Thomas Daschle: “regrettably, we are not going to be able to confirm a number of judges that I had hoped would be confirmed this…”

“regrettably, we are not going to be able to confirm a number of judges that I had hoped would be confirmed this afternoon. We were presented with a list of 10. Somebody on the other side objected to one of those 10. But hours after our last vote, after everybody had left and were on airplanes and in places where they could not be contacted, we were not in the position to be able to contact a number of Senators who also had judges. There are 23 judges that are currently on the calendar; 23 nominations. There are 68 vacancies. Not one judge has been confirmed in this session of Congress--not one. This to our knowledge is unprecedented. So late in the day, after we cooperated all day long--yesterday, today--working as diligently as we could to accommodate the other side in getting the legislation to the point where we were able to call now for third reading and then a final vote next week, we find that on our list of judges to be considered we could not even get up 10--not 10 out of the 23. Those nine we did call up were given to us about an hour ago, after everybody was gone. Mr. President, I have to say this is increasingly a matter that is of great concern to our colleagues and will be a factor in our cooperation as we consider other issues in the coming weeks. We have to resolve this matter. It is just unacceptable that that number of judges would not be given their opportunity to be considered. Careers, families, futures are all at stake here.”