Floor Statements

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that we now proceed to a period of morning business with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each, and we can do that until 7:30 tonight; and during that period of time, it will be for debate only.

Mr. President, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs has received a request from a federal law enforcement agency seeking access to records that the Subcommittee obtained during its recent investigation into JP Morgan Chase's ``whale trades'' and risks and abuses of derivatives.

This resolution would authorize the chairman and ranking minority member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, acting jointly, to provide records, obtained by the Subcommittee in the course of its investigation, in response to this request and requests from other government entities and officials with a legitimate need for the records.

Mr. President, I move to proceed to Calendar No. 91, S. 1197.

I now ask unanimous consent that the cloture motion with respect to H.R. 3204, the pharmaceutical drug compounding bill, be withdrawn, the pending motion and amendments be withdrawn, and the Senate vote on the passage of the bill.

I ask unanimous consent that the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I see our friend here who has returned from his surgery and the death of his son, if he wishes to say something before I complete my remarks.

Mr. President, through the Chair to the senior Senator from Oklahoma, we are glad to have him back. We all empathize with something only a parent can understand. I am grateful to him for the example he sets for all of us.

Schedule

Mr. President, we are going to be in a period of morning business until 5 o'clock today. Following morning business, the Senate will proceed to executive session to consider the nomination of Robert Wilkins to be U.S. Circuit judge for the DC Circuit. At 5:30, there will be up to two rollcall votes, including cloture on the Wilkins nomination. If cloture is not invoked, there will be a second cloture vote on the Defense authorization bill.

Nominations

Mr. President, today the Senate will consider yet another qualified nominee to be a DC Circuit Court of Appeals judge, considered by many to be the second highest court in all the land.

It is troubling that Senate Republicans, for the fourth time this year, appear poised to reject an exceedingly capable nominee to this court for blatantly political reasons. Republicans have blocked three highly qualified female DC Circuit nominees in a row: Caitlin Halligan, Patricia Millett, and Nina Pillard. Today they are expected to block confirmation of District Judge Robert Wilkins, an extremely competent and experienced nominee and one who has bipartisan support. I say that because no one has questioned his qualifications or abilities; likewise, no Senator objected to the qualifications of Ms. Halligan, Ms. Millett or Ms. Pillard. Instead, Republicans have blocked these nominees solely to deny President Obama his constitutional right to appoint judges.

In years passed, my Republican colleagues agreed to block judicial nominees only in ``extraordinary circumstances.'' These are their words, not mine.

In 2005, the senior Senator from South Carolina Lindsey Graham defined extraordinary circumstances for the benefit of this body. Being a highly qualified trial lawyer, I think he is qualified to respond and set this definition that we all agreed with. Here is what he said:

Ideological attacks are not an ``extraordinary

circumstance.'' To me, it would have to be a character

problem, an ethics problem, some allegation about the

qualifications of a person, not an ideological bent.

No Senator--I repeat, no Senator--has questioned the character, ethics, or qualifications of these three women that have already been rejected for the DC Circuit. No one has questioned the character, ethics or qualifications of Judge Wilkins. So I am frustrated that Republicans would once again filibuster such a highly qualified nominee--a nominee so highly qualified, in fact, that he was confirmed 3 years ago by voice vote to become a district court judge.

Judge Wilkins is an Indiana native who graduated cum laude with a degree in chemical engineering, and then he got a law degree from Harvard Law School. He has worked as a staff attorney for the DC Public Defender Service. He was a partner specializing in white-collar defense, intellectual property, and complex civil litigation at the private law firm of Venable. That is an outstanding law firm with lawyers all over the country.

Judge Wilkins also helped shine a national spotlight on national profiling when he brought a landmark lawsuit against the Maryland State Police in 1992 after he and three family members were stopped and searched. Why? Because they were African Americans. It is landmark litigation.

This nominee has a bright legal mind and a remarkable dedication to the rule of law. Under normal circumstances, such as the circumstances of his 2010 confirmation, he would be quickly confirmed, but now he faces a Republican filibuster. Unfortunately, the type of Republican obstruction we face today has become quite commonplace. President Obama's circuit court nominees, including nominees for the vital DC Circuit, have waited seven times longer than those nominated by President Bush.

Republicans claim they are blocking nominees to this crucial court because the court is underworked and doesn't need to fill its complement of judges. Republicans also claim that filling these three vacancies would amount to court packing. That is absurd on its face. My Republican colleagues were happy to confirm four Bush nominees to this court. In fact, 15 of the last 19 to the DC Circuit were appointed by Republican presidents. Appointing judges to fill vacant judicial seats is not court packing, it is the President's right as well as his duty.

I do not ask Republican Senators to support President Obama's nominees or even that they vote for them, but it is right and proper that they should give President Obama's nominees the same fair consideration afforded the nominees that came before them.

Reservation of Leader Time

Would the Chair announce the business of the day.

Mr. President, I enter a motion to reconsider the vote by which cloture was not invoked on the Wilkins nomination.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the first amendments in order to S. 1197, the Defense authorization bill, be the following two amendments. First, an editorial comment. These are two very important amendments that I think we should resolve. The Guantanamo amendment--I think most all Democrats accept what is in the bill. The White House accepts what is in the bill. The Republicans and a few others want to change what is in the bill. We should have debate and a vote on that. I think that is appropriate. Gillibrand--that is an amendment that has received a lot of attention, and we should have that debate now. It has received nationwide attention.

So let's start over. The reason I mentioned these two, and these two only, tonight--I ask unanimous consent that the first amendments in order to S. 1197 be the following: the Republican leader or designee relative to Guantanamo and Gillibrand or designee relative to sexual assault; that each amendment be subject to one side-by-side amendment relevant to the amendment it is paired with; that a McCaskill-Ayotte amendment be considered the side-by-side to the Gillibrand amendment and the majority leader or designee have the side-by-side to the Republican Guantanamo amendment; that no second-degree amendments be in order to any of these amendments; that each of these amendments and any side-by-side be subject to a 60-affirmative vote threshold; that each side-by-side amendment be voted on prior to the amendment to which they were offered; further, that no motions to recommit be in order during the consideration of the bill; finally, that upon disposition of these amendments, I be recognized.

Mr. President, I hope we can work on additional amendments beyond these two after they are disposed of. It is an important bill. We need to finish it before we leave here this week, and it is a big task to do that. It is my understanding that Senator Levin, working with the ranking member, has already had some serious conversations about how to move forward, conferencing, preconferencing, and even though the ranking member has been indisposed because of a medical condition that lasted just a short period of time, he has been in touch with his staff and Senator Levin on almost a daily basis. So I hope we can move beyond these two amendments. I would sure like to get these two amendments out of the way as soon as possible.

As far as an open amendment process, I think that was then and we are here now. I am not sure that is going to happen on this bill. If we could work something out for a finite list of amendments or something that could help us get this done, I would be happy to be as reasonable as I can.

Of course.

Mr. President, to the senior Senator from Michigan, the chairman of this most prestigious and important committee, what I think would be a real shame is if we wind up having to file cloture on the bill as it is written. I know the committee did great work. They worked very hard, and the vast majority of the time they did it on a bipartisan basis to get the bill to where it is now. It would be a shame to have to file cloture on the bill itself. I would hope that if we have to do that, we can get cloture on it and get on with the conference. But I am very troubled. Today is Monday, and I would be happy to renew my request as soon as I get here in the morning, but I would hope that the people who are working on these two important pieces of legislation at the very least would come and start talking about them. Everyone knows what the amendments are. They may not be able to pass a test on every word in the amendments, but we know the concept of the amendments. Let them come and start talking about these amendments. To this stage, they have been negotiated and debated in the press. Let's debate them here on the Senate floor.

I would be happy to yield for a question.

Mr. President, before I yield to my friend from Michigan, there are things in this bill that are not resolved in the Defense appropriations bill that authorize things to be done in the military that can only be done by authorizing them. So I myself am very concerned about being able to move forward on this bill. We do not live in a vacuum. We have to work something out with the appropriate committees in the House of Representatives and then have both the House and the Senate vote. That is what conferences are all about. Time is of the essence.

Reclaiming my time, I ask unanimous consent to yield back all postcloture time.

On behalf of Senator Levin, I have an amendment at the desk.

I ask for the yeas and nays on that amendment.

Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Levin, I have an amendment at the desk. I ask the clerk to report.

I have a motion to recommit S. 1197 with instructions.

On that motion, I ask for the yeas and nays.

I have an amendment to the instructions at the desk.

I ask for the yeas and nays on that amendment.

I have a second-degree amendment at the desk.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for 10 minutes each until 8 o'clock this evening, and as I thought I said, Mr. President, this will be for debate only.

Mr. President, this resolution concerns a request for testimony, documents, and representation in a Federal criminal action pending in Florida Federal District Court. The defendant is charged with sending through the mail to the Jacksonville, FL, offices of Senators Bill Nelson and Marco Rubio an envelope containing a white powdery substance and a letter containing alleged threats directed towards the Senators. The prosecution has requested from both Senators' offices the production of the letters at issue and testimony from current and former office employees who witnessed the relevant events. Senators Nelson and Rubio would like to cooperate with these requests.

The enclosed resolution would authorize the production of the letters at issue and testimony by current and former employees of the offices of Senators Nelson and Rubio. It would also authorize the Senate legal counsel to represent any current or former employees of those offices from whom evidence may be sought in this case.

Mr. President, this great body, the Senate, has a unique ability to work very quickly when cooperation is present. That is one of the many special things about this institution. Unfortunately, cooperation in the recent months has been very lacking.

Case in point: One Senator has delayed action for more than a month on a bill to ensure the safety of custom medications mixed by pharmacies for patients with unique health needs.

The reason that 97 Senators voted to move this legislation is because 64 people died and 800 people were made very, very sick, with some of them very sick. They had strokes and other medical issues because of the irresponsibility and negligence of this company in Massachusetts.

A lawsuit was filed recently in Nevada where two young boys were allegedly impacted significantly as a result of this medication. It was really bad medication.

Unless the entire U.S. Senate bends to that one Senator's wish, the one who voted no--and the vote was 97 to 1--he will force this body to jump through hoops and work through the next several days wasting time to finish the crucial drug safety bill, but we are going to finish that bill. This bill is important for our country, and I cannot let one Senator dictate what goes on in the Senate.

Mr. President, following leader remarks, the Senate will be in a period of morning business for 2 hours, with Republicans controlling the first half and the majority controlling the final half.

Following morning business, we will vote on adoption of the motion to proceed to H.R. 3204, the pharmaceutical drug compounding bill. This is expected to be a voice vote--at least I hope that is, in fact, the case. If that is the case, then we will decide what will happen subsequent to that.

The Senate will recess from 1 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. to allow for an important meeting we are having. I understand that both the majority and minority are holding important meetings today.

There is no agreement that I am aware of to complete action on the compounding bill today, but hopefully we can do that.

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

Mr. President, what is the matter before the body?

Mr. President, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on that amendment.

Mr. President, I have a second-degree amendment at the desk.

Mr. President, I have a motion to commit H.R. 3204 with instructions, which is at the desk.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on that motion.

Mr. President, I have an amendment to the instructions, which is at the desk.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.

Mr. President, I have a second-degree amendment at the desk.

Mr. President, I move to proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 381.

Mr. President, I sent a cloture motion to the desk.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the mandatory quorum under rule XXII be waived.

Mr. President, I move to proceed to legislative session.

If I understand, H.R. 3204 is now the pending matter.

Mr. President, I have a cloture motion with respect to the bill, which is at the desk.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the mandatory quorum under rule XXII be waived.