EXECUTIVE SESSION -- (Senate - February 12, 2003)
Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I have sought recognition to comment about the current procedures with respect to the selection of judges, and what is happening in the Senate today is a constitutional revolution.
The Constitution provides that the Senate will give advice and consent to the President. And the tradition of this country for 215 years has been that the President makes selections as he chooses, and advice can come from the Senate. Consent has been given without challenging the President to a partnership arrangement where the Senate has to consent to the nominee before the President can submit the nominee to the Senate with any chance for confirmation.
What the Democrats are doing here today is really seeking a constitutional revolution. What they want as the minority party in the Senate is a full partnership with the President on selecting Federal judges.
What we are doing with Miguel Estrada, and other nominees who are coming up for an executive session tomorrow, is really a prelude to the nomination of the next Justice for the Supreme Court. The effort is being made by the Democrats to have their acceptable ideology without the traditional deference which has been paid to the President.
The Senate has been maneuvered into a position here, an institution with lines being drawn in the sand, and Republicans on one side and Democrats on the other being backed into a corner--sort of a macho-macho game where no one wants to play the chicken game. What we are really seeing is gridlocking this institution on a permanent basis, if no one yields.
The Judiciary Committee has three nominees on the Executive Calendar tomorrow, and the Democrats have served notice that they are going filibuster. If at least one Democrat does not vote to end the filibuster, nothing will happen there.
So we have a long litany of judges--some of whom have been held up for 2 years--and nothing is going to happen.
What we may be seeing here is the foundation laid for a grand political argument in the Presidential election of 2004. We are laying it right on the line. If the American people want judges confirmed, there are going to have to be 60 votes in the President's party.
Both sides have been at fault in the past, in my opinion. When President Clinton was in the White House and the Republicans controlled the Senate, we wouldn't confirm people. There were some breakthroughs but relatively few. When President Bush submitted nominees for 2 years, or a year and 7 months, the Democrats stopped the nomination process.
It is high time we had a protocol which both sides respected wherein so many days after a nomination, there is a hearing, so many days later, a vote in committee, and so many days later, a vote on the full floor.
But we are really heading for extraordinary deadly deadlock in this body. I think we ought to recognize it for what it is. There is a constitutional revolution underway here to change the fundamental way judges are selected.
If the Democrats insist on a full partnership with the President, if any party insists on a full partnership with the President of the opposite party, then it is going to take 60 votes. And we may be setting the stage for 60 votes in the 2004 election.
But it is my hope that cooler heads can prevail and we can sit down and work this out so that when the shoe is on the other foot, we don't have this kind of gridlock and this effort to really upset longstanding constitutional principles.
I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.
Who's statements are these?
This brings up another vital issue. We need to find a way around the obstructionist practices of the Democrats in the Senate who use false-fillibusters to keep nominees from a full Senate vote. Either we need to get rid of the 60-vote rule or enact some time limits on debate as suggested by whoever made those comments on the Senate floor.