The Senate has officially
reached the 60-year record for obstructing judges. But that doesn't bother Republicans in charge of the Senate, the ones who are doing all this obstruction. Because 11 judges were confirmed in last year's lame duck session under Democrat Harry Reid, and they should really count as Republican confirmations. That's Sen. John Cornyn's
reasoning, anyway, and his excuse for blocking the latest attempt by Democrats to bring nominees to the floor.
Cornyn objected to a request by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to vote on three U.S. district court nominees from New York. Ann Donnelly and LaShann Moutique DeArcy Hall are nominees for the Eastern District of New York, and Lawrence Vilardo is a nominee for the Western District of New York. Two of those vacancies are judicial emergencies, meaning judges on those courts are swamped and taking on more than 600 cases each, or have had between 430 and 600 cases for more than 18 months.
Cornyn said Obama doesn't get to have his nominees confirmed right now because Democrats "rammed through 11 federal judges" during the lame duck congressional session in December. He said "regular order" rules in the Senate mean those nominees should have been held over until the new year, when the GOP became the majority.
Had those judges been confirmed this year, Republicans could take credit for confirming them, which he said would "roughly be on pace" with the rate of judicial confirmations in 2007, when Democrats controlled the Senate under President George W. Bush in his seventh year in office.
Then he took a page from Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley's
playbook, and claimed those 11 judges as Republican confirmations to say that Republicans were indeed "on pace" in getting judges in.
Here's the best part, and by "best" I mean worst: all 11 of those lame duck judges were confirmed unanimously, so neither Cornyn nor any other Republican objected to not holding them over. But wait, there's more. "Three were from his home state of Texas and he had been pressing Democratic leaders to hold votes to confirm them—in that lame duck session." Of course.
So far in 2015, Republicans have allowed just six of President Obama's nominees to get a floor vote. Six. In nine months. That, again, is the slowest pace of confirmations in over 60 years.