Political Quotes

“First, I am going to speak a little bit about the process of her nomination through the committee. The distinguished Presiding Officer would know about this because he has had probably the best attendance of anybody, including the chairman, on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and he has handled a number of these nominations. We are going to proceed today on only 1 of the 22 judicial nominations that have been stalled on the Senate floor by Republican obstruction. This is a nominee we considered and voted out of the Judiciary Committee unanimously 3 months ago without objection. Just so everybody will understand, even after being nominated to serve on a court, these well-qualified nominees have to put their lives on hold. We have the hearing, they go through the committee unanimously, but then they wait and wait on the Senate floor. If the nominee is practicing law they cannot take on new clients. If they are with a law firm, they have a hard time taking new cases as the law firm needs to avoid any conflict of interest. I cannot understand why this obstruction is happening. I have never seen anything like this in my 36 years in the Senate. No Republican Senator on the Judiciary Committee voted against this nomination. There are another dozen judicial nominations on the Senate's Executive Calendar that were reported by the Judiciary Committee without objection, but they remain stalled by a Republican refusal to consent to final Senate action.…”