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

[Pages S2216-S2220]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Cloture Motion

  The cloture motion having been presented under rule XXII, the Chair 
directs the clerk to read the motion.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the nomination 
     of Jeffrey Kessler, of Virginia, to be an Assistant Secretary 
     of Commerce.
         Mitch McConnell, Steve Daines, John Thune, John Cornyn, 
           James M. Inhofe, Pat Roberts, Mike Crapo, Chuck 
           Grassley, Richard Burr, John Barrasso, Jerry Moran, Roy 
           Blunt, Shelley Moore Capito, John Boozman, Johnny 
           Isakson, Thom Tillis, John Hoeven.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The mandatory quorum call has been waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the 
nomination of Jeffrey Kessler, of Virginia, to be an Assistant 
Secretary of Commerce shall be brought to a close?
  The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator 
from Mississippi (Mrs. Hyde-Smith).
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from California (Ms. Harris) 
is necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 95, nays 3, as follows:

                       [Rollcall Vote No. 58 Ex.]

                                YEAS--95

     Alexander
     Baldwin
     Barrasso
     Bennet
     Blackburn
     Blumenthal
     Blunt
     Booker
     Boozman
     Braun
     Brown
     Burr
     Cantwell
     Capito
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Cassidy
     Collins
     Coons
     Cornyn
     Cortez Masto
     Cotton
     Cramer
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Feinstein
     Fischer
     Gardner
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hassan
     Hawley
     Heinrich
     Hirono
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Jones
     Kaine
     Kennedy
     King
     Klobuchar
     Lankford
     Leahy
     Lee
     Manchin
     Markey
     McConnell
     McSally
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Paul
     Perdue
     Peters
     Portman
     Reed
     Risch
     Roberts
     Romney
     Rosen
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Scott (FL)
     Scott (SC)
     Shaheen
     Shelby
     Sinema
     Smith
     Stabenow
     Sullivan
     Tester
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Udall
     Van Hollen
     Warner
     Whitehouse
     Wicker
     Wyden
     Young

                                NAYS--3

     Gillibrand
     Sanders
     Warren

                             NOT VOTING--2

     Harris
     Hyde-Smith
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote the yeas are 95, the nays are 3.
  The motion is agreed to.
  The Democratic leader.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, this is a very sad day for the Senate. At 
a time when Leader McConnell brags about confirming more judges than 
anyone has done in a very long time, he feels the need to invoke the 
terribly destructive and disproportionate procedure of the nuclear 
option in order to fast-track even more of President Trump's 
ultraconservative nominees to the Federal bench.
  Before I discuss that in greater detail, I want to note for the 
record that Democrats were prepared to confirm the nomination of Mr. 
Kessler by unanimous consent, so the cloture vote we had was 
unnecessary.
  If you have been listening to Senators debate this issue in recent 
days, you have heard a lot of claims and

[[Page S2217]]

counterclaims about cloture votes, about rates of confirmation for 
circuit and district courts in different Congresses, about judicial 
vacancies and other arcane things that may not sound very illuminating. 
So I want to start by making clear what this debate is really all 
about. I want to issue a warning about what is at stake in this fight. 
Underneath all of the statistics, what Leader McConnell, President 
Trump, and Republicans in the Senate are trying to do is use the courts 
to adopt the far-right agenda that Republicans know they cannot enact 
through the legislative process.
  Why can't they? Because it is an agenda the American people reject, 
an agenda set by the far right, which Republicans in the Senate follow.
  Senator McConnell and Republicans in Washington understand that they 
will never persuade enough Americans to support backward goals like 
ending women's reproductive freedom, taking away healthcare, rolling 
back civil rights, making it more difficult to vote, or abolishing 
safeguards for clean air and clean water.
  Instead, they decided there was another route to achieving their 
policy goals, one that requires neither public support nor legislation: 
the courts. So Republicans, pressured by the hard right and by wealthy, 
special interest donors, launched a sustained effort to pack the courts 
with very conservative judges, preferably young ones, who would sit on 
the bench for decades. These prospective judges were identified as 
early as law school, having signaled their hard-right leanings through 
their writings or membership in conservative groups like the Federalist 
Society.
  Nominees like these started to appear during the George W. Bush 
administration. Take Miguel Estrada, a Bush nominee with no judicial 
experience, who held membership in the Federalist Society but had no 
writings and claimed he had never even thought about Roe v. Wade.
  Or take William Pryor, another Bush nominee, who called Roe ``the 
worst abomination in the history of constitutional law'' and who argued 
that States should have the right to criminalize homosexuality.
  Or take Charles Pickering, who advocated a reduced sentence for a man 
convicted of burning a cross in the front yard of an interracial 
couple.
  Before the Republicans launched their campaign to remake the courts, 
neither party would have dared put forward such radical nominees.
  Starting with his campaign and into his Presidency, President Donald 
Trump has been captive--totally captive--to the conservative campaign 
to take over the courts. Before he was a Presidential candidate, Mr. 
Trump had been a Democrat and a person with no fixed judicial 
philosophy, so conservatives didn't trust him. He and his advisers came 
up with a solution: Ask the Federalist Society to produce a list of 
far-right Supreme Court nominees, and then have candidate Trump pledge 
to only nominate people on that list. And not just the Supreme Court--
the Federalist Society is and continues to be a huge influence on 
nominees to the circuit courts.
  No other Presidential candidate had so willingly and openly 
outsourced judicial nominations this way, but it mollified the hard 
right, and the President has dutifully nominated people from the list 
to the Supreme Court. He has made similarly ideological choices for the 
circuit and district courts.
  This is an alarming strategy because, over the last 2 years, 
President Trump has nominated and Senate Republicans have advanced the 
most unqualified and radical nominees in modern times.
  Consider the nomination of Ryan Bounds, who misled the Oregon 
Senators' bipartisan judicial selection committee about his 
controversial writings in the past, writings in which he dismissed 
efforts to increase diversity as mere ``race-think,'' criticized 
Stanford University's suggested punishment for students who defaced an 
LGBT pride statue, criticized a student group for protesting against a 
hotel company that had fired workers trying to unionize, and 
disregarded the value of university disciplinary actions against 
students accused of sexual violence. Five of the seven members of 
Oregon's in-State screening committee, including the committee's chair, 
said they would not have recommended Bounds had they known of his 
college writings when they first interviewed him. Fortunately, it 
became clear that a few Republicans would not support Mr. Bounds on the 
floor, and the nomination was withdrawn.
  Consider the nomination of Thomas Farr, who has an extensive record 
defending discriminatory voting laws and racial gerrymandering in North 
Carolina. He is also credibly alleged to have played a role in the 
voter suppression efforts of the Jesse Helms campaign, including 
sending over 100,000 postcards to heavily African-American precincts 
that ``falsely told voters they could be found ineligible to vote based 
on several conditions involving place and length of residence.'' 
Amazingly, after something as despicable as that, President Trump and 
Leader McConnell pushed hard for his nomination, but it could not 
withstand scrutiny by the Senate and was ultimately withdrawn due to 
the united Democratic opposition and a few conscientious Republican 
Senators.
  I would note that in the cases of both Mr. Farr and Mr. Bounds, the 
Republican concerns emerged only at the end of postcloture debate time, 
which Republicans now propose to limit. Had we had only 2 hours, 
horrible nominees--way beyond the bounds of normal nomination and 
discourse, even from conservatives--like Farr, like Bounds would be 
sitting on the courts today.
  I agree with what my colleague Senator Klobuchar has said:

       Two hours for a lifetime appointment . . . is unacceptable.

  She said:

       Two hours for a lifetime appointment, with huge influence 
     on people's lives, is unacceptable. It's ridiculous. It's a 
     mockery of how this institution should work.

  It is not just the courts. There are many examples in the executive 
branch as well. Ann Marie Buerkle, nominated to chair the CPSC--just 
today the Post reported that this nominee blocked action at the 
Commission to recall hundreds of thousands of potentially defective 
baby strollers, even in the face of reports that they caused 
``potentially life-threatening injuries.'' She even kept Democratic 
Commissioners in the dark about the investigation.
  Of course, there is Chad Readler, who led the charge to end 
preexisting condition protections. President Trump and Senate 
Republicans, the self-declared ``party of healthcare,'' rewarded him by 
overwhelmingly confirming him to a lifetime position as a circuit court 
judge. Despite Mr. Readler's conspicuous role in trying to curtail 
Americans' healthcare, no Republicans were willing to stand up to 
President Trump and vote against his confirmation.
  At this point, people listening to these proceedings might be asking 
themselves: What happened when a Democratic President occupied the 
White House?
  The answer is that Republicans, led by Senator McConnell, remained 
undeterred. In such times, they chose to employ the extraordinary 
tactic of denying confirmation to a Democratic President's nominees in 
order to hold vacancies open until a Republican could regain the 
Presidency. It was an audacious and insidious gambit, a way to nullify 
a Democratic President's power to fill judicial vacancies.
  We saw this tactic during the Clinton administration, when 
Republicans on the Judiciary Committee killed a number of President 
Clinton's quite moderate judicial nominees, even without the basic 
courtesy of a hearing.
  We saw it again during the Obama administration, when Republicans 
used the filibuster and other forms of delay to more than double the 
number of circuit and district court vacancies. During Obama's last 2 
years in office, the Republican Senate confirmed fewer circuit court 
nominees than any Congress in 70 years.
  Then, in March of 2016, Senator McConnell and Senate Republicans took 
this maneuver to a new Machiavellian low. They refused to even consider 
President Obama's nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States, 
Circuit Judge Merrick Garland, one of the most respected jurists in the 
Nation, a man known not only for his judicial excellence and perfect 
judicial temperament but his moderation. In fact, Senator Orrin Hatch, 
a conservative's conservative and the former chairman of Judiciary 
Committee, had previously endorsed Judge Garland for the Supreme Court.

[[Page S2218]]

  But the merits didn't concern Senator McConnell. His cynical strategy 
required Republicans to block the Garland nomination for almost a year 
until after President Obama's second term ended, and that is exactly 
what they did. It was widely condemned as a naked power grab that 
nullified the President's constitutional authority. It was a terrible, 
deeply lamentable moment for our democracy and our Constitution. Yet, 
as the New York Times reported, Senator McConnell said it was one of 
his ``proudest achievements.''
  After President Trump took office, Republicans sensed an opportunity 
to grease the conveyer belt even more. Senator McConnell ordered the 
Judiciary Committee chairman to do away with the longstanding practice 
that Senators be consulted about district court nominees in their home 
States. The blue-slip tradition ensured that judicial nominees 
reflected the ideology and values of the State to which they were 
nominated. It provided some healthy counterbalance against nominees who 
were outside the mainstream from either party or were lacking in proper 
qualifications. Thanks to Senate Republicans, led by Senator McConnell, 
that protection is now history.
  So when Republicans complain about Democratic handling of nominees, 
there is no other word for it but hypocrisy. You don't have to take my 
word for it. According to the Congressional Research Service, more 
circuit judges have been confirmed in the first 2 years of the Trump 
administration than in the first 2 years of any Presidency since at 
least the Truman administration.
  The majority leader himself has celebrated the pace of confirmations. 
He bragged about it to the Heritage Foundation. He said this to them a 
few months ago:

       We confirmed every circuit judge. We've now done 29 circuit 
     judges. That is a record for this quick in any administration 
     in history.

  Those are Leader McConnell's words, not mine.
  Now we have to change the rules, even though you have confirmed more 
circuit court judges than anyone in history. That is a shame. That is a 
disgrace. That is not the Senate we want. For Leader McConnell to brag 
about confirming more judges than ever before and then to complain 
about Democratic obstruction and say that the process is broken so you 
have to change the rules is the height of hypocrisy.
  Leader McConnell and Senate Republicans also complain about the pace 
of confirmation for President Trump's executive branch and independent 
Agency choices. They conveniently omit Republicans' sorry record of 
obstruction of nominees to Democratic seats at important agencies like 
the NLRB, the FDIC, and the SEC, which have suffered as Republicans 
caused dedicated public servants like former NLRB Chair Mark Pearce to 
languish for months or even years.
  It is actually a little surprising that Leader McConnell and his 
Republican colleagues would draw attention to the subject of executive 
nominees now, given the appalling history of incompetence, corruption, 
and venality among President Trump's so-called ``best people,'' not to 
mention the fact that there are hundreds of vacancies the President 
can't even be bothered to fill.
  Staffing the government is serious business and so is the system of 
justice assigned to the courts by our Constitution. They both deserve 
better than the Senate Republicans' cynical, partisan efforts to turn 
the Senate into a conveyer belt for ideological conservatives.
  The notion that President Trump's judicial nominees have been treated 
unfairly is simply false. There is no truth to it, as all of these 
statistics that I have talked about have shown. What Republicans really 
want to see is the elimination of yet another norm of the Senate so 
they can automate and expedite the nomination process without a modicum 
of debate. They are all for ``consent'' with no ``advice.'' With all 
undue haste, they want to pack the courts with partisan warriors, not 
impartial jurists. It is outrageous.
  Democrats have a different view of who should sit on the Federal 
bench. We have a different view of the role of this Chamber. Our 
judicial system works best when we hold nominees to three simple 
standards: excellence, moderation, and diversity. These are not 
ideological litmus tests. They are the pillars of a healthy system of 
justice. They are the benchmarks by which we can rest assured that the 
men and women who are appointed to the Federal bench will respect the 
rule of law and execute their duties impartially.
  It cuts both ways. When Republicans are prepared to act in good faith 
and advance nominees of high caliber, we are ready to give them the 
consideration they deserve. For generations, the Senate has done the 
work of the American people through consensus, through compromise, and 
through cooperation. It has been a place where seemingly impossible 
disagreements have found sensible solutions. Indeed, the legacy of the 
Senate is the story of debate--ample debate--followed by compromise. It 
is in large part thanks to the rules that govern how this Chamber 
works. It is crucial that those rules not be twisted or abused for 
partisan advantage.
  The majority, by taking yet another step to erode that legacy, risks 
turning this body into a colosseum of zero-sum infighting--a place 
where the brute power of the majority rules, with little or no regard 
for the concerns of the minority party, and where longstanding rules 
have little or no meaning.
  I am so sorry my Republican colleagues have gone along with Senator 
McConnell's debasement of the Senate. To do this for such blatantly 
political ends is simply unworthy of this institution.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. McCONNELL. One of the advantages of having been around the 
``advice and consent'' process for as long as I have is that I know a 
little history. I was actually here as a young staffer on the Judiciary 
Committee when Richard Nixon appointed two Supreme Court Justices who 
were defeated. During most of those years, our Democratic friends were 
in the majority here in the Senate. They could have done whatever they 
wanted to on the executive calendar to slow down, obstruct, and prevent 
Republican Presidents from having nominations confirmed.
  I can remember during the Clinton years the urging of both Senator 
Daschle and Senator Lott--when my party was in the majority--to invoke 
cloture on circuit court nominees whom I opposed in order to keep the 
Senate from developing a process of filibustering the executive 
calendar, which had never been done before.
  The clearest example of why it was never done before is the Clarence 
Thomas nomination--the most controversial nomination for the Supreme 
Court in history, with the possible exception of Brett Kavanaugh. He 
came out of committee with a dead-even vote. They could have killed him 
in committee. He went to the floor and was confirmed 52 to 48. We all 
know it only takes one Senator, just one, to make us get 60 votes on 
something.
  Joe Biden and Ted Kennedy were hard over against Clarence Thomas, but 
nobody--not one of the 100 Senators--said you have to get 60 votes. 
Clarence Thomas was confirmed 52 to 48 and has been on the Supreme 
Court for 30 years. He would never have been there if a single 
Senator--just one--had said you had to get 60 votes. My friends, I call 
that a pretty firm tradition that you don't filibuster the executive 
calendar. Was it possible? Yes, it was possible. It just wasn't done.
  When did all of this start? Well, the junior Senator from New York 
got elected in 1998. George W. Bush gets elected in 2000. The alarms go 
off. They are going to appoint a bunch of crazy rightwingers to the 
circuit courts.
  So my good friend the Democratic leader, at a seminar or a meeting, 
invited a couple of people named Laurence Tribe and Cass Sunstein--two 
rather famous liberal law professors--and they had a discussion about 
what to do about these awful rightwing judges who are going to be sent 
up.
  The conclusion was to open the toolbox, take out whatever tool would 
work, and save America from these kinds of people. And so they did. The 
poster child for that was Miguel Estrada, who they said openly they 
were afraid was going to give President Bush the opportunity to make 
the first

[[Page S2219]]

Hispanic appointment to the Supreme Court. We had all-night 
filibusters. We actually stayed up all night trying to make a point.
  It didn't make a difference. Ultimately, we thought maybe we should 
employ the so-called nuclear option. We ended up not doing it after 
there was a gang of 14 that developed and worked out an agreement, and 
some of the nominees were confirmed and some weren't. Yet what had been 
clearly established was that now the norm in the Senate was that you 
filibuster anybody that you want to on the executive calendar. That had 
then been established as a matter of practice, and that continued 
through the Bush years. There was actually an effort to keep Justice 
Alito from being on the Supreme Court by requiring a filibuster for the 
purpose of defeating Justice Alito, but it was not successful. A number 
of circuit judges were stopped.

  When we fast-forward to the Obama years, our side used the filibuster 
twice to defeat two circuit judges over a period of 5\1/2\ years. 
Majority Leader Harry Reid decided, in his zeal, to pack the DC 
Circuit--that this had gone on long enough. So, in November 2013, I 
believe it was, the nuclear option was employed. The threshold was 
lowered to 51 for everybody on the Executive Calendar except for the 
Supreme Court. The DC Circuit court judges were confirmed. At the time, 
I said I didn't like the way it was done. I thought maybe those on the 
other side would rue the day they did it.
  Amazingly enough, about a year and a half later, I was the majority 
leader. Funny how these things change, isn't it?
  A number of my Members came up and said: Why don't we change it back.
  I said: Look, I don't think we like the way they did it, but this is 
the way the Executive Calendar was handled for 200 years until Senator 
Schumer and his allies Laurence Tribe and a cast unseen said: Well, why 
don't we use any tool in the toolbox to stop judicial appointments?
  I discouraged our going back to 60 because I had actually seen that 
both sides had respected their using a simple majority on the Executive 
Calendar down to 2003, so we didn't.
  Now, look, with regard to these continued complaints about Merrick 
Garland, that is not what this proposal is about. This proposal is 
about sub-Cabinet appointments and district judges. For those of you 
who were not here in 2013, it is almost identical to what almost every 
one of you voted for in 2013--a standing order that lasted 2 years and 
a good number of us giving President Obama the opportunity to advance 
these sub-Cabinet appointments and district judges more quickly.
  Let's talk about district judges for a minute. Chairman Grassley and 
Chairman Graham honored the blue slip for district judges. There are 47 
of you guys. There is not a single district judge who comes out here on 
the calendar who doesn't have two blue slips returned from whomever the 
Senators are from the home State. What that means is that you guys are 
not irrelevant on district judge appointments. You are not irrelevant. 
For example, I tried to get my good friend the Democratic leader to 
approve a list of 30 district judges last fall, and 14 of them were 
from blue States. Oh, no. He was not going to do any district judges on 
a voice vote even if he were for them.
  So, look, all this proposal does that we are talking about today is 
reduce the postcloture time for sub-Cabinet appointments--just like we 
helped you all do in 2013--and for district judges, none of whom will 
even be on the calendar until both blue slips are returned positively. 
It is not exactly a radical change.
  Back to Merrick Garland for a minute. Look, I made the decision--and 
my colleagues on the Republican side joined me in making that 
decision--because I knew for sure, for absolute certainty, that if the 
roles were reversed and there were a Republican President and a 
Democratic Senate, you wouldn't have filled the vacancy. How did I know 
that? You have to go back to the 1880s to find the last time a vacancy 
on the Supreme Court occurred in the middle of a Presidential election 
year and was confirmed by a Senate of a different party from the 
President's--1880.
  Oh, but that was not enough. In 1992, our friend Joe Biden, the 
chairman of the Judiciary Committee, with a Republican in the White 
House, a Democratic Senate, and no vacancy on the Supreme Court, 
helpfully opined that if a vacancy occurred, he wouldn't fill it.
  Oh, but guess what. Eighteen months before the end of the Bush 43 
term, the majority leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, and a fellow named 
Chuck Schumer said that if a vacancy occurred, they wouldn't fill it. 
That was 18 months before the end of the Bush term.
  On the business of filibustering the Executive Calendar, there is one 
thing I left out, and I want to catch up here. Back in 2003, when my 
good friend the Democratic leader started all of this that we have been 
wrestling with since then, he said: I am the leader of the filibuster 
movement, and I am proud of it. The Buffalo News, May 27, 2003. I am 
the leader of the filibuster movement, and I am proud of it. The 
Buffalo News. Charles E. Schumer recommended using an extreme tactic--a 
filibuster--to block some of the Bush administration's nominees for 
Federal judgeships. Talk about being proud of something. He started 
this whole thing that we have been wrestling with since 2003. He cooked 
it up and convinced his colleagues to do it, and once it started, it 
continued until 2013 when it was turned off.
  So, look, where are we? The Executive Calendar is very close to being 
returned to the way it was treated by both parties down to 2000--not 
the legislative calendar but the Executive Calendar. There is nothing 
radical about this. He is acting like it is a sad day for the Senate. 
If you want to pick a sad day for the Senate, go back to 2003 when we 
started filibustering the Executive Calendar. He started it. That was a 
sad day. This is a glad day. We are trying to end the dysfunction on 
the Executive Calendar.
  Let's talk about dysfunction. There were 128 cloture votes in the 
last Congress, many of them on nominees for whom there were no 
objections at all--128. Goodness gracious. In the first 2 years of each 
of the last six Presidents, cumulatively, the majority leader of 
whichever party had to do that 24 times in order to try to advance a 
nomination.
  So don't hand me any of this ``sad day in the Senate'' stuff. What 
has been going on here is completely and totally unacceptable. Do you 
know why I know that? It is because many of your Members, Mr. Leader, 
have told me privately that they would be happy to do this provided it 
would take effect in January 2021. Oh, what might happen in January 
2021? I can't imagine. Well, it might be a Democratic President and a 
Democratic Senate. I can understand--but, oh, not now.
  Look, we know you don't like Donald Trump, but there was an election. 
He is at least entitled to set up the administration and make it 
function. With regard to the judiciary and circuit judges, every 
President of both parties feels it is his prerogative.
  Senator Alexander has pointed out the history of the blue slip. There 
has been a little confusion about that. He has noted that blue slips 
were not used as an absolute veto over judicial nominees until--listen 
to this--the 1950s, when former Judiciary Committee Chairman James 
Eastland of Mississippi afforded them the status because he did not 
want Federal judges who had been appointed by President Eisenhower to 
interfere with segregationist policies in the Jim Crow South. When he 
became the Judiciary Committee chairman, our former colleague Ted 
Kennedy restored blue slips to their historical purpose of ensuring 
consultation as opposed to serving as a one-Member veto of a qualified 
judicial nominee.
  All we have done is restore blue slips for circuit court nominees to 
the consultative function they have played for most of their history.
  I have been under Presidents of both parties. They do not defer to us 
on circuit court judges. We don't get to pick them. We almost do get to 
pick them when they are district court judges and when we are of the 
same party as the White House. We have a lot of clout because the 
chairmen honor the blue slips for district court judges. They are 
entirely contained within our States, and none of them get out here on 
the floor unless the Senators approve

[[Page S2220]]

them. There are 47 of these guys over here who are not toothless when 
it comes to district judges.
  So this is not a bad day for the Senate; this is a day we end this 
completely outrageous level of interference and obstruction with this 
administration. I don't think anybody ought to be seized with guilt 
over any institutional damage being done to the Senate.