If Senate Dems Won’t Legislate, Spend the Time Confirming Judges

The Senate will need to remain in session 24/7 for months. But it can be done.

Dov Fischer January 10, 2019

Now the Democrats have announced that, if the President keeps the Government shut until Congress approves a spending bill that allocates at least $5 billion for a wall along part of our southern border, they reciprocally will refuse to participate in legislating anything in the Senate.

Oh no! What will we ever do! The Senate Democrats won’t legislate!

Under the principle of “Occam’s Razor,” sometimes the best solution to a complex problem is the simplest. This one is even easier because the problem itself is simple........... President Trump has been making these fabulous judicial nominations.! — Senators are allowed to insist that each and every nominee be subjected to a full 30 hours of debate on the Senate floor. It is a joke. Inasmuch as the nominee already has been through the wringer of Senate Judiciary Committee hearings — remember what those are like? — what is it that can be said further in thirty hours about a person’s qualifications that cannot be said in ten hours, five hours, three hours? The whole aim of the Democrats has been to slow down the confirmation process, to jam the machinery, and to sabotage movement in the name of “The Resistance.”
 

Right now, twelve highly gifted people are awaiting confirmation to the federal appellate circuits as United States appeals court judges, and approximately sixty others are awaiting confirmation as federal trial judges in their new roles as United States district court judges. At the rate of thirty hours per nominee, seventy-two such dragged-out confirmations would require 30 x 72 = 2,160 hours of Senate time for all to be confirmed............ Even at the blistering rate of convening the Senate for 24 hours per day, those 2,160 hours would take 90 days..............more days of clock ticks if you also would like to see the confirmation of a Secretary of Defense, Interior Secretary, Attorney General, and such. (And the Democrats complain about shutting down the Government?)

That focus is exactly what McConnell should be doing. The current Senate term has two years to go. Even at the pace of a 24/7 full-court press, it will take more than three months to get the current six dozen judges and federal cabinet appointments through. By then, a whole new crop of judges will have been named, too, and they also will need time at 30 hours per..........Just keep the darned Senate open and in session non-stop for the next several months, and get those judges and other Presidential appointments through ...........To Read More...