Prayer

PRAYER

Mr. KOHL. Mr. President, I have been in the Senate now 15 years, and I must say I never experienced what will be 30 hours, when this debate ends at around midnight tonight, that I thought were as off point and, in many ways, as not relevant to what we are talking about here-which is Federal judgeships in our country-as this debate has been.

In my judgment, that is because our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have not wanted to deal with the facts and have wanted to, instead, try to create impressions which are not true. Because the fact is-and it has been said now on many occasions and many times since this debate started last night-the President and the committee have sent to the floor 172 nominees since he came into office, and we have voted out 168 of them positively, and 4 have been held up.

So how can anybody claim that in fact there is a conspiracy to deny those nominees sent up by the President a vote? Mr. President, 168 have been voted on and are now sitting in their Federal judgeships, and 4 have been held up.

Furthermore, the vacancy rate at the Federal judgeship level is less than 5 percent. In other words, over 95 percent of all the Federal judgeships in this country are now presently occupied. When you have a vacancy rate of less than 5 percent, how can anybody make the argument that there is something sinister going on?

Just a minute ago, my colleague from Alaska suggested that in the Ninth Circuit, because of the vacancies, apparently, justice delayed is justice denied. That phrase has been used time and again to suggest that perhaps a third or a half of all of the Federal judgeships in this country today are vacant. Again, I repeat, it is less than 5 percent. It is at its lowest point since 1985 in terms of vacancies.

Now, on the Ninth Circuit, which was referred to by my colleague from Alaska, there are 25 circuit court judges who are supposed to be sitting, and there are but 2 vacancies at the present time. So how can we make the argument that justice delayed is justice denied because there are "so many vacancies on the Federal judiciary"? It simply is not true.

So what is the argument about? What are we spending these 30 hours on? To suggest that the Democrats are holding up the Federal judiciary by some vast conspiracy which, in fact, the numbers do not suggest in any way to be true?

In fact, when President Bush took office, we did have a vacancy rate of about 12 percent, and now it is down, as I said, to less than 5 percent, which is at its lowest point since 1985.

So to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, what is the point? Why are we spending 30 hours debating an issue which, in fact, is not an issue? If we want to debate ideology, that is an entirely different story. But that is not what this 30-hour debate is all about. It is about the assertion made by the other side that the Democrats are preventing our Federal judiciary from doing its job by decimating Federal judgeships all over the country.

As I pointed out here, in the most clear manner, in an arithmetic way, the argument in no way has any merit. So I wish we could move on and talk about the things that are really important to the American people today, on which they are looking to us for leadership: Our economy, our deficit, our unemployment rate, our health care crisis, our educational crisis, the problems men and women who are leading their regular lives every day face and on which they are looking to the Federal Government for at least some help and assistance.

They are not all hot and bothered about the fact that 4.5 percent or 5 percent of the Federal judgeships in this country are today vacant, which is to say that over 95 percent are occupied. They are not concerned about that. They are concerned about their real problems and what we are doing to try to alleviate them. And here we are, taking 30 hours and, in my opinion, just wasting it in talking about a problem which the other side alleges exists and does not exist.

Finally, when President Clinton was in office, and the Republicans controlled the Senate from 1995 to the year 2000, nominees were also denied votes in that era. They were denied votes because they were not given hearings by the Republican Judiciary Committee. So they were denied their vote in much the same way that some are being denied a vote right now. That is the way the process works. There is nothing sinister about it, and it certainly does not cripple our country's judicial system.

My colleague from New Jersey is, I believe, waiting to speak.