Patrick Leahy: “I try to keep a straight face when I hear my good friend, the distinguished Senator from Utah, speaking, but it is hard.…”

“I try to keep a straight face when I hear my good friend, the distinguished Senator from Utah, speaking, but it is hard. He has been able to master the ability to look stern and self-righteous, as he has throughout a recitation of the revisionist history here. The question of precedent? The Republicans joined the filibusters of Stephen Breyer to the First Circuit, Judge Rosemary Barkett to the Eleventh Circuit, Judge H. Lee Sarokin to the Third Circuit, Judge Richard Paez to the Ninth Circuit, and Judge Marsha Berzon to the Ninth Circuit. We had to have cloture votes on all but one of these and on several others. But as the former Republican leader admitted--and I commend him for this--they did not have to go to filibusters on most of these because they never brought them up at all. They never had a hearing on them. They never had a vote on them in committee or anywhere else. In effect, they had a filibuster of one. If any one Republican Senator objected to any one of President Clinton's nominees, or just a few, the caucus would make the determination they would never get a hearing. The distinguished chairman at that time would not give them a hearing. They would not get a vote. It was only if the caucus decided that they would be allowed to go forward would they even get a vote. So it begs credulity to hear this kind of sophistry on the Senate floor and the nature of a 'filibuster' being constantly redefined.”