Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, first, let me thank my friend and colleague from Nebraska for her indulgence.

Explosion in Saint Petersburg, Russia

Before I begin, Mr. President, I want to express our concern here in the United States for our friends in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the wake of an explosion on their subway system this morning. Russia has been in the news a lot recently, typically in adversarial terms. Today is a time to remember that, whatever our differences, we wish no ill to the people of any nation. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the Russians who were killed this morning. We wish a swift recovery to the injured and hope the perpetrators are soon brought to justice.

Nomination of Neil Gorsuch

Mr. President, I rise this afternoon on the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, which was just advanced by the Judiciary Committee.

This afternoon, it has become clear that Judge Gorsuch does not have the 60 votes that are necessary to end debate on his nomination. So now the focus is shifting away from the issue of whether Judge Gorsuch will get 60 votes on the cloture motion and toward the fundamental question before us: Will the majority leader break the rules of the Senate in order to get Judge Gorsuch on the bench?

My friend, the majority leader, has said several times that Judge Gorsuch will be confirmed by the end of this week one way or another. What he really means when he says that is, if Judge Gorsuch does not earn 60 votes in the Senate, which is now the likely outcome, the Republicans must--underline ``must''--exercise the nuclear option to pass Judge Gorsuch on a simple majority vote.

I think the majority leader reasons that if he says it enough times, folks

will start believing it--that he has no choice--but they should not. It is a premise no one should swallow. The majority leader is setting up a false choice of supporting Judge Gorsuch or he will have no choice but to break the rules. Maybe, to the majority leader, the nuclear option is the only option, but there are many alternatives. The majority leader makes up his mind independent of what Democrats do on issue after issue, but on this one, he says he has no choice. Maybe he has no choice because the rightwing of the Republican Party--organizations like the Heritage Foundation--will go after him if he does not, but he certainly has a choice to do the right and courageous thing.

Instead, Republicans are playing the game of ``they started it.'' They say Democrats started this process by changing the rules for lower court nominees in 2013. They fail to mention the history that led to that change. The reason that Majority Leader Reid changed the rules was that Republicans had ramped up the use of the filibuster to historic proportions.

They filibustered 79 nominees in the first 4 years of President Obama's Presidency. To put that in perspective, prior to President Obama, there were 68 filibusters on nominations under all other Presidents--from George Washington to George Bush. Under President Obama, exclusively, in the first 4 years of his administration, Republicans filibustered 79 nominees. They deliberately kept open the DC Court of Appeals because it has such influence over decisions that are made by the government.

We all know the hard-right Federalist Society and the hard-right Heritage Foundation want to limit what government can do. The deal we made in 2005--a group of Senators, the so-called Gang of 14--allowed several of the most conservative jurists in the land to become judges and be confirmed to that circuit court. Yet, when President Obama came in, our Republican colleagues insisted on holding three seats of that court open. They, literally, said that they would not allow the seats to be filled at all by President Obama.

Sound familiar? Merrick Garland knows it is.

At the time, I pleaded several times with Senator Alexander, my dear friend from Tennessee, to let us vote on some of the judges for the DC Circuit. I asked him to go to Senator McConnell and say that the pressure on our side to change the rules after all of these filibusters was going to be large. Let's avoid it, I said. But Senator McConnell said no.

Republicans had refused all of our overtures to break the deadlock that they had imposed. So if the majority leader wants to conduct this partisan ``they started it'' exercise, I am sure we could trace it all the way back to the Burr-Hamilton duel.

The fact is that the Republicans blocked Merrick Garland by using the most unprecedented maneuvers. Now we are likely to block Judge Gorsuch, and that means neither party has gotten its party's choice in the last 2 years.

We can go back and forth and blame each other, but in the recent history of the vacancy caused by Justice Scalia's death, we have both lost. We lost Merrick Garland because of the majority leader's unprecedented blockade, and Republicans will lose on Judge Gorsuch because we are doing something we think is reasonable in asking that he be able to earn 60 votes as so many others have. We think the two are not equivalent, but in either case, we have both lost.

We are back to square one, and Republicans have total freedom of choice in this situation. No one is forcing them to break the rules. They don't have to treat the nuclear option as if it were their first and only option. It is a false choice.

To my friends on the other side, the answer isn't to change the rules; the answer is to change the nominee. Presidents of both parties have done so in the past when Supreme Court picks failed to merit confirmation. Again, the answer isn't to change the rules; the answer is to change the nominee.

The majority leader should have the vision and courage to see past this impasse, and I believe he should seriously consider a different option. The President, Senate Republicans, and Democrats should sit down together to come up with a mainstream nominee who can earn bipartisan support. We are willing to meet with them anywhere, anytime to discuss a consensus nominee.

Now, I know my colleagues on the other side will say Judge Gorsuch was a mainstream nominee and Democrats would never support any judge nominated by President Trump. We disagree. We probably can't support any nominee whose sole vetting is by the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society. They were the sole gatekeepers for the Scalia vacancy, and each is well known to be a rightwing, wealthy special interest group dedicated to moving the bench way to the right. Their selection of Judge Gorsuch shows it. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post did analyses done by experts that showed that Judge Gorsuch would be a very, very conservative--many would say rightwing-- Justice on the bench. The New York Times said he would be the second most conservative Justice on the bench--second only to Justice Thomas-- and more conservative than the late Justice Scalia. The Washington Post actually said he would be the most conservative Justice on the bench, based on his record--even more conservative than the very, very conservative Justice Thomas.

In fact, we Democrats have never let special interest groups be the gatekeeper. We have never said to any special interest group, as President Trump did: Give us a list, and we will choose from that list. That is what Republicans did. We have never done it.

In the past, Presidents have done just what we are suggesting for selecting Supreme Court Justices. President Bill Clinton sought and took the advice of Republican Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch in nominating Justices Ginsburg and Breyer instead of Bruce Babbitt. President Obama took the advice of Republican Senators when he picked Merrick Garland--a consensus, mainstream nominee.

President Trump, on the other hand, ignored the Senate and only sought the advice and consent of rightwing special interest groups when making Supreme Court picks. He was running. He had to shore up his support on the hard right. So he said: I am outsourcing the entire selection process to two groups--which, again, are not consensus groups. They would admit that themselves--the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society. Lo and behold, the process didn't produce a nominee who could earn 60 votes. By contrast, Justice Ginsburg earned 93 votes and Justice Breyer earned 87.

So we are offering President Trump and our friends on the other side a way forward. They don't have to break the rules to get a Justice on the bench. They don't have to break the Senate confirmation process, fundamentally weakening the constitutional principle of advice and consent, to get a Justice on the bench. President Trump could simply consult with Members of both parties to try and come up with a consensus nominee who could get approved and meet a 60-vote threshold.

The answer, again, isn't to change the rules. It is to change the nominee.

We Democrats are not going to oppose every Republican nominee. Of course, we realize a nominee selected this way would not completely agree with our views, but Judge Gorsuch is so far out of the mainstream that he isn't able to earn votes to pass the Senate. Even Justices Roberts and Alito--two very conservative judges--earned a bunch of Democratic votes, and each got more than 60--one, in his nomination, and the other, 72 votes in the cloture process.

So the Republicans are free actors. They can choose to go nuclear or they can sit down with Democrats and find a way forward that preserves the grand traditions of this body.

The majority leader himself has said the one thing the two leaders have always agreed upon is to protect the integrity of this institution. He continued, and this is a direct quote: ``I think we can stipulate . . . that in the Senate, it takes 60 votes on controversial matters.''

Mitch McConnell: In the Senate, it takes 60 votes on controversial matters. He has long stood for that proposition for the many years I have been here.

A Supreme Court seat, I believe, meets the majority leader's standard

for 60 votes. I hope that instead of crippling the Senate in a partisan way--removing that 60-vote threshold for controversial matters like the Supreme Court--my Republican friends consider the option of working together to find a solution we can both accept. It may seem like a novel concept around here, but that option is always on the table.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, as we prepare to consider the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court, I would like to take a moment this morning to discuss the false choice Republicans are presenting about his confirmation.

The Republican majority wants everyone to believe that by the end of next week one of two things must happen: Either Judge Gorsuch will pass with 60 votes or they must exercise the nuclear option and change the rules of the Senate so that he can pass on a simple majority vote. As Republicans tell it, one inexorably follows from the other. They are talking about next week as if they have no choice but to go nuclear if Judge Gorsuch doesn't earn 60 votes.

It is absolutely false. It is complete hokum. This is not some inevitable showdown. The Republicans control this body. They can choose to go nuclear or not. The ball is entirely in

their court. In the past, when a President's nominee didn't get enough support for confirmation for whatever reason, the President just picked another nominee. If it comes to that, that is what this President should do. If Judge Gorsuch fails to garner 60 votes, the answer isn't to irrevocably change the rules of the Senate, the answer is to change the nominee. It is not Gorsuch or bust.

The Republicans are playing a game of unnecessary and dangerous brinksmanship. If it comes to a rules change--and I sincerely hope that it does not for the sake of the grand traditions of this body, for the sake of the advice and consent clause of the Constitution, but if it does--it will be squarely on the shoulders of the Republican Party and the Republican leader--a Republican Party that broke 230 years of precedent when it refused to even consider President Obama's nominee, Chief Judge Merrick Garland, with almost a year left in Obama's Presidency. There was no vote--not even a hearing--and Republicans accuse Democrats of the first partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee? What Republicans did to Merrick Garland was worse than a filibuster. They didn't even grant him the basic courtesy of a filibuster. Merrick Garland actually was a consensus nominee with Republican buy-in for the Supreme Court.

Second, President Trump totally dispatched with the notion of ``advice and consent'' by pledging, before he was even elected, to nominate a Supreme Court Justice off of a preapproved list of hard- right, conservative judges put together by the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society. Contrast that with Bill Clinton, who sought and took the advice of the Republican Judiciary Chairman, Orrin Hatch, in nominating Justices Ginsburg and Breyer. He did not pick his first choice, Bruce Babbitt, because Orrin Hatch said that would be a bad idea and could not bring the kind of unity we needed. How about Democratic President Obama, who took, again, the advice of Orrin Hatch when he picked Merrick Garland. There was bipartisan consultation. That is why the process worked. There is none now. The Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society are not simply mainstream organizations, as every Republican knows, but they are organizations on the hard-right of the Republican side who often threaten Republicans if they don't vote the right way--the far-right way. So we are not talking about ``advise and consent.'' We are talking about something that was done without any consultation and a political move by a President to shore up his base with the hard rightwing.

What President Trump did was worse than simply ignoring article II of the Constitution. President Trump actively sought the advice and consent of rightwing special interest groups instead of the Senate. That is another Supreme Court-related precedent that the Republicans discard. Because President Trump made that choice, now Republicans are saying they have no choice but to change the rules? It is illogical and self-serving. For all the handwringing of my friends on the other side of the aisle that they cannot imagine Democrats voting against Judge Gorsuch, I would like to remind them that only three of the current Senators on the Republican side voted for either of President Obama's confirmed nominees. Let me repeat that. Only three of the current Senators on the Republican side voted for either one of President Obama's confirmed nominees. Most voted for neither, and every single one of them lined up to conduct an ``audacious'' partisan blockade of Merrick Garland.

It is true the norms and precedents and traditions have been eroded by both sides. We changed the rules for lower court nominees in 2013 after years of unprecedented obstruction by Republicans on routine circuit and district court judges. Still, I am on the record as regretting that decision. But this is in an order of magnitude much greater than that. This is the Supreme Court. This is the Court that is the final arbiter of U.S. law and the Constitution. We Democrats have serious principled concerns about Judge Gorsuch, his record, his long history of ties to ultraconservative interests, and his almost instinctive tendency to side with special power interests over average citizens. We have principled concerns about how Judge Gorsuch was groomed by hard-right conservative billionaires, like Mr. Phillip Anschutz. We have principled concerns about how Judge Gorsuch was selected off a preapproved list of conservative judges made by organizations who spent three decades campaigning to move our judiciary far to the right.

Judge Gorsuch had a chance to answer these concerns in his hearings. We were all waiting and hoping, but our questions were met with practiced evasions. He couldn't even answer whether Brown v. Board was decided correctly.

Instead of considering the possibility of another nominee should Judge Gorsuch fail to reach 60 votes, our Republican friends are threatening to press the big red button for him.

Again, the Republicans are creating a false choice--Judge Gorsuch or the nuclear option--in an attempt to avoid the blame if they change the rules, and it just doesn't wash. The Republicans control this body. They are in the driver's seat, and they are the only reason that we are here today. They held this seat open for over 1 year so that this President could install someone handpicked by the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society--a lifetime appointment for this President, whose campaign is under investigation by the FBI for potential ties to Russia.

I just repeat to my Republican colleagues: You don't need to change the rules if Judge Gorsuch doesn't get 60 votes. You are not required to do so. You just need to change the nominee and do some bipartisan consultation as Presidents of both parties have done in the past.

Now on the ACA, Mr. President. The HHS Secretary appeared before the House appropriators yesterday and testified that, under his direction, the Department of Health and Human Services may try to undermine our Nation's healthcare system in several ways. Specifically, he hinted that he might make it easier for insurers to offer coverage without certain essential benefits and refused to say if he would continue certain programs that stabilize our healthcare markets. That is in line with steps this administration has already taken to undermine the healthcare law, such as when they discontinued the public advertising campaigns that encouraged people to sign up for insurance. All of these things harm our Nation's healthcare system, and they should be ceased immediately.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I rise this afternoon on the pending business of the CRA that would allow States to discriminate against women's healthcare providers.

Before I begin, I want to recognize the members of the HELP Committee. Senator Murray, who understands this issue as well as anyone in our caucus and speaks powerfully about it, has been such a great leader on these issues, even in these difficult times when we are in the minority. I think our entire caucus is grateful to her and all of the members of the HELP Committee. It is an outstanding group of people.

As my colleagues have explained, this CRA would empower States to discriminate against healthcare providers, specifically title X family planning providers. The practical result of this measure is that State legislatures would pass laws to deny certain providers the funding they need to operate, which would prevent access to family planning and preventive care for millions of American women.

This CRA is just another example of the Republican war on women. It would let States treat women as second-class citizens who do not deserve the same access to healthcare as men. Some States say this is about abortion, but let me be clear. This is not about abortions. In fact, title X funding cannot be used to pay for abortion services. Some of our Republicans who are sort of tied in a knot on abortion say they are for other kinds of health services, contraception and things like that, but this would take that away. Our Republican friends could not get TrumpCare through, which sought to shut down Planned Parenthood for a year. Now they have moved on to this measure. It is just bad policy.

Title X clinics are a critical resource for women, especially in rural areas. This bill would hurt those areas most. Many of my Republican friends represent rural areas. I would like to remind them that in many of these places--and I have several in Upstate New York-- these clinics are the only family planning and preventive care services that are available. Sometimes they are the only healthcare services available at all. I am sure that is why two of my Republican colleagues, with a great deal of courage--the Senators from Maine and Alaska--voted against moving to debate on this measure. They know that it would hurt women and hurt families in their States, particularly in the rural areas, and, of course, Maine and Alaska are both rural States.

For the second time this year, the Republicans had to beckon Vice President Pence down from the White House to break a tie here in the Senate on a measure that has bipartisan opposition.

President Trump, who once said, ``No one has more respect for women than I do,'' sent Vice President Pence down here to the Senate to break a tie on a bill that would allow States to discriminate against women's health providers. The next time the President says, ``No one has more respect for women than I do,'' I would ask the women of America to not look at his words but his actions because this is just another example in which the President has said one thing, but his policies have done exactly another.

I urge my Republican friends, particularly those in rural States, where this could really hurt, to please think about it and vote against this CRA. We only need one more vote to stop this resolution that would allow States to dramatically reduce the access for women to essential healthcare services. I urge each of my Republican friends to consult their conscience before they vote in the next hour.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise this morning on a few topics, but I first want to mention that last night many of us spent some time at the White House where we were regaled by the wonderful Marine and Army chorus, where there was talk about renewing a spirit of bipartisanship in Washington.

I am all for it. Of course, we Democrats hope that the President and Republicans in Congress will sit down with us in a true spirit of bipartisanship because so far in this Congress--the Republicans in this Congress so far--the Republican idea of bipartisanship has meant to both the President and the Republicans in Congress: We come up with our plan, and you Democrats should support it. That is not bipartisanship.

The Republican leader, the House Speaker, have come up with issue after issue, including a Supreme Court nominee, with no Democratic consultation, and then said: The only way you can achieve bipartisanship is just to vote with us.

You can't improve the healthcare system with only Republican votes on reconciliation, without consulting any Democrats, without a single sentence of Democratic input, and call that an attempt at bipartisanship.

You can't do an infrastructure package of tax credits and no real spending, and then ask for bipartisan support. And you certainly can't out-source your entire selection of Supreme Court Justices to be handpicked by the hard-right, special interest-dominated Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society, and then ask for us to vote for that nominee as a show of bipartisan support.

Bipartisanship means sitting down with the other side, getting our ideas, and hashing out a compromise. It does not mean proposing your policy--particularly when these policies and nominees are so far to the right--and then making an exhortation for bipartisanship and bemoaning the absence of it when Democrats don't go along with your way. I truly hope that the President and Republicans want to renew a spirit of bipartisanship, but it has to be real, it has to be meant, and their actions have to follow suit.

Nomination of Neil Gorsuch

Well, Mr. President, let's talk about the Supreme Court because that exemplifies exactly what I am talking about. Over the last several weeks, my Republican friends have tried to paint Judge Neil Gorsuch as the beau ideal of a neutral and impartial judge. They insist that Judge Gorsuch is a straight down-the-middle guy, someone who will call the balls and strikes. The majority leader likes to cite a letter of a friend of the judge who says ``there is no principled reason'' to oppose his nomination. Of course, there are several principled reasons to object to Judge Gorsuch. Today I would like to focus on one in particular: Judge Gorsuch's long career ties to conservative interests and conservative ideological groups.

The idea that Judge Gorsuch would simply be a neutral, mainstream Justice is belied by his career, his judicial record, and, perhaps most of all, the manner by which he was selected to serve on the Supreme Court. He was culled from a list handpicked by the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, conservative organizations that have spent the last few decades simply trying to shift the balance of the courts way to the right. Most of my colleagues on the other side know how far to the right the Heritage Foundation is, and they often grumble at how they are pulling the party too far over, but Judge Gorsuch was handpicked by that group, along with the Federalist Society.

Instead of consulting the Senate, President Trump outsourced his Supreme Court pick to the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation long before an election even took place. The Constitution does not say the President shall appoint the Supreme Court Justices with the advice and consent of rightwing special interest groups. It says he should appoint them with the advice and consent of the Senate. President Trump didn't consult the Senate; he never even considered it. He just consulted this list.

Surely my dear friend from Utah, Senator Hatch, must remember when President Clinton consulted him about his Supreme Court picks. Senator Hatch told the President not to select Bruce Babbitt and offered instead the names of Ginsburg and Breyer. President Clinton listened to Senator Hatch and nominated them instead. Surely my good friend from Utah also remembers when he suggested to President Obama that Merrick Garland be nominated to the Supreme Court, calling him a fine man. President Obama listened and made him his pick.

President Trump is different from all of the past Presidents in so many ways, so many of them unfortunate, and here is one: Even before being elected to office, President Trump swore off the entire process and outsourced the advice and consent process to a list selected by two ultraconservative organizations.

Take the Heritage Foundation, for example. Are they down the middle? Are they unbiased? Well, let's listen to some of the things they believe in, which are way different from most Americans. It is a group that believes ``freedom'' means businesses have the right to discriminate against LGBT people. This is a group that believes ``limited government'' means eliminating resources for the Violence Against Women Act. This is a group that believes a strong national defense means discriminatory Executive orders that bar immigrants and refugees from Muslim-majority countries. This is a group that holds extreme-right positions, a group that is far, far out of the American mainstream--and is even out of the Republican mainstream so many times--and they have handpicked Neil Gorsuch to have a seat on the highest Court in the land.

Does anyone think the Heritage Foundation or the Federalist Society would put on their list a judicial moderate who would only call balls and strikes? Does anyone think there would be all this outside, dark, undisclosed money being spent to support Judge Gorsuch's nomination if he were just someone who called balls and strikes? No. There is a reason all of this dark money is being spent to support him. There is a reason the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation liked Judge Gorsuch enough to put him on the President's short list. There is a reason the President pledged to select only from this list. He wanted to curry favor with skeptical hard-right, special interest-dominated conservatives during his campaign. So the idea that Judge Gorsuch would simply be some neutral Justice does not hold water.

When Republicans say that if Democrats will not support Judge Gorsuch, we will not support any Republican-nominated judge, that is simply not true. We have several reasons to be concerned with Judge Gorsuch specifically, and specifically one of those things we are concerned about is that he was pushed forward from the Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society, groomed by billionaire conservatives like Mr. Anschutz, another hard-right, special interest person.

Judge Gorsuch had a chance. Most of us waited till after the hearings because at the hearings he had a chance to distance himself from these views, but he refused to substantively answer question after question.

So if Judge Neil Gorsuch fails to reach 60 votes, which, by the way, the American people believe is the appropriate standard for a Supreme Court nominee, it is not because Democrats are being obstructionists; it is because he failed to convince 60 Senators that he belongs on the Supreme Court. In that event, the answer is not to permanently change the rules and traditions of the Senate; the answer is to change the nominee and do what President Clinton and President Obama did before they nominated people: Consult the other party for some semblance of bipartisanship.

The majority is trying to make this a binary choice: Confirm Gorsuch or change the rules. It is not so; it is just not so. The idea that if Judge Gorsuch can't get 60, we must immediately move to change the rules is a false narrative. If the majority chooses to go that route, they do so at their own volition. No one is forcing them to do so,

except maybe the Heritage Foundation and groups like the Federalist Society.

Border Wall

Mr. President, there is one thing I want to say about the wall. I talked about the wall yesterday, and I am not going to elaborate, but I would like to add to the Record a quote about the wall from none other than the Secretary of Interior, former Republican Congressman, Mr. Zinke, from Montana. Here is what he said. This is his quote about the wall, and I hope my colleagues will listen:

The border is complicated, as far as building a physical

wall. . . . The Rio Grande, what side of the river are you

going to put the wall? We're not going to put it on our side

and cede the river to Mexico. And we're probably not going to

put it in the middle of the river.

Affordable Care Act

Mr. President, finally, on the Affordable Care Act, today, 44 Senate Democrats are sending a letter to the President who puts onto paper our official offer to work with him to improve the existing law.

Last Friday, in the wake of TrumpCare's defeat in the House, I was deeply concerned to hear the President say that he wants the Affordable Care Act to ``explode.'' The President and his HHS Secretary, Tom Price, have significant latitude to either improve the law or undermine it. So far, the President has undermined the law. These were all before the vote: He discontinued the advertising campaigns to get people to sign up for coverage and worked behind the scenes to give insurers flexibility to offer less generous care, and, still, the President's Executive order directing agencies to help him repeal and replace the ACA is hanging out there after the defeat or lack of a vote in the House, causing instability in the market and giving Federal agencies permission to undermine the law. That should be rescinded.

What our letter says today is simple: If the President drops these efforts to undermine the law, we Democrats stand ready to sit down with him and with our Republican friends across the aisle in good faith to discuss a bipartisan approach to improving our healthcare system.

It is time to work together to make healthcare even more affordable but not to encourage or root for the failure of the law that would have devastating consequences for millions of Americans.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Reservation of Leader Time

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, first I will speak on the Supreme Court. Last Thursday, I announced my opposition to Judge Neil Gorsuch and endeavored to explain why, on the merits, I don't believe he deserves to be elevated to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court.

I listen to my friend, the distinguished majority leader, each morning. Since the beginning of this Congress, he has chalked up every Democratic request or objection in this body to ``sour grapes,'' to some leftover resentment from the election. It is just not true, but he keeps trying. Now he is trying the same strategy with Judge Gorsuch. He repeatedly cites a quote by a friend of the judge's who, of course, said ``there is no principled reason'' to oppose this nomination, so it must be politics, the majority leader concludes. I respectfully but wholeheartedly disagree with the majority leader on this point.

There are several principled reasons to oppose Judge Gorsuch's nomination.

First, Judge Gorsuch was unable to sufficiently convince me that he would be an independent check on a President who has shown almost no restraint from Executive overreach. He asserted independence but could not point to a single thing in his record to guarantee it.

He refused to publicly condemn what the President did when he went after the three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit. He had a case before them, and the President said: If they don't decide my way, they will be guilty of terrorism. I have never seen anything like that in all my years of politics. Judge Gorsuch refused to publicly condemn. He said privately to different people that he was disheartened. When President Trump said: He didn't mean me, Judge Gorsuch shrugged his shoulders, going along with what the President said.

Second, he was unable to convince me that he would be a mainstream Justice who could rule free from the biases of politics and ideology. His career, his early writings, and his judicial record suggest not a neutral legal mind but instead someone with a deep-seated conservative ideology. He was championed by the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation and has not shown 1 inch of difference between his views and theirs. I would ask my colleagues this question: Are all these groups who are spending dark, secret, undisclosed money to support his nomination doing so because they just want a Justice on the Court who will ``call balls and strikes''? I doubt it. Some here may agree with the Heritage Foundation, but they are not a mainstream organization. They are on the far right. That is their right to be. But their advocacy of Judge Gorsuch suggests he is not a ``balls and strikes'' guy.

Finally, Judge Gorsuch is someone who almost instinctively favors the powerful over the weak and corporations over working Americans. That is what his record shows. Judge Gorsuch repeatedly sided with insurance companies that wanted to deny disability benefits to employees, and in employment discrimination cases, he sided with employers the great majority of the time.

He wrote--in dissent--that trucking company executives were right to fire truckdriver Alphonse Maddin for leaving his trailer in order to save his life. And just last week, we saw another example of how extreme Judge Gorsuch's views are when the Supreme Court unanimously rebuked his interpretation of the Individuals with Disabilities Act. In the opinion of even Justice Thomas, the educational rights Judge Gorsuch would allow to disabled students under the law amount to no education at all.

Judge Gorsuch's opportunity to disabuse us of all of those objections was in the hearing process, but he declined to substantively answer question after question. Absent a real description of his judicial philosophy, all we have to go on is his record--a record that landed Judge Gorsuch on the lists of the conservative Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation. President Trump, of course, selected Judge Gorsuch off those preapproved conservative lists, as he promised he would during his campaign.

To claim, as the majority leader does, that Judge Gorsuch is simply a neutral judge is belied by his history since his college days, his own judicial record, and the manner of his selection.

These are principled reasons to oppose Judge Gorsuch, even if people on the other side disagree with them. We need a Justice who will be an independent check on the President. We need someone who will consider fairly the plight of average citizens, not further tip the scales of justice in favor of already powerful corporations. Judge Gorsuch--his record and his performance in the hearing--did nothing to show me he could be that kind of Justice.

So when Republicans said that if Democrats won't support Judge Gorsuch, we won't support any Republican-nominated judge, that is simply not true. It may be hard for us to support anyone from a list culled by the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, but we have several reasons to be concerned with Judge Gorsuch specifically.

For all the hand-wringing by my friends on the other side of the aisle that they cannot imagine Democrats voting against Judge Gorsuch, I would like to remind them that only three--three--of the current Senators on the Republican side voted for either of President Obama's confirmed nominees, and all of them went along with my friend the majority leader's unprecedented plan to refuse President Obama's third nominee, Judge Garland, even a hearing or a vote for nearly a year.

Which brings us back to the present day, where we Democrats have participated in a fair, transparent, and thorough process of advice and consent. Now that the time to decide whether to provide consent approaches, we take that responsibility seriously. A lifetime appointment on the highest Court of the land is not something to be taken lightly.

To participate in hearings and a thorough process--something we were denied--does not mean you have to be a rubberstamp. After a thorough review of Judge Gorsuch's record, many of my colleagues and I have concluded we cannot consent.

If Judge Gorsuch fails to reach 60 votes, it will not be because Democrats are being obstructionists, it will be because he failed to convince 60 Senators that he belongs on the Supreme Court.

My friend the majority leader made the decision to break 230 years of Senate precedent by holding this seat open for over a year. If the nominee cannot earn the support of 60 Senators, the answer is not to break precedent by fundamentally and permanently changing the rules and traditions of the Senate; the answer is to change the nominee. This idea that if Judge Gorsuch doesn't get 60 votes, the majority leader has to inexorably change the rules of the Senate--that idea is utter bunk.

It is the free choice of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to pursue a change in rules if that is what they decide. And I would remind the majority leader that he doesn't come to this decision with clean hands. He blocked Merrick Garland for over a year. We wouldn't even be here if Judge Garland had been given fair consideration. That is why we are here today--not because of any Democrat.

Mr. President, finally, on the wall--a place where there may be more agreement between some of us than on Judge Garland--last night we learned that the Trump administration will be seeking deep cuts to critical domestic programs in order to pay for a border wall. The administration is asking the American taxpayer to cover the cost of a wall--unneeded, ineffective, and absurdly expensive--that Mexico was supposed to pay for. He is cutting programs that are vital to the middle class in order to get that done.

They want to cut the New Starts Transportation Program and TIGER grants. These are the lifeblood of our road and tunnel and bridge building efforts. Build a wall or repair or build a bridge or tunnel or road in your community? What a choice. They want to cut off NIH funding for cancer research to pay for the wall. How many Americans would support that decision? They want to cut programs that create jobs and improve people's lives--all so the President can get his ``big, beautiful wall''--a wall that we don't need and that will be utterly ineffective. Think about that. The President wants to slow down cancer research and make the middle-class taxpayer shoulder the cost of a wall that Mexico was supposed to pay for. He wants to cut funding for roads and bridges to build a wall that Mexico was supposed to pay for.

The proposed cuts the administration sent up last night will not receive the support of very many people, I believe, in this Chamber. These cuts would be bad for the American people. They are not what the American people want, and they are completely against one of the President's core promises in his campaign. I believe they will be vigorously opposed by Members on both sides of the aisle.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I rise this afternoon on a few topics. First, on the investigation into the Trump campaign's potential ties to Russia, this is a matter of such gravity, we need to get it right. There should be no doubt about the integrity and impartiality of the investigation, either in the executive branch, where the FBI and Department of Justice are looking into it, or in Congress, where the Intelligence Committees of both Chambers are conducting an investigation.

Unfortunately, the House Intelligence Committee has come under a cloud of suspicion and partisanship. A few months ago, Chairman Nunes spoke to reporters at the request of the White House to tamp down stories on the links between the Trump campaign and Russia, which is exactly what his committee now must investigate. This past week, Chairman Nunes broke with the committee process and tradition to brief the President on information he had learned but hadn't yet shared with the committee. We have learned this morning that Chairman Nunes was at the White House the day before that event--doing what? We don't know. It could very well be the case that Chairman Nunes was briefing members of the administration about an investigation of which they are the subject.

Chairman Nunes is falling down on the job and seems to be more interested in protecting the President than in seeking the truth. You cannot have the person in charge of an impartial investigation be partial to one side. It is an inherent contradiction, and it undermines decades of bipartisan cooperation on the Intelligence Committee, which handles such sensitive information paramount to national security. It undermines Congress as a coequal branch of government meant to hold the executive branch accountable for its actions, and it corrodes the American people's confidence in our government.

If Speaker Ryan wants the House to have a credible investigation, he needs to replace Chairman Nunes. Congress was meant by the Framers to be separate and equal, and I sincerely worry that under his direction, Mr. Nunes is pushing the committee into a direction of obsequiousness and not one that is asking the hard questions and getting the important answers.

There has always been a grand tradition of bipartisanship on the Intelligence Committee. When Members go into the SCIF, the room where they get secure briefings, they check their partisanship at the door. Chairman Nunes is right on the edge of doing permanent damage to that grand tradition of bipartisanship. Chairman Nunes seems to be more of a partisan for the President than an impartial actor. He has not been cooperating like someone who is interested in getting to the unvarnished truth. His actions look like those of someone who is interested in protecting the President and his party, and that doesn't work when the goal of the committee is to investigate Russia and its connection to the President and his campaign.

Without further ado, Speaker Ryan should replace Chairman Nunes.

Mr. President, on another matter, the failure of TrumpCare this past Friday was a good day for the American people. We can finally put to bed the disaster of a bill that was TrumpCare, which would have resulted in spottier coverage, 24 million fewer Americans with health coverage, and higher costs, premiums, and deductibles for the middle class, the working poor, and older Americans, all to finance close to $600 billion in tax breaks for wealthy Americans. Americans should breathe a sigh of relief that TrumpCare will not become law. We are happy that it is gone. We can finally move on.

As I have said many times, we Democrats, provided our Republican colleagues drop ``replace'' and stop undermining the ACA, are willing to work with our Republican friends to improve the existing law. No one ever said the Affordable Care Act was perfect. We have ideas to improve it; hopefully, our colleagues on the Republican side do as well. I hope once ``replace'' is dropped and the ACA is no longer undermined by the administration, we can sit down and talk about it.

Unfortunately, the administration has already done several things that undermine the law and hurt the people. During the final weeks of open enrollment, the Trump administration discontinued the public advertising campaigns that encouraged people to sign up for insurance. The administration is working behind the scenes to give insurers flexibility to offer Americans less coverage for the healthcare they need, and the Executive order that President Trump issued directing agencies to facilitate the repeal and replacement of the ACA has destabilized the marketplace. Now that TrumpCare is off the table, the President should rescind the Executive order.

Today, I am urging the President and his entire administration to immediately cease all efforts to undermine the ACA. People's lives are at stake.

The President should not hope that the healthcare system for tens of millions explodes. He should not want premiums to go up on his watch. He should not hope that Americans lose treatment for opioid addiction on his watch. This approach is wrong, and wrong in two ways: First and foremost, it is wrong because it hurts people. The President must be a leader. It is not leadership for the President to hurt people and actively work to undermine our Nation's healthcare system simply because he is angry that he didn't get his way on repealing the ACA. That is not Presidential, that is petulance.

Secondly, this approach will not work politically. Donald Trump is no longer an outsider; he is President. The American people are looking to him to help solve their problems. If he doesn't, it is going to hurt him and his party. Pointing the finger of blame isn't going to solve anyone's problems. That strategy is not only bad for the American people and beneath the Presidency, it will backfire politically. He is in charge. People want him to make their lives better, not make them worse because of some political anger or vendetta.

I know many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle do care deeply about fixing the Nation's healthcare problems, and we are ready to do that with them in a bipartisan way. But, of course, repeal must be taken off the table, and the President must stop hurting citizens by undermining the Affordable Care Act.

Mr. President, first, I would like to thank the senior Senator from the State of Washington, the ranking member of the Health Committee, for her outstanding work on this issue. She knows this issue better than just about anybody in this Chamber. She is passionate and also fact-driven about her views and has had great influence on this Chamber.

I hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will review what she said. To rush through a bill for a campaign promise--a bill that is fraught with problems and difficulty, many of which will probably not come to light until after the bill comes to the floor--is the wrong thing to do. I thank the senior Senator from the State of Washington.

Terror Attack in London

Mr. President, first, I want to just say a few words. My heartfelt condolences go to the families of the victims in London.

Terrorism strikes everywhere. It was so close to the symbol of Great Britain--Parliament, Big Ben, a place we have all seen in pictures and some of us have had the opportunity to see in person. It reminds us that the scourge of terrorism needs to be eradicated in any way we can. I am committed to that, and I know the 100 Members of this Senate body are as well.

Our hearts go out to those who were lost.

Nomination of Neil Gorsuch

Mr. President, now I will move on to the subject I wish to speak about at length this morning, and that is Judge Gorsuch.

I have had the opportunity these past 3 days to watch Judge Neil Gorsuch in the Judiciary Committee and to review his credentials and record on the Tenth Circuit and before that.

I would particularly like to recognize the outstanding work done by every Democratic member of the Judiciary Committee. They were outstanding in questioning Judge Gorsuch despite his lack of candor and desire to answer. I would like to particularly call out our exceptional ranking member, Senator Feinstein, who has done a wonderful job leading that committee.

I have thought long and hard about his nomination and what it means for the future of the Supreme Court and for the future of our country. What is at stake is considerable. The decisions we make here in the Senate over the next few weeks about Judge Gorsuch, as on any Supreme Court nominee, will echo through the lifetime tenure of that judge, through a generation of Americans.

Discussions of the Supreme Court can get wonky and technical, with invocations of precedent and canons of interpretation. What is at stake, however, is not at all abstract; it is real and it is concrete for Americans, whose lives, health, happiness, and freedoms are on the line at the Supreme Court. Closely divided decisions recently have meant the difference between the ability to marry the person you love or not, the ability to have your right to vote protected or not, the ability to make personal choices about your own healthcare or not. The Supreme Court matters a great deal. It matters for workers who want to protect both their lives and their jobs, for employees who need to be able to seek redress for discrimination, and for parents who want their kids to get a fair shake in the education system.

It is with all this in mind that I have come to a decision about the current nominee. After careful deliberation, I have concluded that I cannot support Judge Neil Gorsuch's nomination to the Supreme Court. His nomination will face a cloture vote. He will have to earn 60 votes for confirmation. My vote will be no, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

To my Republican friends who think that if Judge Gorsuch fails to reach 60 votes, we ought to change the rules, I say: If this nominee cannot earn 60 votes--a bar met by each of President Obama's nominees and George Bush's last two nominees--the answer isn't to change the rules, it is to change the nominee.

This morning, I would like to lay out the reasons I will be voting no on this nomination.

First, Judge Gorsuch was unable to sufficiently convince me that he would be an independent check on a President who has shown almost no restraint from Executive overreach.

Second, he was unable to convince me that he would be a mainstream Justice who could rule free from the biases of politics and ideology. His career and judicial record suggest not a neutral legal mind but someone with a deep-seated conservative ideology. He was groomed by the Federalist Society and has not shown 1 inch of difference between his views and theirs.

Finally, he is someone who almost instinctively favors the powerful over the weak, corporations over working Americans. There could not be a worse time for someone with those instincts.

Judge Gorsuch's opportunity to disabuse us of all these objections was in the hearing process, but he declined to answer question after question after question with any substance. Absent a real description of judicial philosophy, all we have to judge the judge on is his record.

First, I want to address the first issue I raised, that of judicial independence. It is so clear that at this moment in our history, our democracy requires a judge who is willing to rule against this President. This administration seems to have little regard for the rule of law and is likely to test the Constitution in ways it hasn't been challenged in decades. It is absolutely the case that this Supreme Court will be tried in ways that few courts have been tested since the earliest days of the Republic when constitutional questions abounded.

The President himself has attacked individual judges and the credibility of the judiciary at large. The President has attacked a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit and said if they didn't decide with him, they would be responsible for the next terrorist act. I have never heard any President in my lifetime or read about any President in previous history who dared do that. We are in uncharted territory with this President and with judicial independence. It requires a strong independent backbone. Judge Gorsuch has shown none. Senators on the Judiciary Committee rightly asked Judge Gorsuch direct questions about this issue. I did so myself in my meeting with the judge. While the judge repeatedly asserted his independence, he could not point to anything in his record to guarantee it. Judge Gorsuch offered the Judiciary myriad platitudes on this point. ``No man is above the law,'' he said. He said he was ``disheartened'' by the President's attacks on the judiciary. The President, for his sake, said that Judge Gorsuch didn't mean him, and everyone left it at that.

If Judge Gorsuch had an ounce of courage, had shown a scintilla of an ability to be independent, he would have said: No, Mr. President. No, President Trump, I did mean you. Instead, he just tells us in general that he is demoralized, disheartened. Telling us is not the same as showing us. He is asking us to take him at his word, but his record suggests that he has long been someone who has advocated extreme deference to assertions of broad Presidential power.

That leads me to my second point; that Judge Gorsuch was unable to convince me that he would be a neutral judge, free of ideology and bias. The hearings this week were an opportunity for Judge Gorsuch to explain his record, to tell us how he thinks and how his judicial philosophy does not fundamentally advantage the powerful. Instead, we got banalities and platitudes. We didn't get any real answers to any real questions about what he thinks about the law and why. He refused to answer general questions on dark money in politics, LGBTQ rights, the constitutionality of the Muslim ban. I couldn't believe it, when I asked him: Is a law that bans Muslims, a law that just said all Muslims are banned from the U.S. unconstitutional, he couldn't even answer that. He refused to say whether he agreed with Supreme Court decisions in seminal cases like Brown v. Board, Roe v. Wade, Griswold v. Connecticut, despite the fact that his predecessors, Justices Roberts and Alito, said they agreed with those cases.

He refused to answer questions about the emoluments clause, a section of the

Constitution that prohibits foreign corruption of U.S. officials. Instead of an umpire calling balls and strikes in baseball, what we really saw was a well-trained expert in dodgeball.

My friend, the ranking member of the committee, said it best. ``What worries me,'' she told the nominee, ``is that you have been very much able to avoid any specificity like no one I have ever seen before.''

Let me repeat. There is no legal standard, rule, or even logic for failing to answer questions that don't involve immediate and specific cases that are or could come before the Court. It is evasion, just evasion, plain and simple, and it belies a deeper truth about this nominee.

If anyone doubts that Judge Gorsuch doesn't have strong views, that thinks he would be a neutral judge calling balls and strikes as Judge Roberts once put it, just look at the way he was chosen. He was supported and pushed forward by the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society, and groomed by billionaire conservatives like Mr. Anschutz. President Trump simply picked someone from off their list.

President Trump sought the advice and consent from the Federalist Society instead of from the U.S. Senate. Does anyone think the Federalist Society would choose someone who just called balls and strikes? Does anyone think they would put on their list a neutral, moderate judge when they haven't ever supported anyone but judicial conservatives, almost all hard-right judicial conservatives in their history? The Federalist Society has been dedicated for a generation to influence the courts to favor corporations and special interests. If anyone doubts that Judge Gorsuch could be an activist judge with views eschewing the interests of average people, look at how he was selected--by a group that is not neutral, a group that has been dedicated to changing the judiciary and placing activist, hard-right judges on the bench. Now that he is nominated, look at how much money, dark, secret, undisclosed money--it is a good bet from the very corporations Judge Gorsuch has been defending his whole career. If he were so neutral, would they be spending this money? I doubt it.

Anyone groomed by the Federalist Society will not call balls and strikes. Their views are best foretold by the ideology of the people who groomed them. To say Judge Gorsuch has no ideology whatsoever is absurd. He just will not admit it to the American people. To say he is just neutral in his views is belied by his history since his college days and by his own judicial record. He even tried to deny it. In the hearings, Judge Gorsuch repeated the hollow assertion that judges don't have parties or politics. He said there are no Democratic judges or Republican judges, but if that were true, we wouldn't be here, would we? If that were true, if the Senate were merely evaluating a nominee based on his or her qualifications, Merrick Garland would be seated on the Supreme Court right now. Merrick Garland is not a Justice. We all know why. We all know my friends across the aisle held the Supreme Court seat open for over 1 year in hopes that they would have the opportunity to install someone handpicked by the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society to advance the goal of Big Money interests entrenching their power in the Court.

They don't even mind that this nomination is moving forward under a cloud of an FBI investigation of the President's campaign. The Republicans held a Supreme Court seat open for a year under a Democratic President who was under no investigation but now are rushing to fill the seat for a President whose campaign is under investigation. It is unseemly and wrong to be moving so fast on a lifetime appointment in such circumstances.

Finally, Judge Gorsuch came into this hearing with a record that raises deep concerns about whether he would consider fairly the plight of the average citizen before the interests of powerful special interests. I examined his record. I saw a judge who repeatedly decided with insurance companies that wanted to deny disability benefits to employees. I saw a judge who, in unemployment discrimination, sided with employers the great majority of the time. I saw a judge who, on the issue of money and politics, seems to be in the same company as Justices Thomas and Scalia, willing to restrict the most commonsense contribution limits.

In the hearings, Judge Gorsuch did nothing to explain his philosophy, did nothing to assuage those concerns. We will just have to go by his record, a record that shows time and time again his rulings favor the already powerful over ordinary Americans.

Judge Gorsuch ruled against a teacher, Grace Hwang, who, having been through two bouts of cancer, was advised by her doctors not to return to the college campus during a flu epidemic lest she put her life at risk. She was fired for taking sick leave. Judge Gorsuch, true to form, voted to uphold that dismissal. Her daughter Katherine told us last week:

This decision to protect her health cost my mom her job.

When Judge Gorsuch issued his ruling, he didn't think about

the impact that this had on our family. The law calls for

``reasonable accommodation for those who are disabled.''

Judge Gorsuch ignored the human cost.

Judge Gorsuch ruled against a truckdriver, Alfonse Maddin, who had to make a similar choice between his employer and his life. I met with him. He told me a harrowing story of being stuck in the cab of a tractor-trailer with frozen brakes, no heat, temperatures outside dipping to 27 below zero. He had a choice, leave the trailer with broken brakes and drive the cab to safety or stay in the trailer and freeze to death. He radioed his company to explain his predicament. They told him that the cargo was the most important thing; he couldn't leave it. Rather than risk the lives of other motorists on a freezing highway by driving a trailer with frozen brakes, Mr. Maddin struggled to unhitch his trailer and drive his cab to safety--returning later for it once he was not at risk of dying from the cold. For that, his company fired him. He sued. Seven judges heard this case as it went through appeal. Only one, Judge Gorsuch, in dissent, ruled against him. Judge Gorsuch used an exceptionally technical and illogical reading of the statute to reach the absurd conclusion that Mr. Maddin was obligated to risk his life to protect his cargo.

Mr. Maddin said that Judge Gorsuch's nomination to the Supreme Court gives him ``pause for concern'' because he ``demonstrated a willingness to artfully diminish the humane element that encompassed the issue.''

Judge Gorsuch also ruled against a parent of a severely autistic child, Luke, who sought what the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act guarantees him--the right to an education that met his needs. Jeff Perkins, Luke's father, is testifying before the Judiciary Committee today. Their story is powerful. Judge Gorsuch ruled that Luke was not entitled to attend a specialized school because he was able to make more than de minimis progress in the normal educational system.

Just yesterday, the Supreme Court unanimously--including Justice Alito and so many others who are so conservative--rejected Judge Gorsuch's interpretation of the IDEA. The Court held that ``when all is said and done, a student offered an educational program providing `merely more than a de minimis progress from year to year can hardly be said to have been offered an education at all.' '' That puts Judge Gorsuch's interpretation of the IDEA law to the right of even Justice Thomas--a very difficult feat.

Whom we put on the bench, their basic judgment, matters. While I do not think that the personal views and experiences should bear on the decisions of day-to-day cases, there is a reason we don't program computers to decide cases. We do not want judges with ice water in their veins. What we want and need are judges who understand the litigants before them and bring a modicum--at least a modicum--of human judgment into the courtroom. You can call this trait empathy or mercy. I think it falls in the category of common sense. It is common sense that necessarily comes from each person's own, unique life experience. Even Judge Gorsuch acknowledged this when he told the committee ``I am not an algorithm.'' Yet he wouldn't tell us how, as a human--a nonalgorithm--he would uniquely approach a case.

When it comes to the application of the law, that empathy, that mercy,

that ``humane element'' of common sense--as Alphonse Maddin, the truckdriver, put it--is the most important judicial trait of them all because ultimately the law is abstract, but the people and situations are real. The task of the judge is to apply those abstract legal doctrines to very humane and sometimes very messy situations. It is a hard thing to do to bring fairness and justice to a world that is too short on both.

I am reminded of the words spoken by Portia, the great lawyer in ``The Merchant of Venice,'' who spoke of the blessings and necessity of mercy in applying the law.

He said:

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes

The thron-ed monarch better than his crown;

His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,

The attribute to awe and majesty,

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;

But mercy is above this sceptred sway,

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,

It is an attribute to God himself.

Judge Gorsuch told us he is not God, and that is true, but his humanity does not excuse him from the attribute of mercy. Instead, his humanity should require it.

Alphonse Maddin sought the mercy of the law. The Hwang family sought the mercy of the law. Luke, the autistic child whose school was failing him, sought the mercy of the law. The man who had the power to see plain sense in their cases, who could rule in their favor and right the wrongs that had been done to them as other judges had done in each of those cases--Judge Neil Gorsuch--said no.

I am voting no on Gorsuch for Alphonse Maddin and workers across the country, for the Hwang family and others who do not want to choose between their health and providing for their children, and for the Perkins family, who loves their children just as they are and wants for them no fewer than the opportunities afforded to every other child in America.

The American people deserve someone who sees average litigants as more than incidental consequences of precedent, when that precedent produces an absurd result, whose view of the law is not so cold and so arid so as to wring out every last drop of humanity and common sense. It requires only the bare minimum of judicial decency to rule the right way in the cases I have mentioned, and Judge Gorsuch did not.

That is all the evidence my colleagues should need to vote no, and I urge them and will urge them in the days ahead to do so.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, yesterday Judge Neil Gorsuch went through over 11 hours of questioning in the Judiciary Committee. As expected, he used the opportunity to speak at length about his knowledge of case law, hiding behind precedents rather than giving an impression of his actual views. As expected, his supporters are saying that Judge Gorsuch was erudite, polished, homespun. But none of this matters compared to the real purpose of hearings: to find out a nominee's views and what kind of judge he will be, not how his repartee from the bench will sound.

For 11 hours, Judge Gorsuch looked like he was playing dodgeball with the Senate Judiciary Committee, bending over backward to avoid revealing anything that might constitute a judicial philosophy or give hints about his approach to the legal issues of our day. Those, to me, are far more important than any superficial impressions he may have left. He dodged questions on previous cases like Citizens United, Rowe v. Wade, and Brown v. Board. He dodged general questions on dark money in politics, LGBTQ rights, and the constitutionality of a Muslim ban.

He did manage to wax poetic on the significance of a judge's robe and the humility it brings. He said it reminds us that ``ours is a judiciary of honest black polyester.'' Well, if he were truly humbled, he would realize the augustness of this position and answer questions directly. Judge Gorsuch's testimony yesterday was replete with humble kinds of metaphors and homespun stories but pitifully short on substance, which is what really matters.

The hearings this week are starting to have the element of farce. The Republicans ask softball questions, while we Democrats endeavor to get the judge to offer a meaningful response on one--any legal issue but are met with constant refrains of ``That is settled law'' and ``I can't prejudge'' and ``Gee, Senator, my personal views have no place here.'' Let me repeat. There is no legal precedent, rule, or logic for failing to answer questions that don't involve immediate and specific cases before the Court. Is Judge Gorsuch hiding behind this rhetoric because he does not want people to know his views?

After 4 days of this Kabuki theatre, the press will write that Judge Gorsuch was smooth and well-spoken, but I doubt that even at the end of the hearing process we will have any greater views of his jurisprudence. Will we know any better than we do today what kind of Justice he will be on our Nation's highest Court?

You know, we have seen this before. It was not all that long ago that another charming, polished, erudite judge named John Roberts came before the committee, impressing lawmakers while playing the role of a model jurist. He displayed a similar reluctance to answer specific questions, but he assured us all that he was a judge who was free from the biases of politics and ideology, that, in his words, he simply ``called balls and strikes.'' We were duped. Judge Roberts showed his true activist colors as soon as he got to the bench and dragged the Court sharply to the right, ruling consistently in favor of wealthy special interests and powerful corporations. The whole episode with Judge Gorsuch feels like a Roberts' rerun. If his voting record is any indication, according to the New York Times survey, he will be even more conservative than Justice Roberts.

This is not how the hearing process is supposed to work. Although it has become practice for Supreme Court Justices to elude specific questions, it is not in the best interests of our country to elevate a cipher to the Supreme Court. We don't want the qualifications for Senate confirmation to be an ability of skillful evasion. The hearing process cannot accomplish what it is designed to if the nominee refuses to engage on matters of legal substance.

If anyone doubts that Judge Gorsuch does not have strong views, that he is not simply a caller of balls and strikes, a tabula rasa, just look at the way he was chosen. He was supported and pushed by the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society. Do they just call balls and strikes, or do those two groups have an avowed interest in moving the judiciary far to the right? He was supported by billionaires like Mr. Anschutz who have a similar desire. Does anyone think the Federalist Society would choose someone who just called balls and strikes when they have been dedicated for a generation to moving the courts to the right? They have not endorsed a moderate judge in their history. Again, they are dedicated to moving the court far away from the mainstream.

If anyone doubts that Judge Gorsuch would be an activist judge with strong conservative views eschewing the interests of average people, just look at how he was selected--by the Federalist Society, by the Heritage foundation, not by average American jurists.

TrumpCare

Mr. President, on another matter, TrumpCare, as we speak, the House Republican leadership is desperately trying to whip enough votes to pass their bill tomorrow, making sweetheart deals to sway recalcitrant Members.

It is funny that all the changes House Republicans have made this past week don't even attempt to address the real problems with the bill: that 24 million fewer Americans will have coverage and that premiums will go up. In fact, the changes they are making to TrumpCare are even more cruel than their existing bill in an attempt to win conservative votes. Still, many of them don't think it is cruel enough yet. In their rush, they included language in their managers' amendment that would exclude 7 million or so veterans from the eligibility for tax credits in the bill--7 million veterans. That is what happens when you try to rush a complicated bill like this through.

When Democrats were in the majority and working through healthcare, we debated the bill over the course of a whole year. We had one of the longest committee hearings and amendment processes in recent memory. Still, even then, Republicans criticized us for trying to jam it through. ``Read the bill,'' they would chant.

Now Republicans are trying to do in 2 weeks what we spent 1 year on because the time was required. My friend the distinguished majority leader says he hopes to have TrumpCare brought up and passed through the Senate by the end of next week--no committee process, potentially no CBO score.

I guess Senate Republicans are negotiating a substitute bill behind closed doors right now to meet that accelerated, speedy, and reckless timeline. When you are talking about a drastic reformation of our healthcare system, one-sixth of our economy, that is breathtakingly irresponsible and rankly hypocritical. When will Democrats get to view the substitute bill? Will there be a CBO score before both Republicans and Democrats have to vote on it in the Senate? We don't know. But rushing it through in this fashion, as the majority leader promised, is unwise and unfair to Democratic Senators and, far more importantly, to the American people. It is also a direct contradiction to how then- Minority Leader McConnell spoke about health reform in 2009. Here is what he said: ``We shouldn't try to do it in the dark, and whatever final bill is produced should be available to the American public and to members of the Senate for enough time to come to grips with it, and there should be and must be a CBO score.''

Well, Leader McConnell, what was good enough for us back in 2009 should be good enough for you today.

I certainly hope Leader McConnell follows his own advice from 2009 now that he is majority leader.

My Republican friends like to claim this bill isn't the end of the story on healthcare. They claim they can pass a third prong later on down the road. Republicans in the Senate and the House should know this: There is no third prong. It is a fantasy.

Any legislation outside of reconciliation requires 60 votes, and Democrats will not help Republicans repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act today, tomorrow, or 6 months from now. This bill, TrumpCare, Republicans, is your one shot.

I think that is why House Republicans have tried to jam some extra policy changes onto their bill--like the Medicaid work requirement and the restrictions on abortion--because they know they won't be able to later on, and they need more conservative votes to pass this bill tomorrow.

This approach has a serious problem. There is a serious question as to whether these changes are budgetary changes or policy changes. If they are policy changes, they will not meet the Senate's standards of reconciliation, known as the Byrd rule, and can be stricken from the bill.

Of particular vulnerability, my Republican colleagues, are provisions like the Medicaid work requirement and the restrictions on abortion. House Republicans should hear this before they vote: Those provisions that you might think help you vote yes on the bill may not survive. Factor that into your vote.

Ahead of the vote tomorrow, I just want to say to my Republican colleagues--and I have sympathy, although I don't agree. I vehemently disagree. I know you feel caught between a rock and a hard place, between the prospect of failing to fulfill a shrill and unthought- through campaign pledge and a bill that would badly hurt millions of Americans, particularly your voters.

I say to them: There is a way out. Drop your efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and Democrats will work with you on serious proposals to improve the existing law. Drop TrumpCare. Come to us with some ideas on how to improve the ACA, and we will sit down with you and try to figure out what is best for our country. You can avoid this disaster of a bill called TrumpCare, which will result in higher costs, less care, and 24 million fewer Americans with health coverage. Turn back before it is too late.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.