Mark Warner: “That is the essence of what we are trying to establish here, namely that a vote is what the Framers envisioned when they…”

“That is the essence of what we are trying to establish here, namely that a vote is what the Framers envisioned when they put in the supermajority, as the Senator from South Carolina put it. They did not put a supermajority in for nominations, the concept being that the President and the Senate would work together. Otherwise, the President could thwart the process by putting no one up for judicial nomination, thinking that the Senate would be arbitrary, and the Senate could arbitrarily, as I think we are doing now, turn them down. As I mentioned last night on the Senate floor, unless we work together under the doctrine of checks and balances, which is inherent in the Constitution, we could thwart the ability of this Nation having any Federal judiciary.”