Political Quotes

“I join my colleagues in support of the nomination of Jeffrey Meyer of Connecticut to be a U.S. judge for the District of Connecticut. I thank the chairman of the Judiciary Committee for his hard work in shepherding Mr. Meyer's nomination through the process and thank my colleagues and leadership for bringing it to the floor today. Before I make brief remarks in support specifically of Meyer's nomination, I want to associate myself with the remarks of Senator Leahy and Senator Blumenthal. There are essentially two ways to try to shut down the government from within. You can try to defund it--and we have seen that effort play out in real terms at great cost to the American people over the last year and a half--and you can also try to depopulate it. You can try to very slowly and methodically take people out of positions by either denying them confirmation into the administration--as we have seen, as a long list of nominees to agencies throughout the Federal Government are being delayed by Republicans--or you can try to keep the judiciary understaffed so it cannot do its work as well. So I, unfortunately, believe this is part of a pretty methodical policy and strategy on behalf of those who feel as though they have been elected to destroy government from within, to both try to defund the organs of government and then also to depopulate its ranks.…”