Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise today to speak in support of the nominations of John Lee and Jay Tharp to serve on the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. I have listened carefully to the statement made by the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. I would note several things. First, at this point in President George W. Bush's first term, the Democratic Senate had approved 30 more judges than have been approved under the current situation with this divided Senate. Second, it would take 60 judicial nominations to be filled by the end of the year for President Obama to have received the same treatment as President George W. Bush in his first term--60. We could get a lot of that done today. Right here are 22 nominations for the judiciary that have cleared the committee. If the Senator from Iowa would like to come to the floor and join me, we could make a joint unanimous consent request to bring up all 22 immediately--every one of them--all of whom have cleared the committee. Those Senators who want to vote against those nominations may do so. They can vote no. But, unfortunately, as we can see from this calendar, the names of the nominees languished on this calendar for months--literally for months--and many times passed with a voice vote or a unanimous vote. It really does not speak well of this process that we have reached this point, this slowdown. What many Republicans are waiting for is the so-called Thurmond rule.…”