Political Quotes

“Madam President, I rise today to address the need to move quickly and to confirm several qualified judicial nominees--I would say many qualified judicial nominees. You are going to hear about a number of them today. I am going to talk specifically about the highly qualified nominee for the District of Minnesota who was unanimously voted out of our Judiciary Committee more than a month ago. Our failure to confirm Susan Richard Nelson quickly has consequences for my State. The judge she has been nominated to replace took senior status as of last October and is stepping down from the Federal bench altogether in a couple of weeks. That means a smaller number of judges will be doing the same heavy workload until she is confirmed, which is not fair to my State or many of the States you will hear from today. This nomination is important to our district. Our district's caseload has increased significantly in recent years. In fact, as of June 2008, our district had the second highest number of case filings per judgeship in the entire country--the second highest in 2008 in the entire country. Yet, if she is not confirmed after coming through our committee unanimously, we will be down a judge even though we have this high caseload. Even as of December 2009, we were still in the top 10 most overloaded districts in the country. From 2008 to 2009, the district saw a 54-percent jump in the number of civil cases filed.…”