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.
“PENDING NOMINATIONS” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the Senate section on pages S7296 on July 11, 1997.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
PENDING NOMINATIONS
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I noted yesterday my concern that the Senate is failing to proceed to confirm the four judicial nominees and the nominee to be Deputy Attorney General of the United States. The Republican leader had indicated that today he intended to take up the nomination of Mr. Holder to be the Deputy Attorney General, the second highest ranking official in the Department of Justice. Now it appears that the Republican leadership has decided not to proceed to that nomination but to hold it hostage to the confirmation of the Acting Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust.
I urge the majority leader to abandon this brinkmanship. There is no need to tie up a noncontroversial and consensus nominee for the important position of Deputy Attorney General. In my view we could have proceeded to that matter before the last recess. In any event, there clearly is no justification for tying confirmation of the Deputy to any other nominee.
Likewise, I again urge the Republican leadership to proceed to consideration of the four judicial nominees favorably reported by the Judiciary Committee over the last 7 weeks. Yesterday, we succeeded in reporting three additional judicial nominees. I would hope that we could proceed to their confirmations early next week. Confirming those 7 nominations pending on the executive calendar would literally double our production for the first 6 months of this session.
We are still confirming judges at a rate of less than one judge per month. Twenty-three judicial nominees remain pending before the Judiciary Committee, some have been bottled up in committee for as long as 27 months.
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