M Files: WHY JUDICIAL NOMINATIONS ARE IMPORTANT
The Senate blocked out 30 hours to discuss judicial nominations starting last night. I listened in for a couple of hours and have a few issues that I would like to address.
Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) pointed out that the senate had confirmed 168 out of 172 nominees. And that is a number that sounds on the surface to be quite good. And it is good. But it isn't enough. The reality of the situation is that there are still quite a number of vacancies left to be filled and the candidates that the President has put up for consideration are highly qualified and would pass a majority vote of the Senate (which is what is required by the Constitution). A Republican senator pointed out that in the history of the last eleven presidents, no judicial nominations have ever been successfully filibustered. The point that I take from Sen. Schumer's rebuttal is that those nominations wherein a filibuster was threatened, it was clearly a symbolic gesture when you look at the numbers, and in bipartisan fashion a cloture vote was taken to overturn the possibility. Sometimes politicians do things like this in order to make a point, not to bog down the business of the Senate.
Several Democrats asked why there haven't been 30-hour sessions set aside for other issues. What I take from this argument is that these Democrats don't feel that the judicial confirmation process is important business for the Senate. I couldn't disagree more. This process is so important for the Senate that the procedure was laid out in the Constitution. Nowhere do I see in the Constitution that it is the Senate's responsibility to solve social problems. That's not to say that I don't believe those issues aren't important. It's that the issue of judicial nominations is that important. One senator went so far to put up a chart (numbers was something of a theme) that said "3 Million Jobs" and then proceeded to discuss (had I not been watching on CSPAN2 and seen the sign, I wouldn't have cared about this argument at all because while the sign said million, the senator repeatedly said thousand) that this was a number that needed to be discussed in the session. The senate blocked 30 hours to discuss this topic. If the senator would like to discuss job creation (something that I can't imagine the senate being very good at), he should work to get the time he'd like (maybe I'm naive, but I would think that if a session was called to discuss judicial nominations, that is supposed to be the topic).
Neither side really seemed all that interested in really debating the issue. The Republicans spent most of their time talking about the merits of the nominees and the Democrats spent most of their time discussing anything and everything else. It was another day at the office for senators on both sides of the aisle.
If I were the majority leader, I would have made the Democrats actually go through with their threat and actually filibuster the confirmations. By talking about something that hasn't happened yet, Republicans did look a little silly. But I understand why they did it. These nominees are good people and they do deserve to be considered by the full senate for a vote on their merits.
If I were responsible for the minority, I would have kept to the topic. I would have insisted that no filibuster had actually taken place on any of these nominees. (One of the running arguments involved the actual definition of filibuster; was a cloture vote a filibuster?, etc.)
In my final analysis, I don't think this session is going to accomplish anything. This would have been more effective after an actual filibuster.
MATT
