[Congressional Record: October 2, 2008 (Senate)]
[Page S10501-S10503]
EXECUTIVE SESSION
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EXECUTIVE CALENDAR
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate
proceed to executive session to consider Executive Calendar No. 756,
that the nomination be confirmed and the motion to reconsider be laid
upon the table, that no further motions be in order, that any
statements relating to the nomination be printed in the Record, the
President be immediately notified of the Senate's action, and the
Senate resume legislative session.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The nomination considered and confirmed is as follows:
department of justice
Jeffrey Leigh Sedgwick, of Massachusetts, to be an
Assistant Attorney General.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, today, the Senate confirmed five more
executive nominations that were reported by the Judiciary Committee,
including the nomination of Greg Garre to be Solicitor General of the
United States, one of the highest and most prestigious positions at the
Department of Justice.
The nominations considered today also include Jeffrey Leigh Sedgwick
to run the Department's Office of Justice Programs, George W. Venables
to be United States Marshal for the Southern District of California,
Brian Albritton to be United States Attorney for the Middle District of
Florida, and another that I have agreed to discharge from Committee:
Dennis Michael Klein to be United States Marshal for the Eastern
District of Kentucky. I thank Senator Kennedy for his expedited
consideration of Mr. Klein's nomination. He has long been focused on
maintaining the qualifications of those appointed to be U.S. Marshals.
We tried as well to move forward with the President's nominations to
the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board and the Sentencing
Commission, but Republican holds prevented us from making progress and
confirming President Bush's nominees to those important posts.
After today's confirmations, we have confirmed 40 executive
nominations this Congress, including the confirmations of 13 U.S.
attorneys, 9 U.S. marshals, a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission,
another Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, Associate Attorney
General, and Solicitor General. Eighteen of those nominations will have
been confirmed this year alone, despite this being a Presidential
election year.
Of course, we have considered these executive nominations while
simultaneously moving forward with the confirmation of dozens of
President Bush's judicial nominations. I have spoken many times about
the partisan actions of the Republican-led Senate that created a
judicial vacancies crisis by not considering circuit court nominees in
1996, 1997 and 1998. Those years included
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the congressional session in the 1996 Presidential election year, when
the Republican Senate majority confirmed only 17 judicial nominations
and refused to allow the Senate to confirm even one circuit court
judge. That same presidential election year the Republicans confirmed
just four of President Clinton's executive nominees. By comparison,
with today's confirmations, we have confirmed 18 of President Bush's.
As we prepare to close this Congress, I thank the members of the
Judiciary Committee for the tireless work that resulted in the
confirmation of 68 of President Bush's nominees to lifetime
appointments to the Federal bench. This work was all the more
impressive because of the time and effort we devoted to rebuilding and
restoring the Department of Justice after years of scandals led to the
resignations of the Department's entire senior leadership.
At the beginning of this Congress, the Judiciary Committee began its
oversight efforts. Those efforts revealed a Department of Justice gone
awry. The leadership crisis came more and more into view as I led a
bipartisan group of concerned Senators to consider the U.S. attorney
firing scandal, a confrontation over the legality of the
administration's warrantless wiretapping program, the untoward
political influence of the White House at the Department of Justice,
and the secret legal memos excusing all manner of excess and subverting
the rule of law.
What our efforts exposed was a crisis of leadership that took a heavy
toll on the tradition of independence that has long guided the Justice
Department and provided it with safe harbor from political
interference. It shook the confidence of the American people. Through
bipartisan efforts among those from both sides of the aisle who care
about Federal law enforcement and the Department of Justice, we joined
together to press for accountability.
After we exposed and uncovered the abuses at the Department, we
referred a number of matters to the Department's Inspector General,
OIG, and Office of Professional Responsibility, OPR, for further
investigation. The three reports we have now received from those
internal investigations have confirmed the worst of our findings and
our fears.
The first two reports confirmed what the Judiciary Committee
uncovered about the politicization of hiring practices at the
Department. They confirmed that the same senior Department officials
involved with the firing of United States Attorneys were injecting
improper political motives into the process of hiring attorneys for
career positions throughout the Department, from career prosecutors, to
immigration judges, to young attorneys through the Department's
prestigious honors program.
Just this week, OIG and OPR issued a third report, this one
validating our findings about the improper and unprecedented firing of
U.S. Attorneys for political reasons. These findings add up to another
disturbing report card on the conduct of the Gonzales Justice
Department. This report confirms that the two most senior officials at
the Department of Justice--Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Deputy
Attorney General Paul McNulty--``abdicated their responsibility to
safeguard the integrity and independence of the Department by failing
to ensure that the removal of U.S. Attorneys was not based on improper
political considerations.'' It confirms what I have said all along--the
responsibility for this debacle was not the work of a few bad apples,
as Attorney General Mukasey, former Attorney General Gonzales have
suggested. Responsibility rests at the top, and at the White House.
This report might have told us even more if the investigation had not
been impeded by the Bush administration's refusal to cooperate and
provide documents and witnesses. In this debacle as in others, the Bush
administration's self-serving secrecy has shrouded many of their most
controversial policies--from torture, to investigating the causes of 9/
11, to wiretapping. The evidence in our investigation and in reports
from the Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility
shows that Karl Rove and others from the highest ranks of the White
House were involved in the firings and focused on the political impact
of Federal prosecutions. The White House should not be allowed to hide
from accountability.
Even though it has been clear for a long time that Attorney General
Gonzales allowed politics to permeate the Department's ranks, he
continues to try to avoid accountability. He has provided the Inspector
General the same response he gave so frequently to Congress: I don't
recall. The threads of secrecy of this administration--from the White
House to the Executive agencies--will continue to unravel for years to
come.
When this investigation was handed over to a Federal criminal
prosecutor recently to determine whether there was criminal wrongdoing,
I warned the President that the American people will see any use of the
pardon power or any grant of clemency or immunity to those from his
administration involved in the U.S. Attorney firing scandal as an
admission of wrongdoing and another misuse of power. His administration
has stonewalled the Congress and the inspector general. They should
come clean. They should have testified and given us the information we
were forced to subpoena. We do not want to see another repeat of the
Scooter Libby misuse of power where the President's people misled
investigators and then he excused them from their lies and evasiveness.
There should be accountability and consequences.
Our oversight efforts did not complete our work. In the last year
alone we have held eight hearings to replenish the leadership ranks at
the Department. We confirmed the new Attorney General last November.
Today, in confirming Mr. Garre's nomination to be Solicitor General, we
complete that work.
The position of Solicitor General is a critical post that encompasses
duties quite different than any other lawyer in the Government. The
Solicitor General is not only one of the highest ranking officials at
the Justice Department and the chief advocate on behalf of the United
States Government, but also holds a unique position as an officer of
the court, with a duty to bring forward aspects of cases that the
Supreme Court might not otherwise know. Because of this critical role,
the Solicitor General is often called ``the Tenth Justice.''
I remain concerned about many of the positions he has advocated while
serving in the Solicitor General's office and more recently as Acting
Solicitor General. For example, I strongly disagree with the
administration's position last year in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and
Rubber Co., a case in which the Supreme Court stuck a severe blow to
the rights of working women to equal pay for equal work and to all
working Americans. The amicus brief filed by the government, which Mr.
Garre signed as Principle Deputy Solicitor General, helped bring about
that wrong decision. I strongly believe it was contrary to the purpose
and intent of Congress' bipartisan efforts to root out discrimination
against working women.
For nearly two decades, Lilly Ledbetter, a supervisor at Goodyear
Tire, was paid significantly less than her male counterparts.
Nevertheless, the brief Mr. Garre signed contended that she was not
eligible for title VII protection against discriminatory pay because
she did not file her claim within 180 days of Goodyear's discriminatory
pay decision. That view contradicted the position of the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission, which had stated that each paycheck
could separately provide a cause of action. The administration's
position was wrong and provided cover for the Court to throw out a jury
verdict and compound the harm from the discrimination against Ms.
Ledbetter. I hope that, once confirmed, Mr. Garre will take seriously
the intent of Congress and the need for equal justice for all in
advocating the position of the United States before the Federal courts.
I also disagree strongly with the position taken in an amicus brief
this year signed by Mr. Garre in Crawford v. Marion County Election
Board. In this Supreme Court case Mr. Garre argued that Indiana's
requirement of a photo identification for voting was ``reasonable'' and
furthered the State's interest in combating vote fraud. He made this
argument even though in-person voter fraud has proven time and time
again to be a myth, and evidence shows that photo ID laws have already
served
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to disenfranchise some of the most vulnerable American voters. In
several instances elderly nuns who were not able to vote as a result of
Indiana's laws. Although the Supreme Court agreed with Mr. Garre's
position, 6-3, the Court left the door open for ``as applied''
challenges and statutory challenges to laws that burden voters'
fundamental right to participate in the electoral process by mandating
a photo ID. If confirmed, I hope Mr. Garre will act as he said in his
hearing he would to enforce the Voting Rights Act's antidiscrimination
provisions against State photo ID laws that deter minority voter
participation.
I hope Mr. Garre shares my view that it is vital that we ensure that
we have a functioning, independent Justice Department, and that we
ensure that this sad era in the history of the Department is not
repeated. We have seen what happens when the rule of law plays second
fiddle to a President's agenda and the partisan desires of political
operatives and it is a disaster for the American people. Both the
President and the Nation are best served by a Justice Department that
provides sound advice and takes responsible action, without regard to
political considerations--not one that develops legalistic loopholes
and ideological litmus tests to serve the ends of a particular
administration.
Jeff Sedgwick will also have an important role to play in the few
months remaining in this administration. The Office of Justice Programs
plays a vital role in developing the Nation's capacity to prevent and
control crime and compensating and assisting crime victims. Crime,
including violent crime, has been on the rise, particularly in rural
areas and smaller cities. Many of us think it is in part the
consequence of this administration's failure to provide financial
assistance to our state and local law enforcement partners. Despite our
repeated warnings, the Bush administration has systematically tried to
dismantle Federal support for local and state law enforcement that was
being provided through our successful Community-Oriented Policing
Services, COPS, program, Byrne grants and other programs. Under
President Bush, billions have been cut from our state and local law
enforcement efforts while we continue writing blank checks for police
in Iraq. I hope that Mr. Sedgwick helps us reverse this trend and turn
the tide back against crime in rural areas and smaller cities where it
has been on the rise.
I congratulate the nominees and their families on their confirmations
today.
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