To: Interested Parties

From: Paul Gordon, Senior Legislative Counsel, People For the American Way

Re: Senator Grassley’s Misleading Spin on Judges

Date: April 11, 2013

Yesterday, Sen. Chuck Grassley – the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee – made a statement that, if taken on its face, would convince an uninformed listener that Senate Republicans have been cooperating with President Obama in filling judicial vacancies. However, his highly edited view of reality leaves out vital facts that Iowans need to know if they are to judge for themselves whether their representative in the Senate is being straight with them.
Sen. Grassley said:

Yesterday, the Senate confirmed yet another judicial nominee. That was the 10th judicial nominee we confirmed so far this year, including four circuit court nominees. To put that in perspective, as of today’s date in 2005, we had confirmed zero judicial nominees.

Unfortunately, Sen. Grassley left out the details of that tenth nominee, Patty Shwartz. On March 8 of last year, the Judiciary Committee concluded that she was qualified and forwarded her nomination to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals to the full Senate. However, under Senate rules, the majority cannot even schedule a confirmation vote without the consent of the minority party (or a 60-senator vote to break the filibuster). For more than a year, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was stymied in his efforts to schedule a fair yes-or-no confirmation vote for Shwartz. But for Republican obstruction, she would have been confirmed a year ago; that she was confirmed this year is not something Sen. Grassley should be bragging about.

Sen. Grassley also left out the details of the three other circuit court nominees whose confirmation so early in the President’s second term he cites. All three were unopposed or nearly unopposed but nevertheless blocked for months by Republicans, always without cause. They are:

• Richard Taranto (Federal Circuit) (denied a yes-or-no confirmation vote since March 29 of last year, and finally confirmed last month in a 91-0 vote)
• Robert Bacharach (10th Circuit) (filibustered since June 7 of last year, and finally confirmed in February in a 93-0 vote)
• William Kayatta (1st Circuit) (denied a vote since April of last year, and finally confirmed in February this year in an 88-12 vote)

In fact, of the ten confirmed judges this year, a full seven of them were approved by the Judiciary Committee in the previous Congress and would have been confirmed then but for Republican obstruction.

Including all these victims of partisan obstruction as examples of partisan cooperation takes gall. It also shows contempt for the American people in general and, in particular, the Iowans who Grassley was elected to serve.

His statement continued in the same misleading vein:

Those 10 nominees are on top of a near record setting 112th Congress. During the 112th Congress, we confirmed 111 of President Obama’s judicial nominees. You have to go back 20 years to find a more productive Congress (103rd).

Again, this sounds like a record that Republicans can be proud of, until you learn a key fact that Sen. Grassley is hiding: Many of those confirmed judges from the 112th Congress (2011-2012) would have been confirmed in the 111th Congress (2009-2010) but for obstruction by Sen. Grassley and his party. President Obama started the 112th Congress renominating 42 people who had been nominated in the previous Congress. Of these, 17 had been approved by the Judiciary Committee in the 111th Congress but denied a fair yes-or-no vote. Once more, Sen. Grassley is including victims of partisan obstruction as examples of partisan cooperation.

This deception relies on people not being given the full picture. It assumes that people are kept ignorant of the fact that President Obama’s nominees, regardless of their strong bipartisan support, are on average forced to wait three to four times longer after committee approval for a yes-or-no confirmation vote than was the case for George W. Bush’s nominees at the same point in his presidency: For circuit court nominees, it is 153 days (Obama) vs. 37 days, and for district court nominees, it is 101 days vs. 35 days.

We urge you to write a story about Sen. Grassley’s efforts to obscure the undeniable fact that his party has been engaged in unprecedented obstruction of judicial nominees.

###