Political Quotes

“earlier this week the Senate confirmed Mark Filip to be the Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice. That is the person second in command at the Department. Yesterday, the Judiciary Committee reported four judicial nominations for lifetime judicial positions, and we reported three more executive nominations, including the nomination of Kevin O'Connor to be the Associate Attorney General. That is the third highest ranking official at the Department of Justice. These executive branch nominations would have been on the Senate's Executive Calendar sometime ago, but for some reason the Senate Republicans did not cooperate to get them out of Committee. We were going to put them on the Senate Judiciary Committee's calendar--and did--in mid-February. What happened? The Republicans effectively boycotted the meeting. Now, some of them were out giving speeches saying: Why don't we have some of these nominations go through? But they were effectively blocking the meeting. So we tried it a second time in February. Again, a lack of a quorum. In fact, at the first, only one or two Republicans remained present. At the latter hearing, the ranking member, the senior Republican on the committee, left before a quorum gathered. We concluded the last session of this Congress by confirming each and every judicial nomination that was reported by the Judiciary Committee, all 40. None were carried over into this new year.”