Mark Dayton did us proud. Great speech.
http://dayton.senate.gov/news/details.cfm?id=237920&&FLOOR STATEMENT BY SENATOR MARK DAYTON ON THE NUCLEAR OPTION
How a minority,
Reaching majority,
Seizing authority,
Hates the minority.
Is attributed by the Library of Congress to a Leonard Robinson, in 1968.
So I guess there is a historical precedent for the attitudes of the majority in the Senate today.
The minority is treated often with contempt and disdain.
· Presiding Officers read their mail or sign photos while our Members speak on the Senate floor.
· Democratic conferees are excluded from the committee meetings.
· Our Democratic Senate leader is – again – smeared and targeted as an obstructionist.
For what? For leading the minority party's lawful and proper dissent to the policies and practices of the majority, as though the expression of dissent on the floor of the Senate were improper or un-American - or, now we are even being told - un-Christian.
When, in fact, it is the intolerance of dissent that is improper, undemocratic, and the charges that political or policy disagreements here are actions “against people of faith” are the slurs of charlatans.
We are at this brink - because during President Bush's first term, our Democratic caucus blocked approval of 10 of the President's judicial nominees, while 208 of his nominees were confirmed.
That is a 95-percent approval rate. Ninety-five percent of President Bush's judicial nominees were confirmed by the Senate.
But that is not good enough for this majority and this President.
Nothing less than 100 percent is acceptable. It has to be their way all the time.
A President who said he was going to change
· The tone in Washington,
· Promote bipartisanship,
· Encourage democracy.
Does just the opposite. He
· Demands congressional submission,
· Insists on his way, always
· Denounces and tries to destroy whoever disagrees with him.
I am astonished that the Senate Republican leadership has flip-flopped just because the President is now Republican instead of Democratic.
Republicans were in the majority in the Senate for the last 6 years of President Bill Clinton's two terms, and they certainly did not champion their now precious principle of an up-or-down vote for the full Senate for each of his judicial nominees.
To the contrary, they themselves prevented--or condoned others preventing--69 of President Clinton's judicial nominees from a vote by the full Senate.
Many were denied confirmation hearings. Sometimes one Senator singlehandedly blocked judicial nominations. They received no votes by the Senate, not by part of the Senate, not by all of the Senate, not once, not ever, not this year, not next year, not in 4 years, not ever--69 judicial nominations.
Republican leaders not only defended their actions to deny confirmation votes to Clinton nominees, they bragged about it.
Here are some of the statements they made at the time:
“The confirmation process is not a numbers game and I will not compromise the Senate's advise and consent function simply because the White House has sent us nominees that are either not qualified or controversial.”
Another:
“So we are not abusing our advise and consent power. As a matter of fact, I don't think we have been aggressive enough in utilizing it to ensure that nominees to the Federal bench are mainstream nominees.
“Do I have any apologies? Only one, I probably moved too many judicial nominations already.
“When I go around my State or around the country the last thing I hear people clamoring for is more lifetime tenured Federal judges.”
Regarding the use of the filibuster, Republican leaders were equally emphatic:
“It is very important that one faction or one party not be able to ride roughshod over the minority and impose its will. The Senate is not the House.”
“one of the few tools the minority has to protect itself and those the minority represents.
“Clearly, what distinguishes the Senate as a legislative body is unlimited debate, a traditional aspect that most Senators have felt very important for 200 years.
“The only way to protect minority views in the Senate is through extended debate.”
Their judicial blocking tactics are right, but ours are wrong.
Their use of the filibuster is good, and ours is bad.
How convenient. How self-serving. And how wrong.
It is bad enough that the Senate Republican leadership wants to change the Senate rules to suit their purposes and disregard 214 years of bipartisan institutional wisdom which understood and cared about - the proper role of the Senate in our carefully designed system of checks and balances.
As James Madison, one of our Constitution's principal architects, said during the Constitutional Convention in 1787:
“In order to judge the form to be given to the Senate, take a view of the ends to be served by it. First, to protect the people against the rulers. Second, to protect the people against the transient impressions which they themselves must be led.”
It is bad enough the Republican leadership wants to weaken the Senate's historic role and present responsibility.
But what is even worse, much worse, is that they evidently intend to violate the procedures and disregard the rules by which the Senate can properly change one of its existing rules.
They are going to use their own new and unprecedented procedure and disregard a ruling of the professional parliamentarian that their procedure violates Senate rules.
A senior Republican aide was quoted in today's Washington Post that Senator Frist does not plan to consult the Senate Parliamentarian at the time the nuclear option is deployed. The Parliamentarian “has nothing to do with this. He is a staffer and we don't have to ask his opinion.”
Of course they don't because they are going to throw out the existing Senate rules that they do not like and make up new rules that they do like.
Then they are going to ask the Presiding Officer, one of their own, to rule in their favor and then all vote to ratify what they have just done, even though it is wrong, and they know it is wrong.
They can't change a wrong into a right with a vote.
They cannot disguise a shameful abuse of power by calling it a constitutional option. There is nothing constitutional about violating Senate rules, there is nothing American about violating Senate rules, and there is nothing senatorial about violating Senate rules.
In my career, I have learned to be effective in politics you have to become a realist. To remain effective, you have to remain an idealist.
When I came to the Senate almost 4 1/2 years ago - I was both realistic and idealistic. I knew that the legislative process brings out the best and the worst in people. But I thought the Senate would inspire more of the best. That the 1,863 men and women who had preceded me into this institution - many of them the best, the brightest, and the wisest of their generations.
I thought their collective wisdom embodied in the Senate's rules and procedures would elevate our individual conduct and our collective actions and protect us and, more importantly, protect the American people from the missteps or the misguided attempts of one Senator, of a minority, or even of a majority.
My faith in the uplifting effect of the Senate was perhaps wrong or, rather, it was right until now. Now we are at the brink of desecrating this great institution. It will be a disgrace and a desecration if the Republican leaders of the Senate disregard longstanding Senate rules and substitute their own new rules and if a majority of Senators vote to approve this wrongdoing.
Everyone here should know whatever their honest differences of opinion about Justice Owen, unilaterally breaking rules because you do not like them or because you will not get your way by following them, is wrong. It is terribly wrong.
Now, why would the Senate's Republican leadership do this to the institution? To prove what, to whom? This week's Congressional Quarterly reports that the Senate majority leader told a group of conservative activists questioning his resolve to invoke the nuclear option:
Remember, before I came here I used to cut people's hearts out.
That is a very revealing statement. Not “saved”' hearts or “mended” hearts, but cut them out.
This ploy will cut out the Senate's heart of integrity. Why do it? From much of what I have read, this is being set up as a presidential purity test. I respect the majority leader's right to run for President. I respect that absolutely. I wish that it would not involve the institution of the Senate.
According to the executive director of the American Conservative Union, “If he - the majority leader - aspires to the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination, it is a test he has to pass. This is pass-fail. He does not get a grade here. He cannot get a C for effort. He needs to deliver on this.”
So this is not a constitutional option. It is a campaign opportunity, except that Senate leaders are supposed to deliver the Senate from this, from the President - any President - demanding that every one of his nominees be approved by a submissive body, the Senate; from political zealots and ideological fanatics demanding we give up our role and our responsibility so they can fulfill their delusional rantings of how Federal judges cause everything they cannot tolerate.
Because there is no doubt about it, getting 218 judges, instead of 208 judges, is just their beginning. And then, by God, those judges had better decide every case just right for them or it is “impeach, impale or eliminate.”
Self-anointed evangelist James Dobson - recently, on a national televised rally appeared with the Senate Republican leader - has called the United States Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy the “most dangerous man in America,” and he has demanded he be impeached, along with Justices O'Connor, Ginsburg, Souter, Breyer, and Stevens, that is, six of the nine members of the Supreme Court that he wants to impeach; a Court he has compared to Nazism and to the Ku Klux Klan.
Not to be outdone, and this is a contest of extreme, incendiary, vitriolic hysterics, the director of Operation Rescue has alleged that the courts of this land have become a tool in the hands of the devil, by which the culture of death has found access.
Pat Robertson has written that the out-of-control judiciary is the most serious threat America has faced in nearly 400 years of history, more serious than al-Qaida, more serious than Nazi Germany and Japan, more serious than the Civil War.
Don Feder of Vision America claims:
“Liberal judges have declared unholy war on us, and unless Christians fight back their faith, family, and freedom will be lost.”
He also promised that whatever prominent Republican was willing to take the lead on the issue of judicial reform and impeachment will probably have the Republican presidential nomination in 2008.
Not one to miss such an opportunity, House Majority Leader Tom Delay declared that the judiciary has “run amok,” and poses a threat to self-government. He threatens Congress must take action to rein in the judiciary and that such actions must be more than rhetoric.
And remember, before he came here, he used to exterminate things. So the threat of a congressional leader in running amok to take action against Federal judges must be taken as ominously as he undoubtedly intended it to be.
God's will and Jesus's word are hijacked by false prophets like James Dobson and Pat Robertson. The independence of Federal judges is threatened by Tom Delay. Now the integrity of the Senate's rules and procedures may be violated. And these are the men who want to run our country. They want to dictate who is elected, decide who will be appointed, and even determine who is on God's side, who is not.
Well, if ever - if ever - there were a need for 51 profiles in courage in the Senate, it is now, to save this Senate from those who would savage it for their own gain. The world will note and long remember what we do here, and we will be judged - as we should - whether we acted so that, as Abraham Lincoln said, government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish on this Earth or here in the Senate.
Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
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