Political Quotes

“We have a constitutional responsibility to advise and consent, and we must also help our courts uphold their constitutional responsibility to provide speedy justice. The judges whose confirmations Senate Republicans are delaying are not nominees they will oppose on the merits. They are by and large consensus nominees. Senate Republicans' obstruction on these important nominations is especially damaging at the end of the year. Starting in 2009, Senate Republicans broke from longstanding tradition and prevented votes on eight judicial nominees as the Senate adjourned at the end of the year. It took until September 2010 for the last of those nominees to have an up-or-down vote. Senate Republicans did the same thing--their new version of a pocket filibuster--to 19 nominees in both 2010 and 2011. This forces the Senate to waste time in the new year working on nominations that should have been confirmed the year before. This year it took until May to confirm the 19 left from last year. That is why we have confirmed only 23 nominees reported by the Judiciary Committee this year, and that is why we face this current backlog of 18 nominees and an additional 4 who had a hearing earlier this week and could also be considered and confirmed before adjournment. One of the nominations Senate Republicans are holding up is that of Judge Robert Bacharach to the Tenth Circuit, whom they filibustered earlier this year.…”