With a
nauseating display of self-congratulation, the Senate passed two highway funding bills on Thursday. The first is the six year bill (that's only actually paid for through three years) that the House has repeatedly rejected. The second was the short-term bill sent over from the House that will keep current projects from being shuttered, at least through the end of October anyway. McConnell touted his doomed long-term bill as "more than just another accomplishment for the Senate," and "a win for our country" despite the fact that it will be dismantled in a conference with the House and his Senate's time could be used for something much more productive. Like, say, judicial nominations.
That was a point Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was attempting to make before the transportation votes, in a tussle with Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley.
Schumer, the third-ranking Senate Democrat, spoke first, noting that the judicial vacancy rate throughout the United States is at 10 percent and 28 districts are considered judicial emergencies.
“Under the new Republican Senate, more than half a year into this new Congress, the Republican leadership has scheduled votes on only five federal judges,” Schumer said. “It’s July. They’ve scheduled votes on five federal judges. That … is a disgrace.”
In comparison, at the same point in President George W. Bush’s second term, the Democratic-led Senate had confirmed 25 judges, Schumer noted.
This is where it got really absurd. Just as McConnell and his team have been trying to sell the idea that the House would never have considered a long-term highway funding bill if the Senate hadn't spent the last two weeks on its futile effort, Grassley claimed that if Harry Reid hadn't forced so many judges through in the lame-duck session last year and counted them for Republicans, they wouldn't look so bad.
“Had we not confirmed those 11 judicial nominees during the lame duck last year, we’d be roughly at the same pace we were for judicial confirmations this year compared to 2007,” Grassley said. “So put that in your pipe and smoke it, the senator from New York. So we’re moving at a reasonable pace.”
Grassley has
tried this creative math before. The problem is, as creative as he wants to be, in reality the Republican Senate has shut down nominees, creating more and more judicial crises with each seat that languishes. It's just another facet of the massive failure Republican governance has become.