April 3, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 58 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session

[Pages S2211-S2212]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                           Order of Business

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the time until 2 
p.m. will be equally divided between the two leaders or their 
designees.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                               S. Res. 50

  Mr. THUNE. Yesterday afternoon, Senate Democrats voted against a 
rules change that would have reduced needless delay in the Senate and 
ensure that future Presidents of both parties could staff their 
administrations in a timely fashion.
  Democrats chose partisanship over principle and political advantage 
over the well-being of the Senate. How do I know that this was a 
partisan decision on Democrats' part and not a principled one? Because 
34 currently serving Members of the Democratic caucus supported a very 
similar rules change measure when President Obama was in office. Yet 
not one Member--not one Member of the Democratic caucus--voted in favor 
of the rules change yesterday.
  Worse, privately, many Democrats had indicated a willingness to 
support the rules change but only if the effective date were pushed to 
2021, when Democrats hope they will have a Democrat in the White House. 
Apparently, it is reasonable for Democratic administrations to be 
staffed up in a timely fashion, but Republican administrations should 
have to suffer endless partisan delays. That is a pretty offensive 
position.
  It is disrespectful to the American people, who deserve a fully 
staffed administration, even when their choice of President isn't the 
Democrats' choice. It is disrespectful of our system of government.
  Democrats apparently think the system should be rigged in favor of 
their party, no matter what election results say. Don't like the fact 
that a Republican President got to choose Supreme Court Justices? Pack 
the courts. Don't like the fact that your candidate didn't win the 
election? Change our electoral system.
  In a democracy, you win some elections and you lose some elections. 
Sometimes you like the individual in the White House, and sometimes you 
don't. Sometimes you succeed in passing your legislation, and sometimes 
you just don't have the votes. That is the nature of life in a 
democracy.
  No one likes being in the minority. It is not fun to lose votes or 
elections, but that is the price of freedom. That is the price of 
democracy.
  The other option is for one party to try to rig the system in its 
favor so that everything goes its way no matter what election results 
say. There is a name for that. It is called tyranny.
  Back in 2013, a majority of Republicans, including the Republican 
leader and me, supported a rules change to streamline the process of 
approving lower level administration nominees, such as district court 
judges and assistant secretaries. We voted for this rules change even 
though we knew it would benefit only President Obama since it would 
expire at the end of the 113th Congress, but we signed on because we 
supported the principle behind the change. We believed that Presidents 
should be able to staff their administrations in a timely fashion, yes, 
even if they weren't Presidents from our party. We believed that 
whether the President was a Republican or Democrat, the American people 
deserved a fully functioning executive branch. So we worked with 
Democrats to streamline consideration of lower level administration 
nominees.
  I am deeply disappointed that Democrats chose to betray their 
principles yesterday for short-term partisan gain, and I hope the 
Democrats here in the Senate will think better of their vote and work 
with Republicans to speed up consideration of lower level nominees 
before Democrats' historic level of obstruction becomes a permanent 
standard here in the U.S. Senate.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Romney). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I am going to use my time on the Senate 
floor to address two related subjects.
  The Republican leader is reportedly on the verge of going nuclear to 
speed through the confirmation of more far-right nominees. He says 
Democrats are guilty of extreme, unprecedented obstruction, and he 
claims that his hand has been forced and that is why he is required to 
change the Senate rules. In the real world, I want to make clear that I 
believe the facts tell a different story, and I am going to lay out 
briefly why I think this is the wrong way to go.
  When you look at the numbers, you see that the Republican leader's 
argument is a fantasy. Let's look at judges, and let's compare the 
Trump administration to the Obama administration. The Obama 
administration started with 53 judicial vacancies; the Trump 
administration started with 112. That increase didn't occur because a 
whole lot of judges somehow magically qualified for Social Security and 
quit sometime in 2016; it was because Republicans blocked nominees for 
years at a time, and they kept those seats open. Senate Republicans 
even blocked their own judicial selections during the previous 
administration. Put your arms

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around that. Senate Republicans even blocked their own. Only 22 
judicial nominees were confirmed in the final 2 years of the Obama 
administration--the fewest in a Congress since Harry Truman was 
President.
  In 2015 and 2016, the Judiciary Committee considered only five 
circuit court nominees. It considered that many in December of 2017 
alone. There were nearly twice as many circuit judges confirmed in the 
first 2 years of the Trump administration as there were in President 
Obama's entire first term. Nominees are moving nearly twice as quickly 
under this President.
  Republicans even blew up a century-old bipartisan practice of seeking 
input from Senators on judicial nominees from their home States. It is 
based on what has come to be known as the blue slip to consent to a 
hearing and a markup of a nomination. It is a tradition, by the way, 
Republicans fought to protect when a Democrat was President and they 
were in the minority. Under this President, they threw the blue-slip 
tradition out the window.
  Republicans are also moving nominees in huge batches and at paces 
that prevent serious debate on their qualifications. A few months ago, 
the Judiciary Committee held a markup and voted out 46 nominees, 
including 44 judicial nominees. That had never been done before. It is 
a head-scratcher how that can meet any reasonable definition of 
``advice and consent.''
  The way my colleagues on the other side talk about the issue, you 
would think Democrats delayed every nomination for as long as possible. 
That just doesn't remotely resemble the truth.
  Setting judges aside, what about the executive branch? The President 
and his advisers will tell you right out in the open that they don't 
want to nominate anybody. They have chosen to leave those positions 
vacant. That certainly doesn't meet a textbook definition of 
``Democratic obstructionism.'' I am the ranking Democrat on the Senate 
Finance Committee. Our committee has zero nominees ready for a 
committee vote. It is not because anybody is blocking them; it is 
because the Trump administration seems uninterested in putting nominees 
forward. Our committee, on a bipartisan basis, has done its job.
  So, colleagues, you can't look at the record of nominees over the 
last 2 years, particularly on judges, and conclude that the Democrats 
have broken the Senate. It is just not true. I believe a number of my 
colleagues on the other side know it. When they want to go nuclear and 
change the rules, we get a parade of horror stories about how Democrats 
are obstructionists. It is a totally different story when they prefer 
to tout their record on nominations.
  Let's hear from Republicans, from the President on down.
  Here is the President tweeting in late 2017: ``Judges at a record 
clip. Our courts are rapidly changing.''
  The President at a rally last year: ``We have the best judges. We put 
on a tremendous amount of great Federal district court judges. We'll be 
setting records. We are setting records. Appeals court judges. A 
Supreme Court judge--fantastic.''
  The Vice President, March 2018: ``The President . . . set a record 
for the most court of appeal judges confirmed in the first year of an 
administration in American history.''
  Leader McConnell said it all, speaking about the confirmed judges. He 
said ``including a record number of circuit court judges for a 
President's first year.''
  More recently, Leader McConnell said: ``We confirmed every circuit 
judge. We've now done 29 circuit judges. That's a record for this quick 
in any administration in history.''
  After November's elections, when Democrats won control of the House, 
Leader McConnell said: ``I think we'll have probably more time for 
nominations in the next Congress than we've had in this one, because 
the areas of legislative agreement will be more limited between a 
Democratic House and a Republican Senate. . . . I don't think we'll 
have any trouble finding time to do nominations.'' That is Leader 
McConnell. ``I don't think we'll have any trouble finding time to do 
nominations.''
  Leader McConnell said: ``We intend to keep confirming as many as we 
possibly can for as long as we're in a position to do so.''
  My colleagues on the other side can't have it both ways, constantly 
talking about Democratic obstructionism and then, in effect, making all 
these statements about how they are setting records for getting people 
through. You can't have it both ways.
  I am going to close on this. I am not going to apologize for opposing 
nominees who are unqualified, corrupt, or simply outside of the 
mainstream.
  I opposed the nomination of Ryan Bounds to the Ninth Circuit because 
he concealed hateful writings to a bipartisan committee--since I became 
the State's senior Democrat, and now as the senior Senator, I have 
continued this committee. We have had a bipartisan selection committee 
that vets candidates. We had it when my former colleague, Senator 
Smith, who I know is a friend of the Presiding Officer's, was here. We 
always worked in a bipartisan way to address these issues. This was a 
nominee who concealed hateful writings from the bipartisan selection 
committee that vetted his candidacy, and he was forced to withdraw.
  I opposed Neomi Rao because she also had put extreme views in 
writing, and those views closely mirrored the work she had done as a 
Trump appointee attacking protections for women's health, for sexual 
assault victims on campus, and for vulnerable communities across the 
country.
  I opposed the nomination of Thomas Farr because he ruthlessly 
attacked the voting rights of people of color.
  I opposed the nomination of Tom Price to lead the Department of 
Health and Human Services because I thought he was just about as 
corrupt as they came and seemed to be laser-focused on taking away 
people's healthcare.
  I opposed the nomination of Steven Mnuchin to be Treasury Secretary 
because I believed a history of profiting off of the suffering of 
millions of Americans ought to be disqualifying for that job.
  Now, what has been the record? Multiple members of the Trump Cabinet 
have resigned under an ethical cloud. The rule change for which the 
Republican leader is pushing will cause the rushing through of even 
more unqualified and corrupt nominees at the sub-Cabinet level.
  The bottom line is that all of the doomsday talk about the Democratic 
obstruction that is forcing the Republican leader's hand is simply out 
of touch with the facts. The Trump administration will find more 
support among the Democrats when it picks better nominees. It is a 
quaint idea--pick better nominees, and then you will get support. 
Instead, the nuclear option Leader McConnell is set to trigger this 
week is a strategy that will take us in the opposite direction. It is 
going to make it easier to rush unqualified and extreme nominees 
through the Senate before anybody notices.
  I oppose this change. I urge more of my colleagues on the other side 
to do the same.