Judicial Nominees

Floor Speech

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Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I appreciate the opportunity to get back into morning business. A number of my freshman and sophomore colleagues and I have come to the floor to discuss an important issue. We also came to the floor during the final throes of the health care debate. We are here to raise the issue that, while we are enormously proud to be Members of the Senate and respect the traditions of the Senate, something seems a little strange when 15 months into this President's administration, we still have approaching 100 nominees who have not been voted up or down so that they can serve in these most important positions to make sure we get our country back on the right path.

We are going to reiterate these issues, and we will come back to try to urge Senators who have concerns about nominees to come to the floor and make their case against the nominees. They ought to be voted up or down, and if they are not approved, the administration can move on to someone else. But 15 months is a long time. As a former CEO in business and a former Governor, I think this President ought to have his team in place.

First, this is an issue that a number of us have raised over a period of time. We all have previous experience before coming on this body. I call on my colleague, the Senator from Minnesota, Senator Klobuchar, to make a few comments.

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Mr. WARNER. I thank my colleague from Minnesota. In his case in point, we had a judicial nominee endorsed by a Republican Governor, reported out unanimously, filibustered, and then she was confirmed 99 to 0.

I respect the traditions of the Senate, but something is broken. I now ask the Senator from Colorado to speak. He is actively talking with the people of Colorado who hired him for this position. He hears the frustration they express about why can't you get things done.

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Mr. WARNER. Madam President, again, this should not fall on partisan lines. We welcome those Senators on the other side of the aisle who are frustrated by this process and want to bring, while respecting the traditions of the Senate, rationality back to the process.

My good friend from Delaware, while he is a freshman Senator, has served in this institution longer than most of us and has watched the transformation of this institution. I would love to have Senator Kaufman's comments on this issue.

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Mr. WARNER. I thank the Senator from Delaware for his comments and perspective.

Again, while many of my colleagues talk about this related to judges, we have, as the Senator from Minnesota said, members of the DOJ who are held up. We have a very qualified and talented individual up for Treasury Under Secretary for International Affairs. They are enormously important positions.

I know my friend and colleague, the Senator from Maryland, wishes to speak on this subject matter.

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Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Maryland for his comments. Again, we want to be respectful of Senate traditions, but it just seems at this moment in time, with so many issues our country is confronting, we need a rational process. We need to be able to explain, as the Senator from Colorado said, to the American folks why we are not getting business done. Part of the reason we are not getting business done is the President does not have his team in place, judges are not in place, and a lot of time is wasted on the Senate floor with needless filibusters.

There is another freshman Senator with whom I have had a number of conversations, my good friend from North Carolina. This is a little different from the way she operated as State senator in Raleigh, NC. I would love to hear her comments.

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Mr. WARNER. What we have heard in the case of Pennsylvania, as we heard from all of us, is frustration. As the Senator from Colorado said, folks who have legitimate complaints about an individual, whether they are a judge or a Presidential appointee, ought to bring them to the floor and debate them. While we want to be respectful of Senate traditions, I think allowing the process to go along without using the existing rules to try to force us to confront these issues does not make any sense when our country faces many enormous challenges.

I call on my good friend from Colorado who, while he served in the other body, has obviously had a longtime family tradition of public service. I am sure the folks in Colorado are scratching their heads about the rules under which we operate.

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Mr. WARNER. I thank the Senator from Colorado for his comments and his great perspective on this issue, and again, part of what he is raising is that we want to consider the rules and traditions. Today, we have all these freshmen and sophomore Members coming to the floor and saying the process seems to be broken. We want to urge our colleagues on the other side to allow the process to move forward and to suggest that we are not going to let business as usual continue to go on. We want to give them appropriate notice. There is no attempt to ambush on process here, but we are saying enough is enough. We owe it to this body and we owe it to the folks across the country.

Madam President, someone who comes to this floor regularly to talk about health care and a series of other issues has these same issues facing him in his great State of Ohio, and he wishes to make some comments on this as well.

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Mr. WARNER. I thank the Senator from Ohio. A lot of my colleagues and I talk about judges, but this goes way beyond judges. As a matter of fact, a Senator who has been a leader on this issue, my friend, the Senator from Montana, has come to this floor on other occasions by himself to talk about certain other nominees the President has put forward, and my understanding is that some of these nominees were held up because of totally unrelated issues.

I don't know about the folks in Montana, but the folks in Virginia are scratching their head and saying: What do Canadian tobacco laws have to do with a Presidential nominee for a totally different type of job that has nothing to do with Canada or tobacco? So I would like my good friend, Senator Tester, to speak to these issues.

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Mr. WARNER. I thank the Senator from Illinois.

Madam President, I think we have had more than a dozen Senators speak this afternoon. I appreciate all of them coming out on relatively short notice.

We raised these issues before we went on recess, because we want to be respectful not only of traditions but to our colleagues on the other side. We recognize, as the Senator from Colorado has said, that there are rules that allow us to ask unanimous consent to bring these folks up, and in future days and weeks we will use those rules to try to urge a full-fledged debate, and not just on judicial nominees. As the former CEO of a business, and the former CEO of a State, I know there are a whole host of administrative nominees which are part of the administration that this President needs to get in place.

I thank the Presiding Officer for the time we have had to share our concerns about this process. Again, I encourage my colleagues and friends on the other side to allow us to get this fixed, to get back to the substantive debates that are so important--financial reregulation, energy, and jobs--and that the American people deserve and demand.

With that, Madam President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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