Filling the Supreme Court Vacancy

Floor Speech

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Ms. BALDWIN. Madam President, I rise today to speak about something that guides the work of each and every one of us--the U.S. Constitution. Each and every one of us has taken an oath of office to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. We all solemnly swear that we will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution and that we will faithfully discharge the duties of our office. Have some of the Senate Republicans forgotten this?

Last week a colleague was asked in a radio interview on a Wisconsin radio station if Republicans would be more likely to advance a Supreme Court nomination had a Republican been elected President in 2012. He said: ``Generally, and this is the way it works out politically, if you're replacing--if a conservative president's replacing a conservative justice, there's a little more accommodation to it.'' Do Senate Republicans really believe that they need a Republican President simply to do their jobs?

I would like to remind my colleagues that President Obama was elected to a 4-year term in 2012 with over 65 million votes. The American people decided who our President is, and according to the Constitution, the term the President earned has more than 300 days remaining. The voices of those 65 million Americans need to be heard and respected despite how much some people want to silence them, disrespect them, and ignore them.

On Supreme Court vacancies, the Constitution is also clear. Under article II of the Constitution, the President shall appoint judges to the Supreme Court and the Senate's role is to provide advice and consent. It is the constitutional duty of the President to select a Supreme Court nominee, and the Senate has the responsibility to give that nominee fair consideration with a timely hearing and a timely vote.

It is deeply troubling to me and the people for whom I work in Wisconsin that the Republican majority would choose not to fulfill their constitutional duty. Before the President has even made a nomination to fill the current vacancy, a number of Senators have announced that they will not perform their constitutional duty. This not only runs contrary to the process that the Framers envisioned in article II, but it runs counter to our Nation's history.

Now, some of my colleagues have claimed that the Senate history supports their historic obstruction. This is simply false. In fact, six Justices have been confirmed in Presidential election years since 1900, including Louis Brandeis, Benjamin Cardozo, and Republican appointee Anthony Kennedy, who was confirmed by a Democratic-controlled Senate during President Ronald Reagan's last year in office.

Recently, one of my colleagues on the other side suggested that the nomination and confirmation process for a Supreme Court Justice-- perhaps just this impending Supreme Court nomination--would be nothing more than playing pinata. I would like to point out that when playing pinata, children are typically blindfolded, spun around in circles, and then they take a whack at the pinata with either a bat or stick. It is as if my Republican colleagues have become dizzied by what they are hearing around them--perhaps Donald Trump's divisive rhetoric.

Do they see a Supreme Court nominee as nothing more than something to whack over and over, like a pinata? The violence of the metaphor is problematic. Have they lost faith and allegiance in their constitutional duties?

Today, the American people deserve a full and functioning Supreme Court, not an empty seat on the highest Court in the land. The American people cannot afford partisan obstruction that threatens the integrity of our democracy and the functioning of our constitutional government.

In my home State of Wisconsin, people get it. A recent poll there done by Marquette University showed a majority of the people believe that the Senate should hold hearings and a vote on a nominee this year. A majority of Wisconsinites also said they believe that leaving this seat on our highest Court vacant for more than a year will hurt the U.S. Supreme Court's ability to do its job. They are right, and their message to Washington and the Republican majority is simple: Do your job so the Supreme Court can do its job on behalf of all of the American people. The American people deserve better than a long-term vacancy that could jeopardize the administration of justice across our whole country.

So I call on my colleagues to join together on behalf of the American people to fulfill our constitutional obligation of restoring the U.S. Supreme Court to its full strength.

In the spirit of cooperation, in the spirit of bipartisanship, I call on Senate Republicans to end their partisan obstruction and do their jobs.

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