CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
Updated March 13, 2012 – 1:04 a.m.
Reid Sets 17 Cloture Votes on Judges
By Alan K. Ota, CQ Staff
The Senate appears headed for a time-consuming election year exercise this week designed by the Democratic majority to spotlight Republican reluctance to confirm President Obama’s nominees to the federal judiciary.
Majority Leader
Should 60 or more senators support one of Reid’s cloture motions, that would trigger up to 30 hours of debate on confirmation of the nominee.
But there was no indication Monday that Senate Republicans plan to oblige the majority leader, who accuses them of deliberately slow-walking the confirmation process for political purposes.
Democrats complain that delays between committee approval and Senate confirmation of district and circuit court judicial nominees — averaging 101 days for district judges and 139 days for appellate jurists, the Democrats said last week — have been much longer during the Obama administration than during the Bill Clinton or George W. Bush administrations.
Reid said the slow pace of confirmations has resulted in a backlog of cases in the federal courts. “Americans can no longer rely on fair and speedy trials,” he declared.
Reid said all the prospective judges he is attempting to advance this week are “qualified, consensus nominees,” similar to nominees that “in years past would have been confirmed in days or weeks.”
But Republicans argue that the pace of confirmations has not been all that slow, and that more nominees would likely have been confirmed by now had Obama not corrupted the process by making some unusual and particularly controversial recess appointments in January while the Senate was away but was conducting pro forma sessions every few days. The constitutionality of those appointments is being challenged in the courts.
Republicans say the number of confirmations would also be larger if not for the lengthy confirmation processes for Obama’s two Supreme Court nominees,
No Sign of Agreement
Lee said three of the 17 judicial nominees whose confirmations Reid contends have been blocked by GOP delaying tactics were not approved by the Judiciary Committee until March 8.
The level of partisanship in the Senate will escalate considerably as the chamber turns from the widely supported transportation bill to the topic of confirmation filibusters.
Reid Sets 17 Cloture Votes on Judges
A truce was negotiated by the bipartisan Gang of 14 in 2005, when a GOP Senate majority was threatening to change Senate rules and precedents to prohibit filibusters of judicial nominees. Both sides agreed then to filibuster judicial nominees only under “extraordinary circumstances.”
But Democrats charge that Republicans have set that agreement aside during this Congress, blocking the nominations of Goodwin Liu to 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and Caitlin J. Halligan for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit last year by blocking efforts to limit debate.
Nevertheless, Majority Whip
But Minority Whip
“I think we will reject the leader’s attempt to invoke cloture, because the leader would be trying to stuff us,” Kyl said. “I would imagine that after a few, it’s pretty apparent what’s going to happen. Traditionally, the two leaders have been able to work out a process and time to take up [nominations] each week. And they have resulted over the years in pretty uniform numbers of nominees being confirmed for office. There’s no reason that can’t be done this year.”
Other senior Republicans including Grassley, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, said they will vote against limiting debate, not because they necessarily oppose the nominees but because they want the confirmation process to proceed at a steadier pace. Grassley said he and other Republicans also want Obama to promise not to make additional recess appointments when the Senate is away but conducting pro forma sessions.
Many of the current vacancies on the federal bench are attributable to the administration’s own slow pace, Grassley suggested Monday in a written statement. He said Obama has yet to make nominations for 44 of 83 current vacancies.
North Carolina’s
But Burr said the 17 nominees listed by Reid are likely to win confirmation eventually because they have bipartisan support. “I would imagine all of the district judges would be approved before August, which is the historical cutoff for district judges,” Burr said.
It is traditional for the Senate to hold off on confirmation of judicial nominees during the latter months of a presidential election year.
Coast-to-Coast Roster
Despite signs that his cloture motions are unlikely to result in speedy confirmations, Reid said he intends to pursue procedural votes on all of the nominees. “Unfortunately, Republicans have forced our hand. What else can we do?” he said.
Judiciary Chairman
Reid Sets 17 Cloture Votes on Judges
The nominees Reid is trying to advance this week are Obama’s picks for court seats throughout the nation, ranging geographically from Rudolph Contreras for the District of Columbia to Michael Walter Fitzgerald for the central district of California.
They include two nominees for Texas benches, Gregg Jeffrey Costa for the southern district and David Campos Guaderrama for the western district. John J. Tharp Jr. and John Z. Lee are nominees for the northern district of Illinois.
Other nominees would fill court seats in Arkansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, New York, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia.
Niels Lesniewski contributed to this story.
First posted March 12, 2012 4:22 p.m.