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” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the Senate section on pages S2985-S2986 on May 21, 2019.
The Department is one of the oldest in the US, focused primarily on law enforcement and the federal prison system. Downsizing the Federal Government, a project aimed at lowering taxes and boosting federal efficiency, detailed wasteful expenses such as $16 muffins at conferences and board meetings.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
NOMINATIONS
Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, this week presents us with more opportunities to make progress on the backlog of qualified nominees who are still awaiting Senate confirmation.
We began yesterday by voting to advance an exceptionally well-
qualified nominee to the Federal judiciary. Daniel P. Collins of California was chosen by President Trump to be U.S. circuit court judge for the Ninth Circuit, and the reasons why are abundantly clear.
Mr. Collins is a graduate of Harvard and of Stanford Law School. He has held clerkships on both the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court for Justice Scalia. He served at the Department of Justice as Associate Deputy Attorney General and as Attorney-Advisor in the Office of Legal Counsel. He spent 4 years as an assistant U.S. attorney. He has complemented that experience with more than 20 years of well-regarded work in private practice.
Mr. Collins has developed a reputation for legal excellence. The American Bar Association rates him well qualified for this new post. Our colleagues on the Judiciary Committee reported him favorably here to the floor.
I hope my colleagues will join me as we vote later today to confirm this fine nominee.
Following the Collins nomination, we will consider four more nominations to district courts around our Nation: Howard Nielson of Utah, Stephen Clark of Missouri, Carl Nichols of the District of Columbia, and Kenneth Bell of North Carolina. Each has been tapped by the President to fill important vacancies. Collectively, they represent decades of experience in private practice and decades more in public service, and they come before us with the high esteem of their legal peers.
Take the case of Mr. Nielson, whose nomination we will consider first. Former circuit judge Mike Luttig, for whom he served as law clerk, said: ``Howard Nielson may well be the single most qualified person to serve on the federal bench that I have ever had the privilege to know.''
It would be hard to come up with a more unequivocal endorsement, so I hope each of my colleagues will join me in support of Mr. Nielson, along with each of the nominees who will follow him this week.
I have noticed that a few of my colleagues across the aisle have expressed some displeasure that the Senate has recently been spending some time on nominations. I would remind our friends on the other side that not so long ago, thoroughly qualified district judge nominees were the kinds of nominations that would sail through the Senate floor by voice vote and in big groups.
Since this particular President was inaugurated in 2017, this Democratic minority has largely taken a different view. They have chosen to deploy an unprecedented level of systematic, across-the-board delaying tactics. The effect has been the need for cloture votes and individual consideration for all kinds of uncontroversial nominations, where it hadn't been a tradition in the Senate in the past. So more than 2 years into this consideration, we are left with too many vacancies still unfulfilled and a backlog of qualified nominees who need considering.
Confirming unobjectionable individuals continues to take more of the Senate's time than it should, but this obstruction is not going to deter us. We will be here as long as it takes. We will keep confirming highly qualified nominees to the Federal bench. We will keep putting the President's team in place and giving Americans the government they actually voted for.
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