Sen. Elizabeth Warren wants everyone to be absolutely clear just how awful her Republican colleagues are, so she released a report detailing just how destructive they've been since President Obama took office.
“The idea that Senate Republicans are willing to leave our highest court short-handed for nearly a year seems shocking. But the fact is that, for more than seven years, they have waged an unrelenting campaign to keep key positions throughout government empty,” Warren said in a statement.
“This report documents the long history of Republican obstruction of Obama administration nominees—a story that started at the very beginning of Obama’s presidency,” she added. “Instead of preventing government from functioning properly, Republicans should do the job the American people sent us here to do by giving the president’s nominees fair consideration.” […]
Warren notes that when President Ronald Reagan was working with a Democratic-led Senate, about 80 percent of his noncontroversial judicial appointees were confirmed within 100 days of being nominated, including Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who won confirmation in the election year of 1988.
In contrast, almost none of Obama’s court nominees were confirmed in less than 100 days, with most—about 60 percent of confirmations—taking more than 200 days.
She also points out in the report that at the beginning of Obama's term, Republicans went so far as to try to eliminate three seats on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rather than let him fill those vacancies. Republican filibusters of those nominees, in fact, were the driving force behind Senate Democrats' decision to end the filibuster on non-Supreme Court nominees—the nuclear option.
Warren's report ends on a hopeful note: "Senate Republicans should have stood up to this extremism years ago—but it is not too late to do so now. It just takes some political courage." She's probably not holding her breath.
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