Trent Lott: “I thank Senator McConnell for his comments and for his leadership in this area. In many respects, I would like to pick…”

“I thank Senator McConnell for his comments and for his leadership in this area. In many respects, I would like to pick up where he left off in the discussion of how did we reach this point. How did the Senate come to where we are going to have to have hours, days, weeks of debate on highly qualified men, women, and minorities for the Federal judiciary? Most of my colleagues in the Senate know over the years I have been a believer that we should get things done for the American people; that we should have cooperation; that we should vote on these judges up or down and move on; that we need to be working as we did earlier this week to report a highway bill, to get energy legislation, to deal with the very critical and difficult issue of immigration reform, pass appropriations bills, take up other critical issues for the future in our country, the creation of jobs, to promote the continued development in critical high-tech areas such as telecommunications. We have a lot of work to do and yet here we are, stalled out, in my opinion, unnecessarily. I believe we should reach across the aisle and try to find accommodation. Whether one likes it, that is how the Senate was set up, that is how we work, quite often by consensus. Over the years, when I served in leadership positions, I was quite often criticized by my own colleagues of being too willing to work with the other side to try to find a way to get a result.…”