Patrick Leahy

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, we learned this past week of the latest example of the colossal waste, fraud and abuse in the administration's reconstruction program in Iraq. Documented in the Special Inspector General's report released last Friday is the fiasco of the Basra Children's Hospital, yet another casualty on the long list of U.S.-financed infrastructure projects in Iraq to face cost overruns, mismanagement, delays and potential cancellation. Back in 2003, Congress allocated $50 million for the construction of a 94-bed state-of-the-art children's cancer treatment hospital in southern Iraq. Despite repeated calls from humanitarian organizations and experts at the United States Agency for International Development to instead work with the Iraqis to rebuild their primary health system, the Bush administration promoted this high-profile, glitzy project championed by the White House. Nearly 3 years later, due to gross mismanagement, the hospital is only 35 percent complete, out of money and teetering on the verge of collapse. The cost overruns are so significant that the project will cost between $120 and $160 million to complete and is not expected to be finished until December 2007, over a year later than planned. Meanwhile, Iraqis continue to suffer from low quality and poor access to basic health services. USAID is at fault for not properly accounting for all the costs of constructing the hospital and should have consulted with Congress when they knew about cost overruns and scheduling delays. But press reports have ignored the fact that from the beginning, USAID wisely opposed this costly, misguided infrastructure project in a dangerous and corrupt environment, knowing of the likelihood that these problems could arise. Bechtel, the lead government contractor for the Basra Hospital project and the same contractor for the flawed Boston Big Dig tunnel project, has once again been dismissed from a large-scale project due to incompetence. Sadly, this is not the first nor is it likely to be the last instance of waste, fraud and abuse in the reconstruction of Iraq under the negligent leadership of the Bush administration. The Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction has been the watchdog for the billions of dollars appropriated for Iraq reconstruction programs and operations. The creation of the office was initially opposed by the White House and by some in Congress who would prefer that the appalling blunders of the Iraq reconstruction program not be exposed to the light of day. By all accounts, the Special Inspector General has done an excellent job under difficult and dangerous conditions by uncovering numerous instances of waste and fraud and there are dozens of investigations and prosecutions under way. The picture provided by the Special Inspector General is in stark contrast to the rhetoric coming from the administration that reconstruction is moving forward at a rapid pace. Thanks to the persistent leadership of Senator Feingold, and with support from Senators Warner and Levin, we were able to include a Feingold-Leahy Amendment to the Senate version of the fiscal year 2007 Defense authorization bill to extend the life of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction and ensure continued and necessary audits of the very programs the Special Inspector General was created to oversee. It is crucial that this provision be retained in the final version of the bill. Mr. President, the tragedy of the Basra Children's Hospital project speaks volumes about this administration's Iraq policy. It is a legacy of arrogance, squander and incompetence. Just throw money at the problem and hope for the best. Use expensive American contractors rather than Iraqis who are unemployed or underemployed and could do the work for a fraction of the cost. And then try to shut down the office that exposes the waste. It is shocking, it is tragic and it is inexcusable.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, today, I sent a letter to President Bush. In it I urged him to cease and desist from what has become an abuse of Presidential signing statements. I first began drawing attention to these matters 4 years ago, in 2002. I hoped they would end at that time; instead, the abuses have mounted. Outstanding reporters, such as Charles Savage of the Boston Globe, have taken note of this important matter. They have reported on particular examples of egregious signing statements by which the President attempts to rewrite our laws. Editorial boards across the country have become increasingly critical, and I would say increasingly alarmed. This week, a distinguished bipartisan task force of the American Bar Association, made up of Republicans and Democrats, all across the political spectrum, released a unanimous report that was highly critical of the President's practice as ``contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers.'' With my letter today, I am trying to point the President to a better way. I urge him to raise any constitutional concerns he has with legislation with those of us in Congress while the legislation is pending and early in the process. If we agree with his analysis, we will work together to fix it. But, ultimately, under the Constitution, Congress writes the laws, not the President. Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the powers to write the laws. Article II of the Constitution requires the President to faithfully execute those laws. His oath of office very specifically says he will faithfully execute the laws, not make them. I speak on this topic again today because of its immediate importance to the reauthorization and revitalization of the Voting Rights Act that we unanimously passed last week. The President signed it into law yesterday. It was 98 to 0 in the Senate. It was passed by an overwhelming bipartisan margin in the other body. I felt privileged to be there when the President signed that law. I talked with him prior to the signing and again after he signed. I complimented him for the words he used in the ceremony when he signed the law. He sounded like a man fully on board and supportive of the findings, purposes and provisions of the law. I said after the signing, while I was there at the White House, that what really struck me the most was the President's saying his administration would ``vigorously enforce the provisions of this law and we will defend it in court.'' I praised President Bush for this statement. I did so again yesterday when the Judiciary Committee met. I am told that next week the President will issue a Presidential signing statement on the Voting Rights Act reauthorization. I am urging that this not be one of those infamous signing statements where he says something else, seeks to undercut the law, reinterpret it or in any way reduce his responsibility for fully and vigorously enforcing the law and defending and upholding its provisions in legal challenges--the Voting Rights Act especially. This act is something we don't just do for our generation, we do it for our children and our grandchildren in all parts of this country. What greater right do we have as Americans than the right to vote? We fought a revolution to have that right. We praise other nations when they toss off the shackles of dictatorship and can now vote. Yet in this country, for many decades, generations, large groups of people, because of the color of their skin, were not allowed to vote. Artificial obstructions were placed in the way so they could not vote. We came together, Republicans and Democrats, to say these people would be allowed to vote. The color of their skin will not make a difference. Their ethnic background will not make a difference. They will be able to vote. That is what was signed yesterday on the lawn of the White House. The Constitution places the lawmaking power, ``All Legislative Powers,'' in the Congress. That is an Article I power. I believe our Founders made article I to, first and foremost, put the Congress first; the President came next. We are at a pivotal moment in our Nation's history, where Americans are faced with a President who makes sweeping claims for almost unchecked Executive power. This administration is now routinely using signing statements to proclaim which parts of the law the President will follow, which parts he will ignore, and which he will reinterpret. This is what I have called ``cherry picking.'' It is wrong. This President also used signing statements to challenge laws banning torture, laws on affirmative action, and laws that prohibit the censorship of scientific data. In fact, time and time again, this President has stood before the American people and signed laws enacted by their representatives in Congress, while all along crossing his fingers behind his back. I don't want the Voting Rights Act to fall into this area. Under our constitutional system of Government, when Congress passes a bill and the President signs it into law, that should be the end of the story. At that moment, the President's constitutional duty is to ``take care that the Laws be faithfully executed.'' In fact, that is his duty, which he acknowledged yesterday with respect to the Voting Rights Act. I commend him for that because his article II power, Executive power, is to execute the laws. He doesn't have a legislative power. I remind the President and this administration of this--and I have been here with six Presidents, Democrats, and Republicans, and I have never seen anything like this in my 32 years in the Senate. I have never seen such a case where an administration has a sense that it is a unitary executive. It is not a unitary executive. The legislative power is vested in the Congress. The judicial power is vested in the judiciary. The power to execute the laws is in the administration. But the Constitution and the President's oath of office say I ``shall faithfully execute.'' When the President uses signing statements to unilaterally rewrite the laws enacted by the people's Representatives in Congress, he undermines the rule of law and our constitutional checks and balances designed to protect the rights of the American people. These signing statements are a diabolical device, but this President will continue to use and abuse them if the Republican-controlled Congress lets him. So far, the Congress has done exactly that. I say this with all due respect to my friends on the other side of the aisle. The Republican-controlled Congress has become a rubberstamp. It does not show the checks and balances that it should. Actually, the President has not been helped because he is falling into the trap of assuming that whatever he does is going to be rubberstamped by the Republican-controlled Congress. I think America can do better. I think America should have a choice. I think America should have a voice. I don't think America should have a rubberstamp for a Congress because whether it is torture, warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens, or the unlawful treatment of military prisoners, the Republican-led Congress has been willing to turn a blind eye and rubberstamp the questionable actions of this administration, regardless of the consequences to our Constitution and civil liberties. Mr. President, I mentioned that this issue of signing statements is something that has concerned me since 2002. That was also the year that the Bush-Cheney administration was writing secret legal memoranda seeking to justify another form of lawlessness by postulating an unfounded and unconstitutional Commander in Chief override to our laws, and they did this to justify the use of torture. When that memorandum was exposed to the light of day, not by the rubberstamp Congress, but by the press, the administration had to withdraw it. But we read in a front-page story in the Washington Post today of another ominous development. Apparently, the Bush-Cheney administration lawyers are meeting with Republicans and the Republican- controlled Congress to write immunities and amnesties into the law and to renege on this country's commitment to human rights and the Geneva Convention. Mr. President, I say, for shame. To think that you can use a rubberstamp Congress to renege on this country's proud commitment to human rights is another aspect of the lawlessness of this administration. But it will succeed if the Republican-led Congress continues to act as a wholly owned subsidiary of the White House, instead of fulfilling its responsibility as a separate and independent branch of Government intended by the Founders and established by the Constitution to serve as a check on the Executive. I helped write the war crimes law that the Bush-Cheney administration is trying to undermine. In 1996 and 1997, we acted with the support of the Department of Defense to include expressly in our laws culpability for violating human rights in the Geneva Conventions. The United States did that so we could serve as a world leader and as a moral leader. We have set standards for conduct that we demand others around the world follow. We cannot credibly ask others to meet standards we are unwilling to meet ourselves. Why diminish the moral leadership of the United States by trying to quietly carve out an exception for us, telling the rest of the world to do this but then saying we won't? We have insisted on human rights and the rights of Americans, civilian and military, throughout the world. Let's not tell the rest of the world: It is do as we say, not as we do. More recently, we have seen Abu Ghraib reported detainee abuses, investigations into the deaths of detainees and civilians in war zones, and indictments of American service personnel and contractors. These have all combined to stain America's reputation and role. We must not retreat from the fight for human rights. We must not ``cut and run'' from our responsibilities as the world leader and the world's only superpower. The American military men and women are the finest in the world. They have been trained to respect human rights, and they do so. They need not fear laws against brutality and inhumanity. We, the United States, helped develop and then endorse the Geneva Conventions to set standards to protect our own troops. To walk away from these protections would be to ``cut and run'' and walk away from our men and women in uniform. Pulling a thread from this cloak of protection risks beginning a process of unraveling the entire fabric to the detriment of our troops and to the great shame of the United States. It is disheartening to read that the highest law enforcement officer in the country is leading an effort to undercut the rule of law. Rather than enforce the law as he is sworn to do, he is reportedly seeking to undermine it. Instead of ignoring the laws we have long honored, our leaders should be obeying them, not obfuscating or creating loopholes in them. They should be saying nobody, not even the President of the United States, is above the law. The Attorney General of the United States is not an in-house counsel to the President or consigliere to the Vice President and Secretary of Defense. His constitutional responsibility is to enforce the law. They seem to have forgotten this, and I am speaking today to remind them of their sworn duty. Mr. President, before yielding the floor, I ask that a series of items be printed in the Record.

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, what is the parliamentary situation in the Senate?

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Presiding Officer. I commend him for his duty in the chair on a Friday morning where the smell of jet fumes have proven an allure to many of our colleagues in both parties who have headed off. I might say to my friend, the distinguished Presiding Officer, I do realize he cannot respond from the chair, but all of us look forward to that time. I am willing to spend the month of August in my own State of Vermont. I said to somebody that we make sacrifices in these jobs, and they suggested the idea of being in Vermont for a month, which is one of the prettiest times of the year up there, was probably not the world's greatest sacrifice. I invite the Presiding Officer and anybody else to come up and visit. You don't have to wear a tie, and you can go to county fairs. Most of the people at the county fairs are Republicans, but most of them vote for me, so I am delighted to go there. They would vote for the distinguished Presiding Officer, too.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I have been advised by Chairman Specter's staff that the chairman is correcting the Record regarding some materials that were inserted last Thursday, July 20, 2006, during debate on reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act. I thank the chairman for correcting the Record. Contrary to how it appeared in the Record, those materials did not reflect work of the bipartisan staff of the Judiciary Committee. I understand that the chairman filed a committee report last night on S. 2703, the Senate bill reported by the committee last Wednesday. I have yet to see a copy of that final report, nor is it yet publicly available. Indeed, no draft committee report on S. 2703 was circulated to the committee until July 24, 2006, 5 days after the Judiciary Committee unanimously voted to report it and the chairman had reported it, and four days after the Senate unanimously passed H.R. 9, the bill that President Bush signed into law this morning. That draft report did not contain findings based on the extensive record created in both the House and Senate. In this highly unusual development, as the report filed should indicate, it does not reflect the views of a majority of the Senate Judiciary Committee. This, in spite of the fact that all members voted to report the bill favorably. Fortunately, we had the foresight to include legislative findings in the body of the legislation itself. Those findings, based on the record, were adopted by the House and unanimously by the Senate last week. I want to thank Chairman Sensenbrenner, Ranking Member Conyers, Congressmen Watt and Lewis, and all those who worked so hard to assemble and consider that record in the House. Their outstanding work gave us in the Senate a great start, which we supplemented with nine additional hearings. The findings remained the same and were adopted in identical form by both Houses. It is that bill and those findings, based on the extensive record that 18 members of the Judiciary Committee voted to report as part of S. 2703 last Wednesday, July 19 and that 98 Senators voted for in adopting H.R. 9 last Thursday, July 20. With regard to committee consideration, after nine hearings, the committee held a special business meeting at my request to debate S. 2703 on July 19. At our business meeting, the committee debated and voted on only one substantive amendment, Senator Coburn's amendment related to section 203 of the Voting Rights Act. It was debated and then defeated. Other than an amendment I offered at Senator Salazar's suggestion to add the name of Cesar Chavez to the short title, which was adopted, no other amendments were offered. The record is the record. As reported by The Houston Chronicle the next day, Senator Cornyn said: ``I decided that any amendments would be defeated, so I decided not to offer any.'' As Chairman Specter's deadline approached yesterday for filing views to be included in a highly unusual committee report, the Democratic Senators learned that the document the chairman was prepared to sign and file had changed dramatically from the document he had circulated as a draft report on July 24, 2006. As sponsors of the Senate legislation who have supported it pressed for its enactment and voted for it, we felt compelled to file views registering our disappointment that the views then being circulated did not reflect our views, did not properly reflect the record supporting our bill, and did not fully endorse the bill we introduced, sponsored and that we and all members of the committee voted to report favorably to the Senate. After we filed our views, I understand the report was revised even further to incorporate what had previously been styled as supplemental views into a new and not previously circulated version. I will ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a copy of the signature page showing that even then only nine Republican members of the committee, less than a majority, endorsed the report. Of course, at the time of floor debate and consideration of H.R. 9 in the Senate, no Senate committee report on S. 2703 was available to Senators. Fortunately at the time of Senate floor debate and consideration of H.R. 9 in the Senate last week, Senators had available to them an extensive record to inform their votes. We had the voluminous Senate Judiciary Committee record, including thousands of pages of testimony. We had the full record before the House of Representatives, including thousands of pages of testimony. We had the House Committee Report and the full debate on the floor of the House of Representatives, including debate surrounding four substantive amendments to H.R. 9 that were all rejected. Leading up to final passage of the Voting Rights Act reauthorization, I provided the Senate with some of the extensive evidence received in the Judiciary Committee about the persistence of discriminatory practices in covered jurisdictions that supports reauthorization of this crucial provision. I provided evidence regarding the need for fixes to two Supreme Court decisions to clarify Congress's intent regarding the Voting Rights Act to reinforce the original purpose of the act. I also pointed to evidence supporting the extension of the act's critical bilingual language assistance provisions. I included statements in the Congressional Record from Tuesday and Wednesday and available to all Senators during the course of the debate. I referred to that evidence early in the debate last Thursday. Most importantly, of course, at the time we voted, all Senators had before them the detailed findings in section 2 of the legislation based on the record and all Senators endorsed those findings with their votes. For example, those findings explicitly include: ``Evidence of continued discrimination includ[ing] . . . the hundreds of objections interposed, requests for more information submitted followed by voting changes withdrawn from consideration by jurisdictions covered by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and section 5 enforcement actions undertaken by the Department of Justice in covered jurisdictions since 1982 that prevented election practices, such as annexation, at-large voting, and the use of multi-member districts, from being enacted to dilute minority voting strength; . . . the number of requests for declaratory judgments denied by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia; . . . the continued filing of section 2 cases that originated in covered jurisdictions; and . . . the litigation pursued by the Department of Justice since 1982 to enforce sections 4(e), 4(f)(4), and 203 of such Act to ensure that all language minority citizens have full access to the political process.'' In addition, those findings include, ``[t]he continued evidence of racially polarized voting in each of the jurisdictions covered by the expiring provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 demonstrates that racial and language minorities remain politically vulnerable, warranting the continued protection of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.'' These findings the Senate adopted in its unanimous vote for H.R. 9 and as a reauthorization measure also incorporated the statutory findings within the following provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965: section 203(a); section 4(f)(1); section 10(a); and section 202(a). By passing the legislation, Congress has adopted and reaffirmed the detailed findings in H.R. 9. The Senate unanimously adopted these findings. Nothing inserted in the Record thereafter can diminish the force of those findings contained within the enacted legislation itself. As several courts have properly recognized, postpassage ``legislative history'' is a contradiction in terms. Earlier today, we celebrated the reauthorization and revitalization of the Voting Rights Act when President Bush signed that bill into law. I know that many in his party are unhappy with him, but I think he did the right thing. The Voting Rights Act is one of the most important laws Congress has ever passed. I am proud to say that our democracy and our Nation have been better and richer for it. The Voting Rights Act is the keystone in the foundation of civil rights laws and is one of the most important methods of protecting all Americans' foundational right to vote. Several generations have kept the chain of support for the Voting Rights Act unbroken, and now our generation has done its part to continue that legacy and revitalize the act. Keeping the Voting Rights Act intact is important, but enforcing it is equally important. Now that Congress has passed this bill--and the President has signed it--it is up to the President to ensure that this law and all of its provisions are enforced fully and faithfully. I was pleased today to hear the President commit to aggressive enforcement and to defend the act from legal attacks. Article I of the Constitution provides for the Congress to write the laws, and article II provides for the President to enforce them. Congress has done its part, and now the President must do his. I commend him for saying that he will. That was the most important thing the President said today. The President has not always been a supporter of this important civil rights law. While Governor of Texas, President Bush fought against some of the key antidiscrimination provisions Congress just reauthorized, as noted in a front page story in today's Washington Times. Today the President acted on behalf of all Americans and did the right thing despite the backbiting and criticism within his party. I commend him. Now his responsibility is to faithfully execute the law and aggressively enforce its provisions. I trust we will not see another after-the-fact Presidential signing statement undercutting the commitment he made today in his public statement and by signing the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006. The enactment of this law is a triumph for all Americans and a testament to efforts of its supporters in the House and Senate. On several occasions there were attempts by some to derail this bill. Those efforts continue. Fortunately, the findings in the act itself and the record we have built supports this important measure. We know that effective enforcement of these provisions is vital in stamping out discrimination that, unfortunately, still exists in this Nation today. As the President has acknowledged, the wound is not healed and there is more to do to protect the rights of all Americans to vote and have their votes count. I ask unanimous consent that the signature page to which I referred be printed in the Record.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Is there a time agreement?

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, what is the parliamentary situation?

Mr. LEAHY. How much time is available to the Senator from Vermont?

Mr. LEAHY. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, today, the Senate considers the nomination of Jerome A. Holmes for a lifetime appointment to the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Just last week we confirmed another nominee to the Tenth Circuit, the fifth to be appointed by this President. This progress comes in stark contrast to the seven years in which a Republican-led Senate failed to confirm a single new judge for that court. Indeed, when I moved forward with the nominations of Harris Hartz of New Mexico, Terrence O'Brien of Wyoming, and Michael McConnell of Utah, it broke a longstanding partisan barricade that had been maintained by Republicans. Among the victims of the Republican obstruction were outstanding lawyers President Clinton nominated such as James Lyons and Christine Arguello, who were never even granted hearings by the Republican majority. Judge Lyons was among the many Clinton nominees voted unanimously ``Well Qualified'' by the American Bar Association who were never granted hearings, and Ms. Arguello is a talented Hispanic attorney whose nomination had significant, widespread and bipartisan support from her community and State. They were among the more than 60 qualified, moderate judicial nominees of President Clinton that Republicans ``pocket filibustered'' and defeated without hearings or votes of any kind. Just last Thursday, Democratic Senators joined in the confirmation of Judge Gorsuch, an extremely conservative nominee, and three others. Working together we confirmed two circuit court nominees and two Federal trial court nominees in a matter of minutes. We brought the total number of judicial nominees confirmed during this President's term to 255, which exceeds the total for the last 5\1/2\ years of the Clinton administration. It brought the total number of judges confirmed over the last 18 months to 50. Of course, during the 17 months I chaired the Judiciary Committee the Senate confirmed 100 lifetime judges, twice as many in less time. Last week's success demonstrates again how we can make progress in filling vacancies by working together. Senator Salazar's support for Judge Gorsuch was a critical factor in our ability to act swiftly. Senator Lincoln's and Senator Pryor's support for confirming Judge Shepherd to the Eighth Circuit likewise made a real difference. Regrettably, this nomination we consider today is not without controversy and concern. Mr. Holmes initially was nominated to fill a district court seat in Oklahoma. The White House withdrew that nomination and renominated him to the circuit court after Judge James H. Payne asked the President to withdraw his nomination. That withdrawal came after public reports that Judge Payne had ruled on a number of cases in which he had a conflict of interest. While the committee never had a chance to hear directly from Judge Payne about the reported conflicts, these types of conflicts are a violation of Federal law as well as canons of judicial ethics and have no place on the Federal bench. Certainly, they should not be rewarded with a promotion. Before Mr. Holmes' hearing, I raised concerns about the many controversial letters and columns he has written on such topics as juror racial bias, affirmative action, discrimination, and school vouchers. In these writings, Mr. Holmes derided opposing points of view and those who held them. I asked Mr. Holmes to address my concerns about how he might rule on civil rights issues and how he would treat litigants as a judge. Regrettably, Mr. Holmes' stock answers to my questions that he would follow Supreme Court precedent have not reassured me that he would be the kind of judge who understands the critical role of the courts as a protection of individual rights and civil rights. In one column, Mr. Holmes described certain allegations of racial prejudice at criminal trials as ``harmful'' because it ``bolster[s] the cynical view that jurors vote along racial lines,'' which ``undermines public confidence in the fairness of the criminal justice system.'' In fact, Mr. Holmes suggested that it is the focus on the problem of racial bias in jury selection--as opposed to the racial bias itself that--harms the criminal justice system. He wrote that focusing on racial bias ``may actually give the green light to jurors to exercise arbitrary power in the jury box when their racial number allow it.'' The Supreme Court has long recognized that racial bias in jury selection undermines constitutional guarantees to a fair trial, establishing in the landmark 1986 decision Batson v. Kentucky that striking jurors on the basis of race is unconstitutional. In contrast to Mr. Holmes' statement that accusations of racial bias are merely ``cynical,'' Batson was based on evidence showing patterns of race discrimination in jury selection. It has been reaffirmed repeatedly during the last 20 years in sharp contrast to the views of Mr. Holmes. I gave Mr. Holmes every opportunity to admit error and indicate not only that he had learned of the Supreme Court's precedent but that he had adopted that view of the law and accepted the prohibitions against racial discrimination as just, but received no such reassurance. Instead, the nominee begrudgingly acknowledged that he would have to follow Supreme Court precedent when expressly bound by it. In another column Mr. Holmes wrote after the Supreme Court's landmark affirmative action decision, Grutter v. Bollinger, he criticized the High Court for missing an ``important opportunity to drive the final nail in the coffin of affirmative action'' and said that the ``court did not go far enough: Affirmative action is still alive.'' In addition, he described affirmative action scholarship programs as involving classifications that are ``constitutionally dubious and morally offensive.'' This was a landmark case and in it Justice Sandra Day O'Connor spoke for the Supreme Court and the Nation. Justice O'Connor, a conservative appointed by President Reagan, considered the facts and the law carefully. She took into account the brief from 65 leading U.S. corporations that noted the importance of a diverse workforce and the brief of a highly respected group of former military officers that the military needed a racially diverse and highly qualified corps of officers. She built upon the Supreme Court's Bakke decision when she upheld the University of Michigan Law School's use of race as a factor in law school admissions and affirmed the important interest in diversity. She proclaimed: ``Effective participation by members of all racial and ethnic groups in the civic life of our nation is essential if the dream of one nation, indivisible, is to be realized.'' She went on to note that she hoped and expected that consideration of race might no longer be necessary in another 25 years. Even after the decision, Mr. Holmes chose to criticize Justice O'Connor's pragmatic, principled and practical resolution of what had become an ideological dispute. Sadly, Mr. Holmes seems to continue to want to take sides, and in my view, he is on the wrong side. Just last week, the Senate unanimously extended the expiring provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for another 25 years. We all hope that such special provisions will no longer be necessary after another 25 years of growth and progress. But they are needed now. Last week, we also heard the President, who has nominated Mr. Holmes, acknowledge that slavery and racial discrimination ``placed a stain on America's founding, a stain that we have not yet wiped clean.'' In his first-ever address to the NAACP national convention during his time in office, the President said racial discrimination remains a ``wound'' that ``is not fully healed.'' I will not soon forget President Bush speaking to the nation from Jackson Square in New Orleans and acknowledging that ``poverty has roots in a history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America.'' Such powerful words inspire hope for change. But that change only occurs when those words are followed by action. During his address to the NAACP, the President lamented the Republican Party's loss of support among many African Americans in our country today. He called it a ``tragedy'' that the party of Abraham Lincoln could disenfranchise the African-American community. It is not difficult to understand why. Despite his eventual support for the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, this President's priorities, his polices--and indeed his nominees do not demonstrate any sort of meaningful commitment on the part of this administration to confront the very real racial and economic disparities that continue to persist today. When considering a nominee to a lifetime appointment on the Federal bench, a chief consideration of mine has always been whether all litigants would get a fair hearing in that nominee's courtroom. That is why I have been, and remain, concerned about the tone and stridency of Mr. Holmes' writings. In answering my questions about the tone of his criticisms of those with whom he disagrees on issues, Mr. Holmes seeks to make a distinction between ``the role of the opinion-article writer'' and the role of a judge. The fact that Mr. Holmes took part in hard-edged debate on public issues should not be disqualifying. It appears, however, that those opinions are what earned him this elevated nomination and what his proponents expect he will deliver from the bench. Mr. Holmes has been an outspoken critic not only of affirmative action programs and efforts to combat race discrimination, but of African-American civil rights leaders who support them, calling them ``ideologically bankrupt.'' He has called into question the sincerity of civil rights organizations opposed to school vouchers by describing them as having ``longstanding ties to school employee labor unions, which view vouchers as a dangerous threat to the educational status quo, in which teachers bear little or no accountability for their students' educational failures.'' When the convention of the NAACP reacted negatively last week to President Bush's advocacy for vouchers, it was not because they were under the sway of any teachers' union. It was because they know how important public education is to the futures of so many from minority communities. In a letter to one publication, Mr. Holmes criticized claims of race discrimination based on forced assimilation, characterizing a doctor's complaint that his colleagues had ``negative reactions to his dreadlocks'' as ``naive.'' In another article, he described a defense attorney's concerns about racial bias in jury selections as ``philosophically offensive.'' Mr. Holmes' comments belittling those concerned with the persistence of race-based barriers in this country leave me with little assurance that he has the ability to maintain objectivity when applying constitutional and statutory remedies for race discrimination and concerned that he will not have an open and fair mind as a judge. Mr. Holmes membership in the Men's Dinner Club of Oklahoma City, which restricts its membership to men, also concerns me about his ability to have an open mind. He did not resign his membership until February 2, 2006, less than 2 weeks before his initial nomination to be United States District Judge for the District of Oklahoma, presumably only after he had been notified that he would be nominated. When I asked him about why he said in his response to the committee's questionnaire that he did ``not perceive the club as practicing invidious discrimination,'' he did not respond directly. Instead, he declared in a self-serving conclusion that he would ``not knowingly be a member of any organization that harbored or expressed any bias against women, or any other groups on the basis of immutable characteristics.'' I am left to wonder what it is that Mr. Holmes would consider the kind of discrimination with which he would not want to be associated and why he was not troubled by the Men's Dinner Club. It was a place for social and professional advancement for him and he seemed not at all concerned with its restrictive policies. The fact that Mr. Holmes did not resign until the eve of his nomination because ``some might perceive the Men's Dinner Club as being an improper organization'' is troubling. I worry that even before I announced any opposition to Mr. Holmes' nomination, we had already begun to hear the whispers of criticisms taken from the pages of the playbook of extreme right-wing groups. These groups marked a new low a few years ago by launching a scurrilous campaign to inject religion into the debate over judicial nominations. These smears were fabricated as a calculated weapon to chill proper consideration of candidates nominated for significant judicial positions. Similar, baseless accusations of other forms of discrimination serve only to inflame and distract from the fair and deliberate consideration of judicial nominations. The Senate has confirmed 255 of this President's nominee including 100 who were approved during the 17 months that Democrats made of the Senate majority. The first confirmation when I became chairman was of an African-American circuit court nominee on whom Republicans had refused to vote. For that matter, it was Republican Senators who defeated the nominations of Justice Ronnie White, Judge Beatty, Judge Wynn, Kathleen McCree Lewis and so many outstanding African-Americans judges and lawyers who they pocket filibustered. I was surprised when we debated Mr. Holmes' nomination in the Judiciary Committee that those defending Mr. Holmes' nomination criticized any expression of concern about his troubling writings in the area of civil rights. I appreciated when the Senator from Oklahoma apologized to me after that debate. The Senators from Oklahoma are within their rights in supporting this nomination. In fact, I consider their support as a weighty factor in considering this nomination. That support is not universal. This is a controversial nomination. A number of leading organizations concerned with civil rights, including the NAACP, MALDEF, and many others, raised ``grave concern'' about Mr. Holmes' record. The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the country's oldest, largest civil rights coalition has opposed the confirmation of this nomination. Having reviewed the record, I share those concerns. In the last several months, as we have worked to reauthorize and revitalize the Voting Rights Act, I have been thinking about the civil rights movement, what progress we have made, and what distance we still have to go. The new law is named for Coretta Scott King among others. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. knew that our judges and our courts were important to securing civil rights. It was not the Congress but the Supreme Court that moved the Nation forward in its Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. It is worth recalling Dr. King's call for the political branches to join the courts in protecting the fundamental rights of all. In his 1957 address, ``Give Us the Ballot,'' Dr. King said, ``[s]o far, only the judicial branch of the government has evinced this quality of leadership. If the executive and legislative branches of the government were as concerned about the protection of our citizenship rights as the Federal courts have been, then the transition from a segregated to an integrated society would be infinitely smoother.'' Dr. King knew how important fairminded judges were to the realization of equality. Dr. King's view and that expressed by Mr. Holmes appear to be in sharp contrast. I take no pleasure today in doing my duty. I have considered this nomination on its merits and, in good conscience, I cannot support it. Based on Mr. Holmes' own writings and his responses to our questions, I will vote no. I hope that Mr. Holmes will prove my concerns unfounded and be the kind of judge that Dr. King would have admired, a judge in the mold of Thurgood Marshall, William Hastie or A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. I ask unanimous consent that a letter raising grave concerns from the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights regarding Mr. Holmes' nomination be printed in the Record.

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, yesterday we were reminded, again, of the lawlessness of the Bush-Cheney administration as it continues its abuse of ``signing statements'' as part of a systematic pursuit of power without the checks and balances inherent in our constitutional democracy. A most distinguished task force of the American Bar Association has now released a unanimous report highly critical of this President's practice as ``contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers.'' I thank the distinguish panel of conservatives and moderates, or Republicans and Democrats for their thoughtful report. Let me be clear, this is not some academic debate without consequences. I have been seeking to draw attention to this surreptitious power-grab for at least 4 years, since this President's unusual signing statement following enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley bill in 2002 to reign in corporate abuses that cost so many Americans their livelihoods and their retirement savings through Enron and other scandals. The President signed the bill but had secret ``reservations.'' That is when I first realized the President's unorthodox, unwise and unsound practice of signing a bill while crossing his fingers behind his back. We have seen it over and over again as this President insists on the equivalent of an unwritten line- item veto that would undermine the checks and balances of our constitutional separation of powers and that the Supreme Court correctly determined was unconstitutional. Later this week, the President will be signing the reauthorization and revitalization of the Voting Rights Act, passed by the House with 390 votes and unanimously last week by the Senate. In the past I could have gone to the White House to witness the bill signing knowing that our three branches of government were all operating within their proper authority. That is the way we have operated for more than 200 years. But this year, with this President, that is not the way any longer. After the bill signing, after the celebration, after the bipartisan plaudits and after the President takes credit for the civil rights advances that our bill is intended to represent--after all this--we will have to wait to see whether there is a belated presidential document, a so-called ``signing statement.'' Only then will we see if the President will seek to create a gloss that Congress did not intend, or modify a provision of law more to his liking, or declare some provision of law something he and his administration will not enforce. That is wrong. That is the opposite of the rule of law. And no one--not even the President--is above the law. The Constitution places the lawmaking power, ``All legislative Powers'' in the Congress. That is an article I power. A check on the congressional power is the requirement that ``before [a bill] becomes a Law'' it must be presented to the President. Section 7 of article I of the Constitution provides: ``If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated.'' Of course the Constitution then contemplates congressional power to override a presidential objection or veto. That is our system, that is our law. The President has the option to veto-- in fact after 5 years in office, he finally exercised that power last week when he vetoed the stem cell research legislation. I disagreed with his decision to veto that bill, but it was within his constitutional power to do it. He does not have the power to issue a decree that he will pick and choose which provisions of laws to follow in statements issued after Congress passes a law. What this President is doing is wrong. Last month, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the use of these signing statements by the Bush-Cheney administration. I noted that we are at a pivotal moment in our Nation's history, where Americans are faced with a President who makes sweeping claims for almost unchecked Executive power. This President's use of signing statements is unprecedented, although presaged by the work of Samuel Alito at the Meese Justice Department during the Reagan Presidency--now Justice Alito on the Supreme Court. This administration is now routinely using signing statements to proclaim which parts of the law the President will follow, which parts he will ignore, and which he will reinterpret. This is what I have called ``cherry-picking'' and it is wrong. This President's broad use of signing statements to try to rewrite the laws passed by the Congress poses a grave threat to our constitutional system of checks and balances. During his 5 years in office, President Bush has abused his bill signing statements to assign his own interpretations to laws passed by Congress. According to a review of these statements conducted by The Boston Globe, President Bush has employed signing statements to ignore or disobey more than 750 provisions enacted by the Congress since 2001, more than all previous Presidents in the history of our Nation combined. According to scholarly research that number now tops 800 provisions of law. I have alluded to the President's signing statement in 2002 in connection with the Sarbanes-Oxley law designed to combat corporate fraud. The President used his signing statement to attempt to narrow a provision protecting corporate whistleblowers in a way that would have afforded them very little protection. Senator Grassley and I wrote a letter to the President stating that his narrow interpretation was at odds with the plain language of the statute, and the administration reluctantly relented on this view but only after much protest. We also witnessed the President's fondness for signing statements earlier this year, when after months of debate and negotiations in Congress, the President issued a signing statement for the USA PATRIOT ACT reauthorization language in which he stated his intentions not to follow the reporting and oversight provisions contained in that bill. I noted this abuse at the time. When I voted against that reauthorization, I explained it was because I did not have confidence that the oversight provisions we succeeded in incorporating into the law would be respected. What little doubt was left by the self-serving signing statement was erased last week when the Attorney General of the United States refused to commit to following the law. This President has also used signing statements to challenge laws banning torture, on affirmative action and prohibiting the censorship of scientific data. In fact, time and again, this President has stood before the American people, signed laws enacted by their representatives in Congress, while all along crossing his fingers behind his back. And, while this President used to boast--until his veto of stem cell research legislation--that he was the first modern President to have never vetoed a bill, he has cleverly used his signing statements as a de facto line-item veto to cherry-pick which laws he will enforce in a manner not consistent with our Constitution. Under our constitutional system of government, when Congress passes a bill and the President signs it into law, that should be the end of the story. At that moment the President's constitutional duty is to ``take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.'' That is the article II power, the executive power, to ``execute'' the laws, it is not a legislative power. So when the President, including this President, takes the oath of office and swears on the Bible, he does so, in the words of the Constitution, ``Before he enter on the Execution of his Office,'' and swears that he will ``faithfully execute'' the office of President and ``preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.'' I remind this President and this administration that the Constitution has more than one article and that ``All legislative Power'' is vested in Congress, not some ``unitary executive.'' When the President uses signing statements to unilaterally rewrite the laws enacted by the people's representatives in Congress, he undermines the rule of law and our constitutional checks and balances designed to protect the rights of the American people. This President's abuse of signing statements is all the more dangerous because he has packed the courts with judges willing to defer to him and presidential authority. I have noted that Justice Alito helped develop this device. I could not help but note that Justice Scalia, who is famous for not consulting legislative history, reached out in his dissent in the recent Hamdan decision to reference a recent Presidential signing statement. These signing statements are a diabolical device but this President will continue to use and abuse them, if the Republican Congress lets him. So far, this Congress has done exactly that. Whether it is torture, warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens, or the unlawful detention of military prisoners, this Republican-led Congress has been willing to turn a blind eye and rubberstamp the questionable actions of this administration, regardless of the consequences to our Constitution or civil liberties.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I am disappointed that the Senate is bypassing normal procedure to debate a controversial bill on which the Senate refused to proceed 8 years ago. That was the last action taken on this kind of bill. Since then 8 years have passed. Our Constitution has not changed. I am thankful for that. The complex issues and federalism concerns that so many Senators voiced 8 years ago still remain. So if anything has changed, it is difficult to know. Instead of regular order and allowing the committee of jurisdiction to gather the facts, to consider the legislation, to amend it or reject it, we find ourselves proceeding almost helter-skelter on what is a very serious matter with important personal, privacy and legal implications. It is a striking contrast that we turn to this bill after last week's bipartisan unifying effort in which we took four months to hold nine hearings and work with our counterparts in the House to reauthorize key provisions of the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965. If that process exemplified the Senate at its best, this proceeding stands in sharp contrast. The press is reporting that the Senate is being required to turn to this bill at this time as part of the Republican-designed run up to the elections. Having spent time on a constitutional amendment that would have cut back on the Bill or Rights, having wasted precious time seeking to write discrimination into the Constitution, this is next on their campaign checklist of items needed to rev up their voting base. In fact, having just seen the President reject our efforts to authorize Federal funds for vital stem cell research with his first official veto, they now rush to reopen the abortion debate. I am a little surprised they are not seeking another vote on some further intervention into the circumstances of Terri Schiavo and her family. In fact, the bill before us, like the legislation rushed to the floor to intervene in Florida's legal system in the case of Terri Schiavo, is another case of congressional overreaching and of trying to federalize decisions that previously have been left to the States. I unequivocally support the goal of fostering closer familial relationships and the value of encouraging parental involvement in a child's decision about how to respond to an unplanned pregnancy. We all do. That is not the issue. I thank Senators Boxer, Menendez, Lautenberg, and Feinstein for bringing amendments seeking to make this legislative consideration worthwhile and beneficial to those in need of government help, rather than an imposition of the heavy hand of government intervention. I support their amendments. The underlying bill, however, raises challenging issues of federalism that caused many of us to reject it before and will lead me to oppose it, again. I find it ironic that many of the same people who insist that fully considered State laws on civil union and civil partnership and marriage not be respected, are those who in the context of this legislation insist that State laws be held to bind people even when they travel outside their States, and that Federal criminal law become the enforcement mechanism to ensure that they are binding. The underlying bill does little to strengthen communication and trust in families. While I know as a father that most parents hope their children would turn to them in times of crisis, no law will make that happen. No law will force a young pregnant woman to talk to her parents when she is too frightened to do so. This bill does not increase the perception of choices for such young women. Rather, it is likely to drive young women who are afraid to seek help from their families away from their families and greatly increase the dangers they face from an unwanted pregnancy. The nature of our Federal system revolves around States maintaining their historically dominant role in developing and implementing policies that affect family matters, such as marriage, divorce, end-of- life choices, child custody and policies on parental involvement in minors' abortion decisions. I respect that. I respect each State to define those family relationships and have resisted Federal intrusion into those matters. Congress should not dictate the nature of family relationships. I had hoped we learned our lesson on this when the American people reacted with outrage to the President and Congress intervening in the Terri Schiavo matter. Twenty-six States have adopted parental consent or notification laws that are currently enforced and meet the bill's definition of a ``law requiring parental involvement in a minor's abortion decision.'' That means that the remaining States--the 24 States that include Vermont-- either have opted for no such law, or have decided on a State law that allows for the involvement of adults other than a parent or guardian in the minor's reproductive decision. While I respect the 26 notification law States, I also respect the 24 other States and the privacy rights guaranteed by the Constitution. The direct consequence of this bill would be to federalize the reach of the most constricted notification laws and to override the policies in the remaining States. It is telling that the bill does not expressly establish a Federal parental consent requirement. It does not directly override the various State laws in this area of traditional State interest. Instead, it seeks to do indirectly what it will not and likely could not do directly. Doing so makes it no less an abuse of Federal power. The underlying bill would use the power and resources of the Federal Government to force favored States' laws into effect in the other States that have made other legislative choices. It would impose a law that a State has chosen not to adopt on that State, regardless of the choice its people have made through the legislative process. Most troubling of all, it would create a Federal crime as a mechanism for such Federal interference. It is an affront to federalism and an exercise in heavy-handed overcriminalization. Make no mistake: Despite the proponents' contention that this bill does not attempt to regulate any purely intrastate activities, the effect of this bill would be to impose the policies of certain States on the remaining ones. Just because some in Congress may prefer the policies of certain States over those in the others does not mean we should give those policies Federal enforcement authority across the Nation. Doing so is not only wrong, it sets a dangerous precedent. An example apart from family law: Should residents of States that prohibit gambling not be able to travel to Las Vegas or Atlantic City or the many other places that now allow it? It is the nature of our Federal system that when residents of a State travel to neighboring States or across the Nation, they must conform their behavior to the laws of the States they visit? When residents of each State are forced to carry with them only the laws of their own State, we will have turned our Federal system on its ear. Congress has wisely repealed laws in the past that require residents of each State to carry with them only the laws of their own State. We saw this when the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution was passed. That outlawed slavery and repealed article IV, section 2, paragraph 3 of the Constitution, which authorized return of runaway slaves to their owners. That constitutional authority and such laws as the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 enabled slave owners from slave States to reclaim slaves who managed to escape to free States or territories. None of us--and certainly not the sponsors of this legislation--would ever condone slavery. Those discredited laws and the infamous Dred Scott case are about the only precedent we have for a bill like this that would use the force of Federal law to enforce a particular State's laws against people wherever those people may travel. I was proud in November, 2004, when the Senate unanimously passed a resolution sponsored by Senators McCain, Hatch, Kennedy, and Reid to express the sense of the Senate that John Arthur ``Jack'' Johnson should be pardoned for his ``crime'' of transporting a white woman across State lines for ``an immoral purpose.'' The injustice done to Jack Johnson was something we all joined to try to correct many years later. Let us not allow the misuse of Federal power, again. This bill would sweep into its criminal and civil liability reach extended family members, including grandparents or aunts or uncles, who respond to a cry for help from a young relative by helping her travel across State lines to terminate a pregnancy. In addition to close family members, any other person to whom a young pregnant woman may turn for help, including health care providers and religious counselors, could be dragged into court and face prison time on criminal charges. Rev. Doctor Katherine Hancock Ragsdale once helped a stranger, a 15-year-old girl. The girl feared for her safety if her father learned of her pregnancy, and she had no relative to turn to for help. She was alone and desperate. Should offering comfort subject Reverend Ragsdale to Federal prosecution? The purported goal of this bill, to foster closer familial relationships, will not be served by threatening to throw into jail any grandmother or aunt or sibling who helps a young relative. The result of this bill will be to discourage young women from turning to a trusted adult for advice and assistance. Instead, these young women may be forced then into the hands of strangers or into isolation. Keep in mind what this bill does not do. It does not prohibit pregnant minors from traveling across State lines to have an abortion, even if their purpose is to avoid their parents. The perverse effect of the bill, if it is to be followed, would be to encourage more young women to travel alone to obtain abortions. I will not support an effort that may lead back to the days of ``back alley'' abortions. How can anyone view these outcomes as desirable or fostering closer familial ties? Young pregnant women who seek the counsel and involvement of close family members when they cannot confide in their parents--for example, where a parent has committed incest or there is a history of child abuse--would subject those same close relatives to the risk of criminal prosecution and civil suit, if the young woman subsequently travels across State lines to terminate her pregnancy. Is that really what we want? We should not compound these most difficult circumstances by taking actions that if successful will succeed in isolating young pregnant women, forcing them to run away from home or pushing them to seek protection from strangers at a time of crisis. No law will force a young pregnant woman to involve her parents in her abortion decision if she is determined to keep that fact secret from her parents. No law can force a familial connection that does not exist. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the percentages of minors who inform parents about their intent to have abortions are essentially the same in States with and without notification laws. The President remarked just last week that ``governments can't change hearts.'' States have found that there are families in which parental notification laws are not effective. While doing nothing to foster familial relationships, this bill would do serious damage to important federalism and constitutional principles. The underlying bill imposes significant new burdens on a woman's right to choose and impinges on the right to travel and the privileges and immunities due under the Constitution to every citizen. Peter J. Rubin of Georgetown University Law Center and Laurence H. Tribe of Harvard Law School have argued that this language, adopted by the House in 2002, violates both ``the rights of States to enact and enforce their own laws governing conduct within their territorial boundaries, and the rights of the residents of each of the United States . . . to travel to and from any State of the Union for lawful purposes, a right strongly reaffirmed by the Supreme Court.'' These leading constitutional scholars contend that the bill as drafted is unconstitutional. I will ask that a copy of their analysis be printed in the Record, at the conclusion of my statement. For all these reasons--legal, constitutional, practical and institutional--I will vote against the underlying bill. I urge all Senators to respect federalism, the Constitution and families by rejecting this attempt to politicize fundamental decisions and family relationships. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of the aforementioned analysis be printed in the Record.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, have the yeas and nays been ordered?

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President pro tempore, my dear friend, the senior Senator from Alaska, I see the majority leader on the floor. Is he seeking recognition?

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I compliment the distinguished Senator from Colorado for his speech. I mentioned him earlier in my speech on the floor and his tremendous contribution to this bill. We can all agree the time to end discrimination is still here, and we can work to do that.

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, earlier this afternoon when I was not on the Senate floor, a few Republican Senators gave statements that reflected their individual views of what the legislation we are considering today will do to address the Supreme Court's interpretation of legislative intent in the Georgia v. Ashcroft and Reno v. Bossier Parish cases. While I am not fully informed of their positions, I certainly disagree with what I heard. In the Senate Judiciary Committee we received extensive testimony about these two provisions over the course of several hearings that informed our Committee vote yesterday. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a full explanation of the testimony we received that informed our vote yesterday and my understanding of the purpose and scope of these two provisions as an original and lead sponsor.

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I appreciate what the senior Senator from Pennsylvania said. Senator Specter and I have been friends for many years. I think we have accomplished a great deal in the Judiciary Committee. I agree with him this is the most important thing we will do. But I might also note, on a personal note about the Senator from Pennsylvania, much of what was accomplished during that time he was fighting a very serious illness. I compliment the Senator from Pennsylvania for his perseverance during that time. The Voting Rights Act is the cornerstone of our civil rights laws. We honor those who fought through the years for equality by extending the Voting Rights Act to ensure their struggles are not forsaken and not forgotten, and that the progress we have made not be sacrificed. We honor their legacy by reaffirming our commitment to protect the right to vote for all Americans. The distinguished senior Senator from Massachusetts, who is on the floor, was in the forefront of this battle the first time around. He and his family, his late brothers, the President and brother Senator Robert Kennedy--President Kennedy, Senator Robert Kennedy, and now Senator Edward Kennedy, have been in the forefront of the civil rights battle. This has been a personal thing for them. It has been a commitment that has spoken to the conscience of our Nation, and I applaud my friend from Massachusetts for what he and has family have done. Reauthorizing and restoring the Voting Rights Act is the right thing to do, not only for those who came before--the brave and visionary people who fought for equality, some at great personal sacrifice, some even giving their lives--but also for those who come after us, our children and our grandchildren. All of our children, all of our grandchildren, should know that their right to vote will not be abridged, suppressed or denied in the United States of America, no matter their color, no matter their race, no matter what part of the country from which they come. I do thank the chairman for following the suggestion to convene the Judiciary Committee yesterday in special session to consider what really is bipartisan, bicameral legislation to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act. In fact, our Senate bill, S. 2703, is cosponsored by the distinguished Republican leader and the distinguished Democratic leader, by a bipartisan majority of the Judiciary Committee and by a bipartisan majority of the Senate. In fact, at the end of our committee meeting yesterday, we had a rollcall vote. We voted unanimously to report our bill favorably to the Senate. I mention that because so many of the things that have to go through the Judiciary Committee tend to be of a divisive nature. This was a unanimous vote. I have commended all those in the Judiciary Committee who worked so hard over the last several months to build a fair and extensive record and bring us to this point today. As I said earlier, I commend Senator Kennedy for his work. I agree with Senator Specter, when he gets passionate about a subject he doesn't need a microphone. I commend those who started with doubts--and there were serious doubts; some regional, some for legal matters. But those who had doubts have now come around to supporting our bipartisan bill. Because the bill we take up today and the bill from the committee to report are so similar, I know the Senate debate will be informed by the extensive record we have built before the Judiciary Committee. Over the last 4 months, we held nine hearings on all aspects of this matter and on the overall bill itself. In another indication of bipartisanship, those hearings were chaired by large numbers of members of the committee and chaired by both Republican and Democratic Senators who wanted to send a signal that this is not a partisan matter. All of those hearings were fairly conducted. Those Senate hearings supplement those held in the House on this matter. Indeed, our first hearing was held for the express purpose of hearing from the lead sponsors from the House and to receive the results of their hearings into our Senate Record. In fact, in anticipation of this bill coming to the floor, I have included statements in the Record in the course of this week to help make sure we have a complete record before the Senate before we vote. For example, on Tuesday, my statement focused on the continuing need for Section 5. On Wednesday, my statement focused on the continuing need for Section 203. They reflect my views as the lead Democratic Senate sponsor. We have fewer than two dozen legislative days left in this session of Congress, so I appreciate the willingness of the Republican and Democratic leadership to take up this important measure without delay. I know the House of Representatives had to delay consideration of the Voting Act for a month due to the recalcitrance of some, recalcitrance that was overwhelmed in their vote. Here, I hope we do not suffer the same delay. This is a time for us to debate, consider, and vote on this important legislation. We should pass the bill in the same form as the House so it can be signed into law before the Senate recesses for the remainder of the summer. There has been speculation about why we are here today. Some tied it to the fact that for the first time in his Presidency, President Bush is going to appear before the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP. I, for one, applaud him for going before the NAACP. All Presidents should, Republican or Democrat. And in fact, if that had anything to do with the success in getting this bill moved expeditiously through the Senate, I have a number of other organizations I hope will invite him to get other legislation moving. The House-passed bill and the committee-reported bill is very similar. We introduced them in a bipartisan, bicameral, coordinated effort in May. The only change made to the House-passed bill was the inclusion of a governmental study added in the House Judiciary Committee. I urge the Senate to accept that addition. The only change made during the Senate Judiciary Committee was to add an Hispanic civil rights leader to the roster of the civil rights leaders for whom the bill is named. We did this at the suggestion of Senator Salazar. It is a good suggestion. We did this unanimously. I commend the Senator for it. As Senator Salazar has reminded us, ``Cesar Chavez is an American hero. He sacrificed his life to empower the most vulnerable in America. He believed strongly in the democracy of America and saw the right to vote as a cornerstone of our freedom.'' I offered the amendment in the Judiciary Committee and it was adopted without dissent. I told Senator Salazar that I recall the dinner with Marcelle and myself, our son Kevin and his wife Carolyn, and our granddaughter Francesca in the small Italian restaurant, Sarduccis, in Montpelier, Vermont. A family next to us came over to introduce themselves. It was Cesar Chavez's son. He apologized for interrupting our dinner. He wanted to say hello. I told him how proud I was to be interrupted and to meet him because his father had been a hero of mine. They were in Vermont because they were going to the Barre Quarry where the memorial to his father was carved. I have also consulted with Senator Salazar. Neither of us wants to complicate final passage of the Voting Rights Act so I urge the Senate to proceed to the House-passed bill and resist amendments so it can be signed into law without having to be reconsidered by the House. With respect to the short title of the bill and the roster of civil rights leaders honored, I have committed to work with Senator Salazar to conform the law to include due recognition of the contribution to our civil rights and voting rights by Cesar Chavez in follow up legislation. The Voting Rights Act reauthorization is named for three very important civil rights leaders, as the Senator from Pennsylvania pointed out. Fannie Lou Hamer was a courageous advocate for the right to vote. She risked her life to secure the right to vote for all Americans. Coretta Scott King was a tenacious fighter for equality for the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and right up to the time of her passing. Many of us in this Chamber met the late Mrs. King. Everyone in the Senate can remember when less than a year ago the body of Rosa Parks lay in state in the Capitol. She was the first African American woman in our history to be so honored. She was honored because of her dignified refusal to be treated as a second-class citizen sparked the Montgomery bus boycotts that are often cited as the symbolic beginning of the modern civil rights movement. Everyone in this Chamber would be horrified to think that somebody would be treated differently because of the color of their skin, but in the lifetime of every Senator sitting in this Chamber today, we have seen such discrimination. Let's make sure we take this step. It will not remove all discrimination, by any means, but it is a major step to let everyone in the country know that all of us are equal as Americans with equal rights, despite the color of our skin. Last week, after months of work, the House of Representatives, led by Congressmen John Conyers, Mel Watt, John Lewis, and Chairman Sensenbrenner, rejected all efforts to reduce the sweep and effect of the Voting Rights Act. Congressman John Lewis--himself a courageous leader during those transformational struggles only decades ago, a man who was nearly killed trying to retain the rights of African Americans, said during the House debate: When historians pick up their pens and write about this period, let it be said that those of us in the Congress in 2006, we did the right thing. And our forefathers and our foremothers would be very proud of us. Let us pass a clean bill without any amendments. That is my friend John Lewis from the House of Representatives. I want our foremothers and forefathers to be proud of us, but I want our children and our grandchildren to be proud of us, too. The bill we are considering in the Senate today passed the other body with 390 votes in favor. In fact, the other body rejected all four amendments offered. They wanted to have a clean bill. They listened to John Lewis. They listened to the others. I congratulate the House cosponsors, both Republicans and Democrats, for their successful efforts. I hope we can repeat them in the Senate. On May 2, when our congressional leadership joined together on the steps of the Capitol to announce a bipartisan and bicameral introduction of the Voting Rights Act, it was a historic announcement. I noted in my journal it was one of the proudest moments I had in my years in the Senate, an occasion almost unprecedented during the recent years of partisanship. Let's not relent in our fight for the fundamental civil rights of all Americans. Working together, we should pass a clean bipartisan voting rights bill. Congress has reauthorized and revitalized the act four times, each time with overwhelming bipartisan support, pursuant to our constitutional powers. This is not a time for backsliding. This is a time to move forward together. So let us unite to renew this cornerstone, let us rededicate ourselves to its noble purpose, and let us commemorate the many who suffered and endured to bring our cherished ideals closer to reality for millions of our fellow Americans. Let us guarantee those rights for millions of our fellow Americans to come. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, before I begin, I assume we will go back and forth, from side to side of the aisle on this. But as Democrats are recognized, I ask it be in this order: Senator Kennedy for 20 minutes, Senator Durbin for 15, Senator Feinstein for up to 20 minutes, Senator Salazar for up to 15 minutes, as Democrats, are recognized. I ask unanimous consent to that.

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, as the Senate stands poised to conclude this debate and reauthorize the Voting Rights Act, we recall the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., in his famous ``I have a Dream'' speech, where he noted: ``When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.'' The Voting Rights Act is one of the most important methods of enforcing this promise and upholding the Constitution's guarantee of equal rights and equal protection of the law. We owe it those who struggled so long and hard to transform the landscape and make America a place of political inclusion to reauthorize this important Act. We all enjoy these protections and take them for granted. No Senator would ever be denied the right to vote, but the same cannot be said about millions of others. We act so that all Americans can enjoy America's bounty, its blessings and its promise. On May 2, our congressional leadership stood together on the steps of the Capitol--an historic announcement in an era of intense partisanship. We came together in recognition that there are few things as critical to our Nation, and to American citizenship, as voting. In sharp contrast to the tremendous resistance and bitter politics which met the initial enactment of the Voting Rights Act, our efforts this year have overcome objections through discussions, the hearing process and by developing an overwhelming record of justification for extension of the expiring provisions. Last week, the House of Representatives, after a month of delay, passed H.R. 9 by a vote of 390-33, rejecting all efforts to reduce the sweep and effect of the Voting Rights Act. Yesterday in the Senate Judiciary Committee, we did the same after almost as long a delay in considering the companion Senate bill. We acted unanimously to report the Senate bill. Now it is up to the full Senate to complete our work. As Congressman John Lewis said, ``When historians pick up their pens and write about this period, let it be said that those of us in the Congress in 2006, we did the right thing. And our forefathers and our foremothers would be very proud of us. Let us pass a clean bill without any amendments.'' I am encouraged that we are so close to accomplishing this today. The path that my good friend John Lewis has taken from Selma, AL, to Congress, from ``Bloody Sunday'' in 1965 on the Edmund Pettis Bridge to leading the fight in 2006 to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act, is a lesson to us all. The events of Bloody Sunday, were caught on television cameras, and those powerful images laid bare for all Americans the violence encountered by many African Americans trying to exercise their civil rights. It was a crucial turning point in securing the right to vote. A few days after the violence of Bloody Sunday, President Lyndon Johnson outlined the proposed Voting Rights Act of 1965, before a joint session of Congress. Later that year, Congress passed it so that the Constitution's guarantees of equal access to the electoral process, regardless of race, would not be undermined by discriminatory practices. Like the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, the right to vote is foundational because it secures the effective exercise of all other rights. As people are able to register, vote, and elect candidates of their choice, their interests and rights get attention. The very legitimacy of our democratic Government is dependent on the access all Americans have to the electoral process. Today we are poised to reaffirm a cornerstone of our civil rights laws. As we do, we recall the great historic struggle for civil rights led by American heroes of vision and strength, such as Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King, who passed away just months ago. We honor their legacy by reaffirming our commitment to protect the right to vote for all Americans. The pervasive discriminatory tactics that led to the original Voting Rights Act were deeply rooted. As a Nation, this effort to ensure equal protection dates back more than 135 years to the ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870, the last of the post-Civil War Reconstruction amendments. It took the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for people of all races in many parts of our country to begin the effective exercise of rights granted 95 years earlier by the 15th Amendment. Despite the additional gains we have made in enabling racial minorities to participate in the political life of the Nation, the work of the Voting Rights Act is not yet done. In fact, in the recent LULAC decision, the Supreme Court--finding that 100,000 Latino Americans were illegally disenfranchised in Texas-- affirmed that racial discrimination against our Nation's minorities persists today. It proves that the protections of the Voting Rights Act are still needed. We have this year undertaken an extensive process of congressional fact-finding. What it establishes is that we are right to extend the protections of the Voting Rights Act. In the Senate Judiciary Committee, we held nine hearings on the Voting Rights Act. We received thousands of pages of testimony, reports, articles, letters, statistics, and other relevant material from a wide variety of sources to inform our consideration. The evidence gathered, together with the record developed in a dozen hearings in the House provide us with an adequate basis for Congress to determine that the protections of the Voting Rights Act are still needed both to maintain the gains already achieved and to continue to enforce the guarantees of equality enshrined in the 14th and 15th Amendments. Much of the testimony we received focused on the continuing need for Sections 5 and 203 of the Voting Rights Act as essential safeguards to the rights and interests of Americans of all races and our language minorities. The record we have assembled and consider justifies the renewal of Section 5. This section requires certain jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to ``pre-clear'' all voting changes with either the Justice Department or the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. In doing so, Section 5 combats the practice of those jurisdictions of shifting from one invalidated discriminatory tactic to another, which had undermined earlier efforts to enforce the 15th Amendment. After ``enduring nearly a century of systematic resistance to the Fifteenth Amendment,'' Congress found, it was imperative to ``shift the advantage of time and inertia from the perpetrators of the evil to its victims.'' Section 5 continues to be a tremendous tool for protecting minority voting rights and a necessary one. For example, in 1992, the Attorney General used Section 5 to stop Wrightsville, GA, from relocating its polling place from the county courthouse to a private all-white club with a history of refusing membership to black applicants and a then- current practice of hosting functions to which blacks were not welcome. Even more recently, in 2001, Kilmichael, Mississippi's white mayor and all-white Board of Aldermen abruptly cancelled an election after Census data revealed that African Americans had become the majority in the town and an unprecedented number of African-American candidates were running for office. The Justice Department objected under Section 5. Only after the Justice Department forced Kilmichael to hold an election in 2003 did it elect its first African-American mayor, along with three African-American aldermen. These are just a couple of examples that are representative of the barriers to political participation that all too many American citizens still face today, in 2006. In addition to finding extensive evidence that covered jurisdictions have continued to engage in discriminatory tactics, we also found that the Section 5 preclearance requirement has served a vital prophylactic purpose in protecting against discriminatory voting practices before they go into place and securing the gains made in minority political participation. The record also supports renewal of Sections 203 and 4(f)(4), which require bilingual voting assistance for certain language minority groups, to ensure that all Americans are able to exercise their fundamental right as citizens to vote. According to the most recent information from the Census, more than 70 percent of citizens who use language assistance are native born, including Native Americans, Alaska natives and Puerto Ricans. Many of those who benefit from Sections 203 and 4(f)(4) suffer from inadequate educational opportunities to learn English. These Americans are trying to vote but many of them are struggling with the English language due to disparities in education and the incremental process of learning. We can and we must reauthorize these provisions to make sure there is no literacy test at the polling place. We endured a time in our Nation's history when such tests disenfranchised many voters. Renewing the expiring language provisions will help enable all Americans to participate fully in our Nation's democracy. The record also supports the need to amend the VRA to restore its original purpose in response to two Supreme Court decisions that have limited its effectiveness. The bill remedies the Supreme Court's holding in Reno v. Bossier Parish, by making clear that a voting rule change motivated by any discriminatory purpose violates Section 5. Under the holding in Reno v. Bossier Parish, certain voting rule changes passed with the intent to discriminate against minorities could pass Section 5 muster. Because such an interpretation is inconsistent with congressional intent and the purpose of the Voting Rights Act to eliminate discriminatory tactics that undermine the guarantees of the 15th Amendment, our bill fixes this inconsistency by clarifying that a voting rule change motivated by any discriminatory purpose also cannot be pre-cleared. The bill also remedies the Supreme Court's holding in Georgia v. Ashcroft. In this case, the Supreme Court provided an unclear and unworkable test for assessing a jurisdiction's challenge to denial of Section 5 pre-clearance. Congressional intent was to protect the ability of a minority community to elect a candidate of its choice. This legislation clarifies our congressional intent by setting forth defined factors to restore the original understanding of the Voting Rights Act to protect the minority community's ability to elect their preferred candidates of choice. It has often been said that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. We must make certain that the significant gains in voting rights over the past four decades do not suffer the same fate as the voting rights provided during Reconstruction. After the Civil War, the Reconstruction Act promised that the guarantees of the 15th Amendment would be realized. Between 1870 and 1900, 22 African- Americans served in the United States Congress. In 1868, Louisiana elected an African-American Lieutenant Governor, Oscar Dunn, and 87 African Americans held seats in the South Carolina legislature. However, these Reconstruction-era gains in African-American voting and representation proved to be short-lived. Following the end of Reconstruction, the rights of African-Americans to vote and to hold office were virtually eliminated in many areas through discriminatory legal barriers, intimidation, and violence. The changes were swift, systematic and severe. By 1896, Representative George White of North Carolina was the only African American remaining in the U.S. Congress, and it would take 72 years after Representative White left Congress for African-American voters in the South to elect another candidate of their choice to Congress. In Mississippi, the percentage of African-American voting-age men registered to vote fell from over 90 percent during the Reconstruction period to less than 6 percent in 1892. Between 1896 and 1900, the number of African-American voters in Louisiana was reduced from 130,000 to a mere 5,000. Unlike the short-lived gains made by African-American voters during Reconstruction, their exclusion from the ballot box was persistent. Only 3 percent of voting-age African-American men and women in the South were registered to vote in 1940, only 1 percent in Mississippi. These numbers provide a lesson we cannot not ignore. The passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 was a turning point. We have made progress toward a more inclusive democracy since then but I fear that if we fail to reauthorize the expiring provisions of the Voting Rights Act, we are likely to backslide. In his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, civil rights lawyer Robert McDuff warned: No place more than Mississippi has been torn by slavery, by the lost promise of emancipation after the Reconstruction period, by the resurgence of racist power in the latter part of the 19th century and most of the 20th, and by the legacy of poverty and racial separation that still exists. While people's behavior and people's hearts can change over time, vigilance is required to ensure that laws and structures remain in place to prevent us as a society from turning back to the worst impulses of the past. Occasional flashes of those impulses illustrate the need for that vigilance. Important changes have come to pass in Mississippi in the last 40 years--changes due in large part to the mechanisms of the Voting Rights Act, particularly the preclearance provision of Section 5. But, like the gains that were washed away after the nation abandoned the goals of Reconstruction in 1876, the progress of the last 40 years is not assured for the future. When we have such legal protections that are proven effective when enforced, we should not abandon them prematurely simply in the hope equality will come. Reauthorizing and restoring the Voting Rights Act is the right thing to do, not only for those who came before--the brave people who fought for equality--but also for those who come after us, our children and our grandchildren. No one's right to vote should be abridged, suppressed or denied in the United States of America. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is one of the most important laws Congress has ever passed. It helped to usher the country out of a history of discrimination into the greater inclusion of more Americans in the decisions about our Nation's future. Our democracy and our Nation are better and richer for it. We cannot relent in our fight for the fundamental civil rights of all Americans. Congress has reauthorized and revitalized the Act four times pursuant to its constitutional powers. This is no time for backsliding, this is the time to move forward together. As the Senate completes consideration of this important legislation-- the culmination of many months of legislative activity to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act--I welcome the President's statement of support today. It was a long time in coming, and the long way round, but he got there. The President is right to have spoken of racial discrimination as a wound not fully healed. We all want our revitalization of the Voting Rights Act we consider today to help in that healing process and in guaranteeing the fundamental right to vote. I was reminded today of when the President spoke dramatically last September from New Orleans' Jackson Square and pledged to confront poverty with bold action. I look forward to that bold action. He spoke then of helping our people overcome what he called ``deep, persistent poverty,'' ``poverty with roots in a history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America.'' I agree with him. We must, as the President said that night, ``rise above the legacy of inequality.'' That is a shameful legacy that still exists and still needs to be overcome. The President is right that ``the wounds'' of racial discrimination need to be fully healed. In my judgment, based on the record before this Senate, the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act is needed to ensure that healing. We heard so often during the civil rights movement ``we shall overcome.'' But it is not just a case of we shall overcome, it is ``we must overcome.'' I also welcome the support of others who have come recently to this cause and struggle. I welcome our Senate bill cosponsors who joined us after the companion House bill had already won 390 votes and even those who joined after the Senate bill was successfully voted out of our Committee, 18-0. It is never too late to join a good cause, and protecting the fundamental right to vote and have Americans' votes count is just such a cause. Someone who was not late to the struggle but who has been at its forefront since his election to the Senate in 1962 is the senior Senator from Massachusetts. He worked to pass the original landmark Voting Rights Act in 1965. On this issue he is the Senate's leader. It has been an honor to work beside him in this important effort. And work he did. To assemble the record required work. He came to our hearings, helped organize them, helped assemble the witnesses, and when Senators from the majority were unavailable, he and I proceeded with the permission of our chairman to chair those hearings. We would not be passing this bill without the overwhelming support that it will have if it had not been for Senator Kennedy. Of course, we also honor the senior Senator from Hawaii who likewise voted for the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and each of its reauthorizations. His leadership in these matters is greatly appreciated by this Senator and, I believe, by the Senate. I also thank the Democratic leader for his help. Senator Reid stayed focused on making sure this essential legislative objective was achieved. He worked with us and the Republican leader throughout. He is a lead sponsor of the legislation and was a key participant at our bicameral announcement on the steps of the Capitol on May 2. Throughout the process of developing the bill, developing the legislative record and considering the bill, he has never failed to go the extra mile to ensure the success of this effort. I thank our Chairman and lead Senate sponsor. As I pushed and cajoled and urged action he heard me out. Together with the other active members of the Judiciary Committee, we worked to assemble the necessary record and consider it so that our bill is on a solid factual, legal and constitutional foundation. I thank each of our cosponsors and, in particular, those who joined us early on, those on the Judiciary Committee, and the Republican leader. There are too many others who deserve thanks. They include Senator Salazar for his contributions throughout and for his thoughtful initiative to broaden those for whom this bill is named by including Cesar Chavez. I look forward to working with him to make that a reality. To all who have supported this effort I say thank you and know that your real thanks will be in the fulfillment of the promise of equality for all Americans in the years ahead. I wholeheartedly thank the members of the civil rights community. Led by Wade Henderson and Nancy Zirkin at the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and by Bruce Gordon and Hilary Shelton of the NAACP and by lawyers like Ted Shaw and Leslie Proll and all the voting rights attorneys who have made the cause of equal justice their lives' work, they have been indispensable to this effort and relentless in their commitment to what is best about America. I thank my own staff, led by Bruce Cohen, backed by a wonderful staff of Kristine Lucius, Jeremy Paris, Kathryn Neal, Leila George-Wheeler, Margaret Edmonds, and our legal clerks Robynn Sturm, Arline Duffy and Peter Jewett. I express my appreciation and admiration for all they do to make Congress and America measure up to the promise of our Constitution and the vision that Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King and Cesar Chavez had for America. As I said earlier today, all 100 Senators have no problem voting. They can walk into a voting booth in their home State, and nobody is going to say no. We have to make sure that everybody else is treated the same as we 100 Senators are. This is for us, this is for our children, and on a personal level, this is also for our grandchildren. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEAHY. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I want to make sure--I was not trying to force it to a vote. I know the distinguished Republican leader will speak next, but many of us spent a lot of time on this, and we want to make sure it will be--as one of the managers of the bill--we want to make absolutely sure there will be a rollcall vote. If nobody is seeking recognition, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, if the Senator will withhold.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Today the Senate will confirm four more lifetime appointments to our Federal courts, including two more nominees to important Federal circuit courts. Judge Bobby E. Shepherd, who has been nominated for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, is a U.S. magistrate judge and former Arkansas State circuit- chancery judge who has the support of both home State Democratic Senators. We were pleased to be able to expedite his nomination through the committee and bring him to the floor so quickly. Neil Gorsuch has been nominated to the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. I know that Senator Salazar is pleased that we were able to move his nomination quickly as well. Today we also consider two district court nominees, Daniel P. Jordan, III, who has been nominated to be a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, and Gustavo A. Gelpi, who has been nominated to be a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico. I have heard plaudits from around the country for Judge Gelpi. When they are confirmed, Judge Shepherd and Mr. Gorsuch will be the fifth and sixth circuit court nominees confirmed this year. Along with Judge Gelpi and Mr. Jordan, we will have confirmed 28 judges this year. This far surpasses the total number of judges confirmed in the 1996 congressional session, when Republicans controlled the Senate and stalled the nominations of President Clinton in an election year. In the 1996 session, Republicans would not confirm a single appellate court judge, compared to six already this year. All 17 confirmations in 1996 were district court nominees. That is the only session I can remember in which the Senate refused to consider a single appellate court nomination. That was part of their pocket filibuster strategy to stall and maintain vacancies in an election year with the hope that a Republican President could pack the courts and tilt them decidedly to the right. In the important DC Circuit, the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh was the culmination of the Republicans' decade-long attempt to pack the DC Circuit that began with the stalling of Merrick Garland's nomination in 1996 and continued with the blocking of President Clinton's other well-qualified nominees, Elena Kagan and Allen Snyder. The 28 judicial nominations confirmed this year by the Republican- controlled Senate surpasses the number of judges confirmed last year, 22. During the 17 months I was chairman of the Judiciary Committee and the Senate was under Democratic control, we confirmed 100 of President Bush's nominees. After today, in the last 2 years under Republican control, the Senate will have confirmed 50. So the fact that the Senate has now confirmed more nominees in the past 5\1/2\ years, 255, than in the last 5\1/2\ years of the Clinton administration is due in no small part to the much faster pace of confirmations of this President's nominees when Democrats controlled the Senate. I am pleased that the Republican leadership has scheduled debate and consideration of these nominations and am glad that the Republican leadership is taking notice of the fact that we can cooperate on swift consideration and confirmation of nominations. Working together, we can confirm four judges today. I commend the Republican Senate leadership for passing over the controversial nominations of William Gerry Myers III, Terrence W. Boyle, and Norman Randy Smith. The Republican leadership is right to have avoided an unnecessarily divisive debate over these nominations that were reported on a party-line vote. The President and Senate Republican leadership have too often, though, chosen to pick fights over judicial nominations rather than focus on filling vacancies. Judicial vacancies have now grown to well over 40 from the lowest vacancy rate in decades. More than half these vacancies are without a nominee. The Congressional Research Service has recently released a study showing that this President has been the slowest in decades to nominate and the Republican Senate among the slowest to act. If they would concentrate on the needs of the courts, our Federal justice system, and the needs of the American people, we would be much further along. I congratulate the nominees on their confirmations today and hope that they prove to be the kind of judges who understand the central role of the courts as a check and balance to protect the rights of all Americans.