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Mr. INHOFE. I have been observing this all night long and all of these legal scholars. I admire you so much, although I have to admit I have often said that perhaps one of my best qualifications for being a Senator is that I am not a lawyer. When I read the Constitution, I know what it says. It is very clear what it says. It says advise and consent. It is a very important process.
The reason I wanted the Senator to yield is you have been justly talking about the qualities of Miguel Estrada. I have met him, too. He is such a humble man. When you hear the horrible things said about him, it makes you cry inside. There was one thing that all of these nominees the President nominated have in common, and that is they are also eminently qualified. You have talked about his qualifications. Besides that, he worked in both the Bush and Clinton administrations.
Also, look at the rest of the nominees. William Pryor is the youngest attorney general at the time he was appointed and was nominated by the President. He has the highest ranking of the American Bar Association. Priscilla Owen has the highest ranking of the ABA. In 2000, she won 84 percent of the vote. She was supported by three former Democrat judges from the Texas Supreme Court. Judge Pickering--99.5 percent of his cases were affirmed and not appealed.
I think we are talking about people who the President has done such a great job of singling out and finding, the most highly qualified people. I wanted to ask you that question. Isn't it true that everything you have said about Miguel Estrada and his qualifications is true about all these nominees?
Mr. INHOFE. I thank the Senator from Colorado for yielding to me.
Mr. President, I want to share an experience I had at 5:30 this morning. One has lots of experiences at 5:30 in the morning on the Senate floor and in observing what went on during the night. There was something that occurred to me that I want to share, and I hope I can do it in this period of time.
There are two reasons this has been taking place, that they do not want to confirm these judges. One is ideology, philosophy. I hate to say it but unless one is pro-abortion and unless they are anti-gun, they do not want that person on the bench. But there is another reason we have not talked about, and that reason is just a reason of obstruction. We have been watching obstruction in all forms, but I want to share something and I hope people understand that this directly relates to the nominees for the judicial vacancies. I want to get the point across that it is happening to other nominees as well.
I chair the Environment and Public Works Committee. We had a person who was a nominee of this President, Gov. Michael Leavitt from Utah, one of the most highly regarded individuals in this country and certainly one of the most highly qualified ever to be nominated to a position of Administrator of the EPA.
We sat there and recognized how everybody loved this guy and yet they dragged it on and obstructed for days and weeks, just to drag it on out. So it is happening with many of the nominees.
Now, Governor Leavitt is a very kind and decent person and I really believe the most qualified nominee to be Administrator of the EPA we have ever been able to act upon. The way he was treated was just absolutely shameful. It took 56 days to finally get the nomination, five times longer than those who preceded him as Administrator, even though he had overwhelming bipartisan support.
I do not think anyone has questioned that the motivation of the delay was partisan Presidential politics. They set a new standard, new precedent, for an EPA Administrator. They really were not talking so much about him as they were trying to talk about the environmental policies of this President.
If my colleagues will look at some of the people who supported him, we had many people, including my ranking member, Senator Jeffords. He said it has nothing to do with qualifications of the Governor. At this time, I would say that qualifications really do not seem to be an issue on judicial nominations. It has been said over and over again, and later if I have time within my timeframe I am going to get into that, but this goes on and talks about various Democrats praising Governor Leavitt for this nomination and yet they would not confirm him.
Senator Nelson, who is a former Governor of Nebraska, served with him as Governor. He said: I believe nearly everyone, if not everyone, with whom Governor Leavitt worked in the NGA--that is the National Governors Association--would state that they had a favorable impression of him. I wholeheartedly support Mike Leavitt to serve as EPA Administrator.
We heard the same thing from our old friend Bill Richardson with whom many of us served in the House of Representatives. He is currently Governor of New Mexico. He praises his virtues. He has worked effectively with other Governors regardless of party, and he went on to say he is probably the best nominee who has ever been put forth to be Administrator of the EPA.
So he is highly qualified and nobody would deny that, and yet they turn this thing into trying to attack the President on his environmental record.
I have to quote from one person, Gregg Easterbrook. I have not quoted him on this floor before. He is a liberal Democrat. He is a senior editor of the liberal New Republic. He says in an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times: The Democrats are not as interested in Bush's environmental record as they are attacking President Bush personally. He says: Most of the charges made against the White House are baloney--these are his words--and made for the purposes of partisan political bashing and fundraising. He also contends that environmental lobbyists raise money better in an atmosphere of panic. He goes on to explain the real reason this issue was going on. This man was subjected to a lot of things, including 100 prehearing questions, and later 400 questions prior to the hearing. This has never been done before.
Then we had an experience that has never happened in the history of this Senate. We went back as far as Jennings Randolph in the middle sixties. It never happened in the history of this committee. The Democrats boycotted the committee. They did not show up. We have 10 Republicans and Democrats. We have to have a majority there and two members of each party, at a minimum. So they boycotted and did not show up.
Time went on and we started looking at how long it took from the time of the nomination, to the hearing, to the confirmation. In the case of William Riley, it was 13 days; the case of Carol Browner, 10 days; in the case of Governor Whitman, it was 13 days. Yet it took 56 days for this person to be confirmed. Finally, they did confirm and the vote was 88 to 8.
I suggest today if we had the vote on Priscilla Owen, she would be sitting in the Fifth Circuit right now; and Miguel Estrada, the DC Court; William Pryor, the Eleventh Circuit; and Charles Pickering, the Fifth Circuit.
For a minute I will dwell, if the manager will give me a couple extra minutes, on Miguel Estrada. I saw something happening that I thought was significant. I will refer to something that happened to me February 26, 2003, a year ago, when we were talking about the confirmation process.
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