Political Quotes

“Madam President, last week I explained why I oppose the nomination of Pamela Harris to the Fourth Circuit. I wish to raise several other aspects of her record that I find troubling, but before I address the specifics of this nominee, I need to place this nomination in context. Last November, when the distinguished majority leader decided to toss aside an institution almost as old as the Senate itself, he claimed that breaking the rules was necessary because of an imminent crisis in the DC Circuit--not a judicial emergency; the numbers made it plain there was no judicial emergency, but a crisis that required radical action. That was after we had already confirmed the President's first nominee to the DC Circuit by a unanimous vote of 97 to 0. As I said in November, there was no crisis. According to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, as of September 2013, the DC Circuit had 149 pending appeals for each active judge, by far the lightest caseload of any of the Nation's 13 circuit courts of appeals. The number of cases filed in that circuit decreased by almost 5 percent during the year 2013. So the only crisis the distinguished majority leader was responding to was one he and the Obama White House had manufactured. Instead, in an exercise of raw political power he decided to stack the DC Circuit by ramming through three of the President's nominees simultaneously.…”