Chuck Schumer: “we are back to voting on whether to proceed with the Estrada nomination. Before I get into the merits of Mr. Estrada, I…”

“we are back to voting on whether to proceed with the Estrada nomination. Before I get into the merits of Mr. Estrada, I want the record to show that we have now confirmed 140 of the President's nominees. By the end of the week, it could be over 150. By the end of the week, we may be blocking as many as 4. So right now it is 140 to 4 and could be at the end of the week 150 to 4. That is a record that even Yankee fans would be jealous of. We have this view of some, including the White House, that we are obstructionist because we have tried to block 4 out of 140 nominees. My guess is if James Madison or George Washington or Benjamin Franklin or any of the Founding Fathers were looking down on this Chamber, they would say: Why are they blocking so few? We wanted the President and the Senate to come together on judicial nominees. It outlines in the Federalist Papers that the Founding Fathers didn't want the President to have sole power to choose judges, nor did they want the Senate to be a rubber stamp. In fact, one of the first nominees, John Rutledge from South Carolina, was rejected by the Senate, which contained a goodly number of the Founding Fathers themselves because they were appointed to the Senate in those days right from the Constitutional Convention. Rutledge was rejected because of his views on the Jay Treaty.”