Orrin Hatch

Congress must reverse course and rein in spending.

I want to discuss MS-13.

I rise today to join my colleague from Wisconsin, Senator Herb Kohl, in introducing a resolution to designate September 13-19, 2010, as National Polycystic Kidney Disease Awareness Week. Polycystic kidney disease, also known as PKD, is a…

I thank the Senator for his kind remarks, but I also recognize his great leadership. This is a complex set of issues. We had complexities among the groups. We had to bring them all together and work with them. We had to try to resolve…

I rise today to express my growing alarm about the excessive amount of government spending that is adding to our national debt at an exponential rate. We simply cannot continue to add these annual trillion dollar-plus deficits to the…

I rise today to join my colleague from South Carolina, Senator Jim DeMint, in introducing the Freedom for Consumer Choice Act. I am pleased to be an original cosponsor of this legislation, which would require the Federal Communications…

I rise today to pay tribute to our dear departed friend and colleague, Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia. I have been deeply moved by the words of remembrance we have heard here in the Senate this week and I am honored to have been here…

I would also like to thank Senator Hatch, who was a co-sponsor of this resolution.

30 years ago today, the Supreme Court of the United States announced its landmark decision in Harris v. McRae, 448 U.S. 297, upholding the constitutionality of the Hyde amendment, which prohibits Federal funding of abortions under the…

I think those efforts fall short of even the most basic factual scrutiny.

Some of my colleagues and my friends on the other side are really taken aback by some of the arguments on Citizens United and some of the other cases.

I urge you to maintain that focus for the remainder of the hearings and refrain from further hyperbole questioning of Ms. Kagan's support for the men and women of the U.S. military.

But by overruling that one precedent, was not the Court really reaffirming a much larger group of previous decisions?

All right. Well, there was no foreign corporation involved. That is one of the points I am trying to establish.

Many folks have attacked the decision, saying it is a prime example of, quote, 'conservative judicial activism,' unquote.

In short, the First Amendment does not belong to any definable category or persons or entities. It belongs to all who exercise its freedoms.

The application of that statute to any kinds of classic electioneering materials was in fact constitutional.

These are small companies that want the legal protections that incorporating provides.

When President Obama announced your nomination he said that you believed that 'in a democracy powerful interests must not be allowed to drown out the voices of ordinary citizens.'

In Citizens United, the Court listed at least 25 precedents dating back almost 75 years.

The identity of the speaker is not decisive in determining whether speech is protected.

Do you really believe that the Constitution allows the Federal Government this much power to pick and choose who may say what, how and when about the government?

We have to have a little back and forth every once in a while or this place would be boring as hell.

That's why the Citizens United case, I think, is a correct decision.

Now, do you believe the Constitution gives the Federal Government this much power?