Orrin Hatch: “I have enjoyed my colleague's remarks, and although we have our differences on some of them, I appreciate her diligence…”

“I have enjoyed my colleague's remarks, and although we have our differences on some of them, I appreciate her diligence and effort. I have a lot of respect for her. I will say that continually asking to go off the Estrada matter for other matters really concerns me, because I think it is a failure to recognize that this is one of the most important nominees and one of the most important positions in the country. There is one way to get off of this nomination, and that is to vote up or down, instead of filibustering. Do what has always been done in the past in these matters and bring this issue to a vote. Then we can go to these important economic matters and other matters as well. I have been concerned, because I remember when the minority leader and the minority whip came on the floor last week and basically said: Why are we not on economic issues? I did get very upset because I thought that is nice for them to say that, but they were not even willing to do a budget last year because it takes a lot of guts to do a budget. We always did. Last year was the first time in the history of the Budget Act that the majority party refused to do a budget. We know why. Because they made a lot of cheap shots against us when we had to make those tough decisions on the budget.”