Kay Bailey Hutchison: “I rise to speak in favor of Gregg Costa and David Guaderrama for their nominations to the Federal district bench. I want…”

“I rise to speak in favor of Gregg Costa and David Guaderrama for their nominations to the Federal district bench. I want to say that Mr. Costa--and I will mention this again--asked not to be confirmed until after the case that he was working on was finished. His case was the prosecution of Robert Allen Stanford, who swindled so many Texans and other Americans out of money they had invested. Frankly, he was all over the country in his representation. Mr. Costa asked not to be confirmed until he could finish that case because it was complicated and he was the lead on it. So there has been no delay on our part at all on his nomination. As I understand it, we have confirmed the same--roughly the same--number of district judges as President George Bush and President Clinton did in their first terms. To my knowledge, we are not holding up nominations at all. In fact, of course, Senator Cornyn and I both highly recommended Mr. Costa and Mr. Guaderrama to the President for his nomination because we have a process that assures we nominate to the President the most qualified people to fill these spots. We have a bipartisan legal committee that vets them comprised of people who know the legal community in Texas, and so, therefore, they know the reputations of these lawyers, and our committee system has worked very well. I have served on it with Senator Gramm, as I have with Senator Cornyn, and we agree on the quality of these nominees.…”