Senate Confirms Two
Judicial Nominations
Judiciary Committee Reports Four Nominees To Senate For Votes
WASHINGTON
(Thursday, June 26, 2008) – The Senate today confirmed two more
judicial nominations for lifetime appointments to the federal
bench. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.)
had negotiated the Senate’s confirmation of the nominees earlier
this week, when the body was considering
three additional judicial nominations, including two for
circuit court vacancies.
The Senate has
confirmed 54 judicial nominations since the start of the 110th
Congress in January 2007. The total matches the number of
judges confirmed to the bench during the two years Republicans
controlled the Senate in the 109th Congress. The
Senate is poised to make more progress on judicial nominations
after the July 4 recess, when it is expected to consider the
confirmations of four nominees for district court vacancies in
New York that were ordered reported by the Judiciary Committee
at a
business meeting Thursday morning.
“The federal
judiciary is the one arm of our government that should never be
political of politicized, regardless of who sits in the White
House,” said Leahy. “The Senate’s confirmation this week of
five more of this President’s judicial nominees continues the
progress we have made to reduce vacancies across the country. I
congratulate the all the nominees confirmed by the Senate this
week.”
The Senate today
confirmed G. Murray Snow for the District of Arizona and William
Lawrence for the Southern District of Indiana. Earlier this
week, the Senate confirmed Judge Helene White and Raymond
Kethledge for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and Stephen J.
Murphy for the Eastern District of Michigan to cap a productive
week in the Senate.
Judicial vacancies
have fallen from 9.9 percent at the start of the Bush
administration to just 4.5 percent today. The Administrative
Office of the Courts listed 60 vacancies on July 1, 2000,
including 21 circuit vacancies, while today there are just 40
judicial vacancies, and only nine circuit vacancies. During the
Bush administration, vacancies on 11 of the 13 federal circuits
have been reduced.
For more information on judicial
nominations,
click here.
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[Excerpts of floor statement]
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Statement of Chairman Patrick
Leahy
On Judicial Nominations
June 26, 2008
As Prepared
Today, the Senate is acting to
confirm two more nominations for lifetime appointments to the
Federal bench. They are William Lawrence, nominated to a
vacancy in the Southern District of Indiana, and Murray Snow,
nominated to a vacancy in the District of Arizona. I have been
delighted to work with Senator Lugar, who strongly supports the
recommendation of Judge Lawrence, and with Senator Bayh on that
nomination. I have been pleased to accommodate Senator Kyl in
scheduling first Committee action and now Senate action on the
nomination of Judge Snow. Both are being expedited for
confirmation in a presidential election year.
As the Senate approaches the July
4 recess, and confirms its fourth and fifth judicial nominations
of the week, most Americans are not concerned about
nominations. They are concerned about gas prices that have
skyrocketed so high they do not know how they will afford to
drive to work. They are concerned about the steepest decline in
home values in two decades. More and more Americans are
affected by rising unemployment, as last month brought the
greatest one-month rise in unemployment in over two decades,
bringing the job losses for the first five consecutive months of
this year to over 325,000. Americans are worried about soaring
health care costs, rising health insurance costs, the rising
costs of education and rising food prices.
Just yesterday, the front page of
the Wall Street Journal had this headline: “Consumer Confidence
Plummets: Home Prices See Sharp Decline.” They ran a graph
titled “In a free fall” that shows housing prices in April down
more than 15 percent from a year ago and consumer confidence at
its lowest level in nearly two decades. According to the Wall
Street Journal, the number of Americans saying they intend to
buy a home in the next six months is at a 25-year low and
consumers’ expectations of the economy over the next six months
is the lowest it has ever been in the more than 40 years
they have kept track. The lowest it has ever been.
Unfortunately, this bad economic
news for hard-working Americans is nothing new under the Bush
administration. During his administration, President Bush and
all Americans have seen unemployment rise more than 20 percent
and trillions of dollars in budget surplus have been turned into
trillions of dollars of debt, with an annual budget deficit of
hundreds of millions of dollars. When President Bush took
office, the price of gas was $1.42 a gallon. Today, it is at an
all-time high of over $4.00 a gallon. The nation’s trade
deficit widened 8 percent in April alone due to the surging gas
prices, and is now at its highest level in 13 months.
Those numbers are staggering.
Four dollars a gallon for gas, $139 a barrel for oil, more than
$1 billion a day – $1 billion a day – just to pay down the
interest on the national debt and the massive costs generated by
the disastrous war in Iraq. These are the numbers Americans
care about, not a few nominees who are getting the honor of a
judicial appointment and lifetime tenure in a respected job.
Yet, the only numbers we hear
about from the other side of the aisle are the number of
nominees they insist must be considered by a certain date to
reach some mythical average number. Week after week, as the
Senate continues to make progress on filling judicial vacancies,
we hear a steady stream of grumbling from Republicans,
responding to partisan pressures from special interest groups.
These are not the priorities of hard-working American families.
It is ironic that
the Senate’s Republican minority is so focused on the number of
judges, because that is the one area where the numbers have
improved under President Bush. On July 1, 2000,
when a Republican Senate majority was considering the judicial
nominees of a Democratic President in a presidential election
year, there were 60 judicial vacancies. Twenty-one were circuit
court vacancies. Those vacancies were the result of years of
Republican pocket filibusters of judicial nominations.
In stark contrast,
after the two nominations we confirm today and the circuit court
judges we confirmed on Tuesday, there are just 40
total judicial vacancies throughout the country, with only nine
circuit court vacancies. By confirming Judge Helene White and
Ray Kethledge to the last two vacancies on the Sixth Circuit
Court of Appeals, we reduced circuit court vacancies to single
digits for the first time in decades—nine vacancies on our
nation’s 13 circuit courts.
Take a look at these charts. The history is clear. With
respect to circuit court vacancies, Democrats have reversed
course from the days during which the Republican Senate majority
more than doubled them. We have already lowered the 32 circuit
court vacancies that existed when I became Chairman of the
Judiciary Committee in the summer of 2001 to only nine. This is
the first time we have hit single digits in decades. In fact,
since the Republican tactics of slowing judicial confirmation
began in earnest in 1996.
The 100 nominations we confirmed
in only 17 months in 2001 and 2002, while working with a most
uncooperative White House, reduced the vacancies I confronted by
45 percent by the end of 2002. With 40 additional confirmations
last year and another 14 this so far this year, Senate under
Democratic leadership has already matched the confirmation total
for the entire last Congress, two full years with a Republican
chairmen and a Republican Senate majority working to confirm the
judicial nominees of a Republican President. After the two
confirmations today, we will have reached 54 judicial
confirmations for the Congress.
I am sure there are some who
prefer partisan fights designed to energize a political base
during an election year, but I do not. The American people do
not want Federal judges to be tied to partisan politics. The
Republican effort to create an issue over judicial confirmations
is sorely misplaced, and their obstructionism has done a great
deal of damage to our attempts to address the important needs of
Americans.
Sadly, we have seen Republican
obstructionism since the beginning of this Congress, with
Republicans using filibuster after filibuster to thwart the will
of the majority of the Senate from doing the business of the
American people. Republican filibusters prevented Senate
majorities from passing the climate change bill; the Employee
Free Choice Act, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act; the DC Voting
Rights Act; the Renewable Fuels, Consumer Protection, and Energy
Efficiency Act of 2007; the Renewable Energy and Job Creation
Act of 2008; the Medicare Improvements for Patients and
Providers Act of 2008; and the Consumer-First Energy Act. These
are critical pieces of legislation to address urgent priorities,
like the energy crisis, the environment, voting rights, health
care, and fair wages for working men and women. All of them had
a support of the majority of the Senate. And all were blocked
by a minority of Republican Senators bent on preventing us from
making progress.
This long list of priorities
unaddressed because of the Republicans in Congress would be even
longer if we were to include the many important bills President
Bush has vetoed since the beginning of this Congress. This list
includes legislation to fund stem cell research to fight
debilitating and deadly diseases, to extend and expand the
successful State Children's Health Insurance Program that would
have provided health insurance to more of the millions of
American children without it, to set a timetable for bringing
American troops home from the disastrous war in Iraq, and to ban
waterboarding and help restore America as a beacon for the rule
of law.
The Republican effort to turn
attention from the real issues facing Americans to win partisan
political points with judicial nominations is just another in a
long line of tactics we have seen that have prevented us from
making progress since the beginning of this Congress. They
would be laughable if they were not tragic. They are an affront
to those in this country working hard just to make ends meet.
I congratulate the nominees and
their families on their confirmation today. The Federal
judiciary is the one arm of our government that should never be
political or politicized, regardless of who sits in the White
House. I will continue in this Congress, and with a new
President in the next Congress, to work with Senators from both
sides of the aisle to ensure that the Federal judiciary remains
independent, and able to provide justice to all Americans,
without fear or favor.
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