The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“NOMINATIONS AND HOLDS” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Senate section on pages S2439-S2440 on April 20, 2010.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
NOMINATIONS AND HOLDS
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I wish to talk for a minute about nominations and holds. The Senate's Executive Calendar contains the names of those individuals whom President Obama has nominated to serve in his administration, and those positions require Senate confirmation. The Executive Calendar also contains the names of those the President has nominated to be Federal judges--it is called the Executive Calendar, but judicial offices are on it as well--at the district court level and the appellate level.
Since President Obama took office, this Senate has voted on 44 nominees. Some others have been approved by unanimous consent, but we have had 44 votes on nominations. Of those 44 votes, 31 of them--that is 70 percent of the nominees we have confirmed--have been held over, filibustered, and delayed by days, weeks, and months. The average length of time these nominations have languished in the Senate has been over 106 days. That is 15 weeks--3\1/2\ months--from the time they were nominated to the time they were confirmed. That is just the average delay. Some have spent 1 full year in Senate limbo as a result of holds by our colleagues.
If it has taken this long to confirm them, these must have been controversial nominees, and these must have been tough votes and close votes for the Senate, one would think. Well, let's take a look--bearing in mind that it takes 51 votes to be confirmed by the Senate.
Sixteen of these nominees who have been held over, filibustered, or delayed were subsequently approved when they came to a vote by more than 90 votes in the Senate. Again, sixteen of the filibustered nominees passed the Senate with votes of more than 90. Another 10 have been approved with more than 80 votes--bear in mind that it only takes 51 to get confirmed--and 3 more with more than 70 votes. That is 29 out of those 31 nominees who, when they finally came to their vote, were approved overwhelmingly, by enormous bipartisan majorities, in the Senate. They have spent 106.6 days, on average, waiting to be confirmed by those vast majorities--waiting to be confirmed overwhelmingly.
The only conclusion that a rational mind can draw from this is that this is not about controversial nominees; this is about politics, plain and simple--the bare knuckles politics of obstruction, the kind of politics that says I don't care if you are qualified for the job for which you were nominated. I don't care that the Department of State or the Department of Homeland Security needs you for a critical job. I don't care. You are going to sit on the Senate calendar for months and months and months so that I can score political points against the President, so that I can inhibit the deployment of this elected President's administration into the office of the government.
Well, that is wrong and it needs to stop.
As of Monday, the Executive Calendar contained the names of 101 nominees--101 individuals for critical jobs in agencies all across the government that are now sitting on the Senate's Executive Calendar waiting and waiting. I want to address some of the judges who have been waiting for a long time, and I will ask that their nominations be called up and approved.
Mr. President, I will start with Judge Albert Diaz and Judge James Wynn, a pair of judges who are Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals nominees. So I will call up Executive Calendar Nos. 656 and 657, the nominations of Judges Albert Diaz and James Wynn, nominees to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Let me tell you who they are. Judge Diaz currently serves on North Carolina's Special Superior Court for Complex Business Cases. He was reported out of the Judiciary Committee on January 28, 2010, by a vote of 19 to 0. He has served in the Marine Corps and has 9 years of State court judicial experience.
Judge James Wynn was reported out of the Judiciary Committee the same day, January 28, 2010, by a vote of 18 to 1. He currently sits on the North Carolina Court of Appeals, the State's intermediate appellate court. He is a certified military trial judge and a captain in the U.S. Navy Reserve.
____________________
