want to address some other issues that highlight the current state of the judicial confirmation process. Talking about numbers, percentages, and comparisons makes some people’s eyes glaze over while others have trouble sorting out the dueling figures.
That is the way some people probably want it because, if enough confusion exists, the American people might not fully appreciate what is going on.
But as our former colleague from New York, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, once said, “You are entitled to your own opinion but not your own set of facts.”
I believe that facts matter. I believe that the truth matters.
Some have claimed that the Senate has confirmed 86 percent of President Bush’s judicial nominees, compared to only 75 percent of President Clinton’s. This claim is either true or false and if you believe, as I do, that the truth matters, then it is important to know the answer.
The most recent figures from the Congressional Research Service show that the Senate has confirmed 85 percent of President Bush’s appeals court nominees compared to 84 percent of President Clinton’s nominees. That is about as nonpartisan and objective a source as you can find. It turns out the Senate confirmed not 75 percent of President Clinton’s judicial nominees, but 84 percent. No matter how you slice, dice, or spin it, this claim is not true.
Another claim, often repeated here on the Senate floor, is that when I chaired the Judiciary Committee, I blocked more than 60 of President Clinton’s judicial nominees by denying them a hearing. Some claims apparently need not be true so long as they are useful.
And this one, the judicial confirmation version of the urban myth, seems useful indeed based on the number of times it is repeated in various versions and permutations. This claim is no more true than the first one I mentioned. Some Clinton nominees were not confirmed. Some nominees of every president are not confirmed.
In 1992, the Senate was controlled by the same party as today and returned more than 50 unconfirmed judicial nominees to President Bush. The claim being made today, however, is that all of those unconfirmed Clinton nominees could have been confirmed but were not solely because I refused to give them hearings.
This is one of those claims that some apparently hope no one will bother to unpack and sort out. But consider this. A dozen of those nominees were not confirmed because President Clinton withdrew them. That was not my prerogative as chairman; that was his prerogative as president.
It continues to baffle me how the Judiciary Committee chairman can be blamed because nominees that no longer existed were not confirmed. Many of those unconfirmed nominees did not have the support of their home-state Senators. Judiciary Committee chairmen of both parties before me and after me, including the current chairman, do not give hearings to nominees without the support of their home-state Senators. We also hear the claim that in presidential election years the judicial confirmation process is, to quote the current Judiciary Committee Chairman, “far less productive.”
Once again, this claim is not true. The average number of appeals court nominees given hearings and the number of judicial nominees confirmed goes up, not down, in presidential election years.
And finally, we hear the astounding claim that Republicans are supposedly obstructing the nomination of Judge Helene White to the Sixth Circuit because we have asked her questions about her record, her qualifications and her judicial philosophy. Judge White was nominated less than two months ago, and the Judiciary Committee was given just 22 days from her nomination until her hearing, a period far shorter even than noncontroversial nominees.
We had 70 days before Seventh Circuit nominee John Tinder’s hearing, for example, and 120 days before Second Circuit nominee Debra Livingston’s hearing. We had only 22 days this time, and the Chairman chose to waive his own rule and hold a hearing without an evaluation from the American Bar Association, something we still do not have today for Judge White. So written questions following the hearing were entirely in order.
The number of questions asked of Judge White pales in comparison to the number my friends on the other side have asked of President Bush’s judicial nominees, who had been pending far longer and for whom we had received an ABA evaluation. We had 112 days before Fifth Circuit nominee Jennifer Elrod’s hearing, for example, more than five times as long as we had with Judge White.
Yet my Democratic friends gave Judge Elrod 108 questions, far more than Judge White received. And after all that, the Senate confirmed Judge Elrod by voice vote.
And I might add that Grace Becker, who was nominated 189 days ago, has received 250 questions from my Democratic friends and I hear they are not done yet.
Grace is a former counsel on the Judiciary Committee and is well known to all of us as a woman of intellect, character, and compassion.
A few days ago, the current Judiciary Committee chairman said the judicial confirmation process reminded him of the fairy tale Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
Sometimes it reminds me instead of an episode of the sitcom “Seinfeld” about Bizarro World. That is the world where up is down, right is left, where everything is not as it seems.
In the Bizarro World of today’s judicial confirmation process, a plan almost certain to fail is called a commitment, 84 is called 75, senatorial courtesy is called a pocket filibuster, being more productive is called being less productive, and due diligence is called obstruction.
I believe that facts and the truth matter, even in the judicial confirmation process.
I yield the floor.
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