Thomas Daschle: “let me respond briefly, if I may, to the Senator from Idaho. I have respect for him and for much of the work we have…”

“let me respond briefly, if I may, to the Senator from Idaho. I have respect for him and for much of the work we have done together over the years on many issues, including forest health. But I must say I strongly disagree with his characterization of this particular judicial nominating debate. Over the history of our 220 years, the Senate has seen fit on countless occasions to require either a threshold cloture vote or, before we had cloture, some resolution to controversial matters involving extended debate. Before we had cloture, there was no way to resolve it. A Senator could see fit to talk about an issue or a nominee for days, weeks, months, and there was no way to resolve it. There were many occasions during the 20th century when this was exactly the case. That evolved, of course, with the implementation of cloture and the use of cloture over the course of the last 100 years. So now we have a rule of the Senate that says on those issues that are controversial, a supermajority is required. I think for the Senator from Idaho to make the point that there is no vote is just wrong. The vote occurs at 2:15. If the supermajority will move to proceed on this very controversial nominee, you go to the second phase of consideration. But that is what the Senate rules require. I must say that is a far better approach than what we faced during the Clinton administration, when more than 60 nominees never got a committee vote.”