Restores? When was it not?
The headline should be: Senate Democrats Annihilate the Minority in a Historic Unprecedented Power Grab
The parroting from the democrats of obstruction by the minority is false and hypocritical as you can see by this one example.
In an attempt to create the perception of Republican resistance, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev), has taken the extraordinary step of scheduling contentious cloture votes for 17 nominees who were otherwise on the normal path to routine confirmation, claiming “delay for delay’s sake.”
Of course, these desperate claims are entirely false: the Senate has already confirmed more of President Obama’s nominees (129) than it did during President George W. Bush’s entire second term (120), and has done so at an almost identical pace (average of 218 and 211 days, respectively, from nomination to confirmation). Indeed, not long ago Reid acknowledged that the Senate has “done a good job on nominations,” and a Judiciary Committee Democrat recently noted that we have been “speeding up the confirmation of judges.”
Claims of Republican obstruction are not only demonstrably false, they are highly hypocritical. The very Democrats now seeking to manufacture confirmation controversy personally devised and carried out a systematic effort to block President Bush’s judicial nominees through an unprecedented use of the Senate filibuster.
Claims of Republican obstruction are not only demonstrably false, they are highly hypocritical. The very Democrats now seeking to manufacture confirmation controversy personally devised and carried out a systematic effort to block President Bush’s judicial nominees through an unprecedented use of the Senate filibuster.
It is a matter of historical record that beginning in 2001, Senate Democrats dramatically changed the confirmation process. Throughout the Bush administration, Democrats actively sought to block numerous judicial nominees, forcing more than 30 cloture votes as Republicans tried to end persistent Democratic filibuster efforts.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), voted against cloture a record-setting 27 times. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), cast 26 votes to filibuster Bush nominees and, in 2003, defiantly declared: “Yes, we are blocking judges by filibuster. That is part of the hallowed process around here.”
Not to be outdone, Reid took virtually every opportunity to block Bush nominees, voting against cloture on 26 separate occasions. In his view there was no amount of time—“not a number in the universe”—that would be adequate for debate on the filibustered nominees.
Rather than retaliate by continuing with the obstructionist techniques Senate Democrats invented and implemented, Republicans have taken a more cooperative approach. We have confirmed more than 80 percent of President Obama’s judicial nominees, approving a larger share by unanimous consent than under President Bush.
During President Bush’s first three years, Senate Democrats forced 19 cloture votes on judicial nominees; during President Obama’s first three years the Senate took only 6 such votes. Indeed, contrary what some Democrats now claim, the reality is that 84 percent of all votes to filibuster judicial nominees in American history have been cast by Democrats. For those same Democrats to claim Republican obstruction is the height of hypocrisy.
Bold mine.
I used this Senator Lee article just because. ;-)
