Contact: Mike Russell at 703-683-5004 (ex. 109)
May 16, 2005
The following statement from Wendy E. Long, Counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network, concerns a recent statement released by People for the American Way on the use of the Senate filibuster against judicial nominees.
"Once again, the extreme liberal organization People for the American Way is circulating false information. In its desperate campaign to rationalize the use of unprecedented filibusters to permanently block President Bush's judicial nominees, PFAW has produced a list of presidential nominees that it claims were subjected to Senate filibusters before the current Bush administration. (http://media.pfaw.org/filibusters.pdf)
"This PFAW list of 34 names, entitled 'Filibusters of Nominations', blatantly misstates the truth. There is not one single judge on the list that was blocked by filibuster. Of the 34 nominations listed by PFAW, only 3 were not confirmed by the Senate. For example, the list of purportedly filibustered nominees includes Justices William H. Rehnquist and Stephen G. Breyer, and Judges Marsha L. Berzon and Richard A. Paez. Obviously, these jurists were not blocked from the bench by a filibuster: the first two currently sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, and the next two currently sit on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
"Every judicial nominee on the PFAW list was confirmed by the Senate, with the exception of Justice Abe Fortas, who was nominated by President Lyndon Johnson in 1968, and after only four days of debate on the Senate floor, received such strong opposition from Democrats and Republicans alike due to allegations of ethical improprieties that President Johnson withdrew the nomination. Even the Fortas nomination was not killed by filibuster.
"Today, some of President Bush's most important and highly qualified nominees have been pending not for four days, but four years. They have clear majority support in the Senate. President Bush is not withdrawing the nominations. A minority of Democrats have vowed to keep them off the bench forever and deny them even the courtesy and basic fairness of an up or down vote in the Senate.
"PFAW is deliberately misrepresenting history regarding judges who got a vote on the Senate floor in the past and indeed were confirmed to the federal bench, as opposed to President Bush's nominees, who will never get a vote and never sit on the bench if the Senate Democrats have their way.
"If PFAW really believes in the 'American way,' it will stop this deliberate campaign of distortion and admit what Senators of both parties acknowledge: that the current use of filibusters to require a 60-vote standard to confirm judicial nominees is unprecedented in American history.
"PFAW should also stop misrepresenting material that is contained in reports by the Congressional Research Service, which it cites as the source of information for its chart. The actual CRS report, Order Code RS20801, accessible on the Internet, entitled 'Cloture Attempts on Nominations,' explores cloture votes -- not filibusters -- and states: 'It would be incorrect to assume that situations in which cloture is sought correspond completely with those in which filibusters occur. . . . [S]upporters of a nomination may move for cloture, in order to speed action, even when opponents may not consider themselves to be conducting a filibuster against it.
"As Senator Trent Lott has stated publicly this week, the cloture votes on Clinton nominees Judges Paez and Berzon in 2000 were bipartisan actions by Senator Lott and Senator Tom Daschle, intended to guarantee that there was an up-or-down vote on these Clinton judges: just the opposite of what Democrats are trying to do now, which is make sure there is never and up-or-down vote on the Bush judges."
To schedule an interview with a spokesperson from the Judicial Confirmation Network, please call Mike Russell 703-683-5004 (Ext. 109)
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