Republicans are preventing the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee from conducting routine business in retaliation for last month’s rules reform that limited the Senate minority’s power to filibuster presidential nominations. Iowa’s Senator Chuck Grassley is the ranking Republican on Judiciary and a vocal critic of what he called a “power grab” that stopped Republicans from demanding a 60-vote majority on almost every Senate action. Yesterday Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy criticized “obstruction” by his Republican colleagues, who boycotted an executive meeting to consider eighteen nominations last week and “invoked procedural tactics” to scuttle a hearing on five U.S. District Court nominees, which had been scheduled for December 18. Leahy warned that he may “reconsider long-held policies that have upheld the rights of the minority party” in committee matters.
Leahy’s statement is enclosed after the jump, along with Grassley’s response. He denied that Republicans have obstructed judicial nominations and said it would inevitably be “harder to get things done” after “Democrats broke the rules to change the rules.”
An October 2013 report by the Alliance for Justice found that “‘Pervasive and surreptitious’ obstruction of President [Barack] Obama’s judicial nominees is prolonging an ‘unprecedented vacancy crisis’ in America’s federal courts.” You can find that full report here. I’ve posted a few excerpts below.
UPDATE: Added a December 19 Judiciary Committee floor statement from Grassley on “so-called obstruction.”
Statement Of Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee, On Republican Opposition To Judicial Confirmation Hearing On Consensus Nominees
December 18, 2013
[On Wednesday, Senate Republicans invoked procedural tactics to prevent the Judiciary Committee from convening a confirmation hearing for five district court nominees. The hearing was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.]
“The Republican shutdown of the Judiciary Committee is consistent with the obstruction we have witnessed over the last five years, which has led to record high vacancies in federal courts throughout the country. Home state Senators were consulted with respect to the nominees scheduled to appear before the Committee today who, when confirmed, will fill vacancies in California, Maine and Maryland, and an emergency vacancy in Kansas. The families of these nominees invested time and personal expense to travel to Washington for this hearing, losses they will never recover. This escalating obstruction undermines the Senate’s constitutional responsibility of advice and consent.
“Just last week, Republicans prevented the Judiciary Committee from holding an executive business meeting to consider 18 highly qualified nominees, including two Texas U.S. Marshals. Those two nominees should have been approved by the Committee last month, but Republicans failed to attend the meeting to report their nominations. As Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, I have consistently shown my commitment to work with all Senators to process nominations. This obstruction sets back the bipartisan cooperation we have seen in recent weeks on such legislative matters as the budget, the defense authorization bill, and the Farm Bill. If this obstruction continues with respect to judicial nominees, I will be forced to reconsider long-held policies that have upheld the rights of the minority party in this process.”
Press release from Senator Grassley’s office, December 18:
Grassley Responds to Chairman Leahy’s statement on Judiciary Committee matters
Senator Chuck Grassley, Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, made the following comment in response to a statement released earlier today by the Judiciary Committee Chairman.
“There’s no doubt that after the Democrats broke the rules to change the rules, it’s going to be harder to get things done. There is only one party that voted for the irresponsible rules change. And, the fact of the matter is that given the atmosphere the Democrats created by invoking the nuclear option, nominations are going to be given added scrutiny.
“It’s interesting that Democrats are blaming Republicans for not being at an executive business meeting last month. They must have a short memory. That was the very day and time that the Democrats decided to ignore two centuries of Senate history and precedent to break the rules and invoked the nuclear option with a simple majority vote, thereby disrupting the committee mark-up.
“The so-called obstruction of nominees is a figment of the Democrats’ imagination. They are blatantly misleading the public. We have confirmed 44 judicial nominees this year alone. To put this number in context, the Democrats allowed only 21 of President Bush’s judicial nominees to be confirmed in the fifth year of his presidency. The only thing being obstructed is the rights of the minority.
“Now, they are resorting to new threats at the committee level. It’s a sad commentary on the Democrats’ rule of the Senate and the Obama administration. They are slowly but surely taking the world’s greatest deliberative body and moving towards a majoritarian body, all in the name of rubberstamping the President’s extremely unpopular regulatory agenda.”
Excerpt from the Alliance for Justice October 2013 report, “State of the Judiciary: Judicial Selection During Obama’s Second Term.”
Senate Republicans, including Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-IA), have made the misleading claim that Republicans have only blocked two of President Obama’s nominees: Caitlin Halligan and Goodwin Liu. This cherry-picked statistic masks the full extent of Republican obstructionism of judicial nominees and confirmations. In total, 15 nominees have been forced to withdraw from consideration after Republicans blocked a confirmation vote, sometimes after publicly agreeing to support a nominee. A much more pervasive-and surreptitious-form of obstruction has occurred through the threat of withholding blue slips (discussed in more detail below) for qualified nominees. No nominee who lacks the support of both home-state senators has been successfully confirmed, and it has been White House practice to avoid nominating any individual who will not be supported by their senators. This has allowed Republican senators to keep judicial vacancies unfilled for long periods of time-in some cases, over 1,000 days-without any public accountability. Brian Davis, Rosemary Marquez, Jennifer May-Parker, Jill Pryor, and William Thomas are all pending nominees whose confirmations have been delayed for months or even years due to Republican senators withholding blue slips. Each of these nominees has been rated qualified or well-qualified to serve as a federal judge by the American Bar Association. […]
In brief, this report documents that:
During President Obama’s time in office, current vacancies have risen by 65%. This trend stands in stark contrast to the comparable point in President Clinton’s and President Bush’s second terms, when vacancies had declined by 35% and 39%, respectively. [See infra, page 14]
More than 10% of all Federal judgeships are vacant. Judicial vacancies are more than double what they were at this point in President George W. Bush’s second term. [See infra, page 14]
Overall, states with at least one Republican Senator account for more than 90% of all current vacancies without nominees, and states with two Republican Senators account for 51% of all current vacancies without nominees. […]
Grassley Statement at Judiciary Committee Executive Business Meeting – Kadzik, Committee Matters
Prepared Statement of Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
Ranking Member, Senate Committee on the Judiciary
Executive Business Meeting
Nominations:
John B. Owens to be United States Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit
Michelle T. Friedland, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit
Nancy L. Moritz, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Tenth Circuit
David Jeremiah Barron, to be United States Circuit Judge for the First Circuit
Matthew Frederick Leitman, to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Michigan
Judith Ellen Levy, to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Michigan
Laurie J. Michelson, to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Michigan
Linda Vivienne Parker, to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Michigan
Christopher Reid Cooper, to be United States District Judge for the District of Columbia
Gerald Austin McHugh, Jr., to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
M. Douglas Harpool, to be United States District Judge for the Western District of Missouri
Edward G. Smith, to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
Sheryl H. Lipman, to be United States District Judge for the Western District of Tennessee
Stanley Allen Bastian, to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Washington
Manish S. Shah, to be United States District Judge for the Northern District of Illinois
Peter Joseph Kadzik, to be an Assistant Attorney General
Robert L. Hobbs, to be United States Marshal for the Eastern District of Texas
Gary L. Blankinship, to be United States Marshal for the Southern District of Texas
Legislation:
S.619 Justice Safety Valve Act of 2013,
S.1410 Smarter Sentencing Act of 2013,
S.1675 Recidivism Reduction and Public Safety Act of 2013,
S.975 Court-Appointed Guardian Accountability and Senior Protection Act
Thursday, December 19, 2013Mr. Chairman,
I want to be clear about the so-called obstruction being talked about. The reason we didn’t have the business meeting on November 21st was because, minutes before it was scheduled to start, Senators learned we had to report to the floor because Senate Democrats were going to invoke the nuclear option, destroying two centuries of Senate history and precedent by breaking the rules with a simple majority vote.
I want to give some figures to show that the so-called obstruction of nominees is a figment of imagination and is blatantly misleading. We have confirmed 44 judicial nominees this year. Contrast that with the 21 judicial nominees confirmed during President Bush’s entire fifth year of his presidency.
The only thing I can see that has been, and continues to be, obstructed is the rights of the minority.
Today on the agenda we have two US Marshal nominees that can be done by voice vote. All the judicial nominations on the agenda appear for the first time, and we request they be held over. I understand that we will also be holding over the sentencing bills today as we continue to work on them, but that we may be taking up Senator Klobuchar’s bill, S. 975.
With regard to the nomination of Mr. Kadzik, it is no secret that I have concerns with this nomination. I felt that he was not forthcoming during his nomination hearing. I also still have major concerns about the lack of respect for congressional oversight process shown by the way Mr. Kadzik handled another committee’s subpoena in 2001 for his testimony in the matter of billionaire tax fugitive Marc Rich.
Those concerns about respect for congressional oversight process are underscored by Mr. Kadzik’s unwillingness to be responsive to this committee’s Questions for the Record. Getting him to answer simple inquiries has required two or even three sets of questions. He wouldn’t even promise to answer each individual question from members of this committee. In one set of responses, he repeated word-for-word the same answer to a previous question nine times.
When he had information he thought I didn’t want to hear, he glossed over it. I asked Mr. Kadzik at his nomination hearing whether he intended to provide certain documents Chairman Darrell Issa and I had requested relating to a briefing by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Since his response failed to mention the documents, I prompted him about the documents again at the hearing, and he evaded the question.
Only after two subsequent sets of Questions for the Record did Mr. Kadzik finally come clean and just say that the Department would not provide those documents “except in the most extraordinary of circumstances.” This is the type of information Mr. Kadzik should have provided initially, instead of avoiding the issue. Mr. Kadzik’s seeming inability to give straightforward and accurate answers to simple questions causes real concern for me about his ability to perform this job.
The Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs needs to ensure that Congress receives accurate information from the department. This became a problem with Mr. Kadzik’s predecessor, who made claims about Operation Fast and Furious that later had to be retracted.
Additionally, I have concerns about Mr. Kadzik’s track record at the Office of Legislative Affairs. I have numerous outstanding document requests related to a range of issues that need to be dealt with. One of them involves a bipartisan request for a Government Accountability Office study that Senator Whitehouse and I made over a year ago. The Office of Legislative Affairs, under Mr. Kadzik’s direction, has helped block the Government Accountability Office’s access to a database necessary for an important study on drug shortages.
Both in the Marc Rich matter and his current time in the Office of Legislative Affairs, Mr. Kadzik’s actions suggest a lack of respect for the congressional oversight process. As a candidate to be Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs who already works in that office, Mr. Kadzik had the opportunity to demonstrate a real commitment to the role of congressional oversight in our constitutional system of check and balances.
The Justice Department’s Office of Legislative Affairs has a lot of work to do to rebuild trust and confidence after the false letter it sent to me and later withdrew on Fast and Furious. I wish I could say that Mr. Kadzik had demonstrated the kind of serious recommitment to open, honest, and forthright cooperation with congressional oversight that the office needs. Unfortunately, he has not. Therefore, I will vote no on his nomination.