Heidi Alexander: “the majority leader says it is time to cut off debate and vote on the President's nominees to fill three vacancies on…”

“the majority leader says it is time to cut off debate and vote on the President's nominees to fill three vacancies on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. I will not vote to end debate now because I think such a vote would be premature. Before the Senate has an up-or-down vote on the three judges, there is something else we ought to do first. We should first consider the bipartisan proposal that was made 10 years ago to have the right number of judges on this Federal appellate court. For more than a decade, Senators of both parties have argued that this court has more judges than it needs and that other Federal appellate courts have too few. In 2003, 2005, and 2007, with a Republican President in the White House, Republican Senators Sessions and Grassley introduced legislation to reduce the number of seats on the DC Circuit. In 2006, they were joined by a distinguished group of eight Judiciary Committee Democrats who made the same argument. These included the chairman, Senator Leahy, Senator Schumer, Senator Feingold, Senator Kennedy, Senator Feinstein, Senator Durbin, Senator Kohl, and Senator Biden. When President Bush nominated Peter Keisler to the DC Circuit, the Democrats wrote Senator Specter, the committee chairman, a strong letter. The letter says: We believe that Mr. Keisler should under no circumstances be considered--much less confirmed--by this Committee before we first address the very need for that judgeship . . .…”