Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, it was a very sad weekend and will be for a long period of time in Aurora, CO. I heard the remarks of the majority and minority leaders today expressing condolence for the victims and their families. I wish to associate myself with those remarks and offer my condolences to all the people of Aurora but particularly to those who have deceased family members and those who are hospitalized because of this tragic event that happened there.

Mr. President, I support the nomination of Michael A. Shipp to be U.S. district judge for the District of New Jersey, currently serving as a U.S. magistrate and coming out of committee on voice vote. I am not aware of any controversy regarding this nominee, and I expect he will be confirmed with an overwhelming vote.

There has been a bit of discussion regarding whether the cloture vote that had been scheduled on today's nominee was some sort of escalation of Presidential election politics or an indication of a partisan fight over judicial confirmations. Those are raised as speculation or misreading what is happening in the Senate. The fact is that the cloture vote, which is now vitiated, had nothing to do with the judicial confirmation process in general or this nominee in particular.

There is, unfortunately, an element of partisan gridlock that is affecting this nomination, but it is not because of a Republican desire to block this nominee or to shut down the Senate floor. Republicans, in fact, have been demanding more access to the Senate floor. That gridlock is the majority leader's tactics to block amendments on the Senate floor.

Time after time the majority uses parliamentary procedure to prohibit amendments, block votes, and deny or limit debate. For example, last Thursday the Republican leader asked the majority leader if the anticipated business coming before the Senate, the Stabenow-Obama campaign tax bill, would be open for amendment. The majority leader responded that would be ``very doubtful.'' These actions, although they may be permitted by Senate rules, are contrary to the spirit of the Senate.

Certainly we are far from being the world's greatest deliberative body at this time. So when a Senator who seeks a vote on his amendment is stymied time after time, it is not surprising that the Senator would use Senator rules and procedures to bring pressure on the majority leader for a vote--in other words, to do exactly what the Senate was set up under the Constitution to do. There is a bit of sad irony that Senators who are facing obstructionism are the ones who are labeled obstructionist when they are persistent in trying to bring a matter to a vote, which is customary in the Senate.

Unfortunately, we are now seeing this obstructionism strategy creep into committee activity as well. Again, last Thursday the Judiciary Committee marked up an important national security bill. The bill was open to amendment but apparently only amendments the chairman agreed with. In the Judiciary Committee, we have a longstanding practice of voting up or down on difficult, controversial issues. What happened last week undermined the responsibility of the committee to debate and address important issues--in this case, national security. The Judiciary Committee is a forum for these debates.

The bill that was on the agenda is one of the few vehicles that will likely be passed before the end of the year, so it was an important and appropriate vehicle for addressing such issues once the chairman opened the amendment process by adopting his own substitute amendment. Instead, the partisan gridlock, driven by the majority leader's tactics to block amendments on the Senate floor, has now spread to the committee level with made-up germaneness rules and tabling motions forced on amendments, some of which had received bipartisan support from members of the Judiciary Committee in the past. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that the Senate majority leadership wants to protect its members at every step of the legislative process from having to make difficult votes, and the majority leadership will employ any procedure it can to duck debates and to govern.

Even as we turn to the 154th nominee of this President to be confirmed to the district or circuit courts, we continue to hear unsubstantiated charges of obstructionism. The fact is we have confirmed over 78 percent of President Obama's district nominees. At this point in his Presidency, 75 percent of President Bush's nominees had been confirmed. President Obama, in other words, is running ahead of President Bush on district confirmations as a percentage.

I continue to hear some of my colleagues repeatedly ask the question: What is different about this President that he is to be treated differently than all of these other Presidents? I won't speculate as to any inference that might be intended by that question, but I can tell you that this President is not being treated differently than previous Presidents. By any objective measure, this President has been treated fairly and consistently with past Senate practices.

As I stated, as a percentage of nominations, this President is running ahead of the previous President with regard to the number of confirmations. Let me put that in perspective for my colleagues with an apples-to-apples comparison. As I mentioned, we have confirmed 153 district and circuit nominees of this President. We have also confirmed two Supreme Court nominees. Everyone understands that the Supreme Court nominations take a great deal of committee time. The last time the Senate confirmed two Supreme Court nominees was during President Bush's second term, and during that term the Senate confirmed a total of 119 district and circuit court nominees. With Judge Shipp's confirmation today--which I support and which I think will be confirmed almost unanimously--we will have confirmed 35 more district and circuit court nominees for President Obama than we did for President Bush in similar circumstances.

During the last Presidential election, 2008, the Senate confirmed a total of 28 judges--24 district and 4 circuit. This Presidential election year we have already exceeded those numbers. We have confirmed 5 circuit nominees, and this will be the 27th district judge confirmed.

Judge Shipp received his B.S. from Rutgers University in 1987 and his J.D. from the Seton Hall University School of Law in 1994. Upon graduation, he clerked for the Honorable James H. Colman, Jr., a justice on the Supreme Court of New Jersey. After his clerkship, Judge Shipp joined Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP as a litigation associate. There, he worked in general litigation matters, handling labor and employment work. He also developed an expertise in mass tort law and products liability litigation.

In 2003, Judge Shipp became an assistant attorney general in charge of consumer protection with the Department of Law and Public Safety of New Jersey. There, he managed five practice groups: consumer fraud prosecution, insurance fraud prosecution (civil), securities fraud prosecution, professional boards prosecution, and debt recovery. He supervised approximately 80 deputy attorneys general. In 2005, he was promoted to the Attorney General's front office. There, he acted as an advisor to the Attorney General on sensitive legal matters related to ethics and appointments.

In 2007, Judge Shipp was appointed as a United States magistrate judge for the District of New Jersey. As a magistrate judge he presides over civil and criminal pre-trial proceedings. He also presides over civil trials, with the consent of the parties. The ABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary gave Judge Shipp a rating of substantial majority ``Qualified,'' minority ``Not Qualified.''

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