During a Senate roll call vote on President Trump's nominees on Saturday, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) called out Vice President JD Vance for blocking nominations under the Biden administration.
00:00I thank my colleague from Oregon for his statement, and I'd like to join in the chorus
00:13for just a moment and note two or three things that have not been mentioned on the floor
00:19by the other side.
00:21In fairness, I think they should.
00:23I've listened to several Republican senators today with the pie charts come to the floor
00:29and express concern, even outrage, at what is happening in this chamber.
00:35There is some legitimacy to their complaint.
00:37There are a lot of things that need to be changed.
00:39I join in with my colleague from Oregon to say we ought to put a group together
00:45to try to calmly come up with changes in Senate procedure that bring us back
00:49to the stature that this chamber once had.
00:53Today, we don't have it, and we should.
00:56There are several things I'd like to mention briefly.
00:59If you're talking about denying a voice vote or a regular roll call to an individual seeking
01:07a nomination, I call to mind what happened with our colleague at that time, J.D. Vance,
01:14a United States senator from Ohio, who announced when I was chairman of the Judiciary Committee
01:20that he would no longer allow U.S. attorneys to go through with a voice vote.
01:25At that point, he said they should go through the procedure that we're now using for all nominees.
01:30And he literally stopped the process of choosing U.S. attorneys for President Biden at 63.
01:37There are over 90 U.S. attorney positions in the United States.
01:41So he did exactly what is being complained about by Republican senators, saying that we can no longer use the voice vote
01:49or unanimous consent to pick U.S. attorneys.
01:53Let the record reflect that when President Trump was in his first term, every one of his U.S. attorneys was chosen by voice vote.
02:01No record votes.
02:03Democrats were in control and gave that option to President Trump.
02:07And then Vice President Vance had an opportunity to stop it and did.
02:15He said at the time he wanted to grind the Department of Justice to a halt.
02:19I quoted that while he was standing on the floor right there.
02:24He didn't deny it.
02:25It had been quoted in the press.
02:27And so when we talk about balance and fairness in reform in the Senate, it goes both ways.
02:34Secondly, do you remember when Anton Scalia died on vacation and there was a vacancy in the United States Supreme Court?
02:42Do you recall what happened?
02:43That vacancy was protected by the Republican Senate leader, Senator McConnell, for 10 months so that Obama would not have an opportunity to fill that vacancy.
02:54He wanted to make certain that that was done by President Trump in his next term.
03:00There's another illustration of a departure from common practice and precedent for political advantage.
03:08But the last point that I want to make is one that came to mind as I listened to the Senator from Arkansas come to the floor and talk about the treatment of Republicans under his experience in the Senate.
03:23We have something in the Senate called a hold.
03:27And what it means basically is when your name makes it to the calendar, the executive calendar here, which means you've gone through the background investigation at the White House.
03:41You've gone through the committee process.
03:43You've been chosen by the committee and you've come to the calendar to be considered for a position in our federal government.
03:49There's still one last hurdle, not just the vote on the Senate floor, but the possibility of a hold.
03:56Individual senators can put a hold on a nominee indefinitely.
04:00One of the most egregious examples that has happened in modern times relates to the Senator from Arkansas.
04:08Let me read from an article by Frank Bruni in the New York Times on June 6, 2016.
04:13In early 2014, after decades of government and nonprofit work that reflected a passion for public service, Cassandra Butts got a reward, or so she thought.
04:23She was nominated by President Obama to be the next U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas.
04:28It wasn't an especially high-profile gig at the crossroads of the day's most urgent issues, but it was a long-standing diplomatic post that needed to be filled, and she had concrete ideas on how best to do the job.
04:40She was very excited, her sister said.
04:42The Senate held a hearing on her nomination in May 2014, and then nothing.
04:49Summer came and went, so did fall.
04:51A new year arrived, then another new year after that.
04:54When I met her last month, Mr. Bruni wrote, she'd been waiting for more than 820 days on the Senate calendar to be confirmed.
05:02She died suddenly, two weeks later, still waiting, 50 years old.
05:07The delay had nothing to do with her qualifications, which were impeccable.
05:11It had everything to do with Washington.
05:14And then it says, at another point, Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, put a hold specifically on Butts and on nominees for ambassadorships to Sweden and Norway.
05:26He had a legitimate gripe with the Obama administration over a Secret Service leak of private information about a fellow member of Congress,
05:33and he was trying to pressure Obama to take punitive action.
05:37But that issue was unrelated to Butts and the Bahamas.
05:41Cotton eventually released the two other holes, but not the one on Butts.
05:45She told Bruni that she once went to see him personally about it.
05:49He explained that he knew that she was a close friend of Obama's, the two first met at Harvard Law School,
05:55and that blocking her was a way to inflict special pain on the president.
05:59Cotton's spokeswoman did not dispute Butts' characterization of that meeting and stressed in separate emails that Cotton had enormous respect for her and her career.
06:09But that's Washington for you.
06:11So when we sit down and talk about bringing civility and common sense back to the Senate,
06:27Letts bring in more than just the topic of the votes as to whether there will be record votes or whether there will be voice votes.
06:36That's an important issue, but it's not the only issue.
06:39Let us show the civility, one on the other.
06:42Democrats to Republicans and Republicans to Democrats.
06:45And I yield the floor.
06:52I recognize the president pro temp and senator from Iowa.
06:58Soon we will vote on the U.S. attorney for the southern district of Florida.
07:07Until recent years, it's been unheard of to use floor type to confirm U.S. attorneys.
07:15Typically, they're confirmed by voice vote.
07:20I regret that we have become a body where every nominee has been obstructed.
07:28U.S. attorneys keep our community safe and ensure law and order is enforced.
07:36There are 93 U.S. attorneys in the United States.
07:40It would take more than 230 hours to confirm all of them.
07:48That is totally unrealistic, and that's not hyperbole.
07:54The Democrat obstruction of nominees is hindering law enforcement across our nation.
08:03As chairman of the Judiciary Committee, I'll continue to work across the aisle to restore
08:09common sense confirmation process for U.S. attorneys.
08:13U.S. attorneys.
08:14I now ask unanimous consent to waive the mandatory quorum call with respect to the Kinozzi nomination.
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