Thomas Daschle: “I can certainly appreciate the frustration expressed by some of our colleagues. We have been there. We know how…”

“I can certainly appreciate the frustration expressed by some of our colleagues. We have been there. We know how frustrating it is to have judges who are not given the time and attention, and the fair consideration they deserve. Because we have experienced that all too often while we were in the minority. What we have attempted to do is respond to that frustration by doing what we have said we were going to do from the very beginning, that we were going to treat judges fairly, we were going to try to do as much as we could to move them quickly. And we believe we have done that. I do not recall a time when our Republican colleagues ever agreed to hold at least one hearing on a circuit court judge with every group of district court judges receiving hearings. But that is exactly what our chairman of the Judiciary Committee has committed to do. I will look at the numbers, and we can compare statistics all day long, but all one has to do is look at the bottom line. We have exceeded their record in many ways.”