Floor Statements

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, and I will be objecting.

Mr. President, I appreciate the perspective of the junior Senator from North Carolina, but my perspective on the Fourth Circuit covers a little longer period of time.

I advise my friend that for the last Congress of the Bush administration, the Democratic majority only confirmed one nominee to the Fourth Circuit. As a result, the circuit was fully one-third vacant with five vacancies when President Bush left office.

These vacancies were not due to President Bush's failure to nominate several qualified candidates. As a result, my Democratic friends had to resort to creative reasons to justify keeping these seats open.

To give an example, the Fourth Circuit seat from Maryland was kept vacant for the entirety of the Bush administration--8 years. The last nominee for that seat the Democrats objected to was a fellow named Rod Rosenstein. Nobody could reasonably contest his credentials, so my Democratic colleagues turned his virtues into a vice, saying he was doing too good a job as U.S. attorney in Maryland to be promoted to the circuit court.

Despite the unfair treatment that Mr. Rosenstein received, many Senate Republicans in this Congress, including myself, supported President Obama's nominee to this seat, Andre Davis.

Also in this Congress, Republicans, including myself, supported the confirmation of Barbara Keenen of Virginia to the Fourth Circuit. With her confirmation, the Senate has confirmed twice as many nominees to the Fourth Circuit as occurred during the entire last Congress of the Bush administration when Democrats controlled the Senate.

With respect to the vacancies from North Carolina, President Bush put up a nominee who satisfied all of Chairman Leahy's criteria for confirmation--Judge Robert Conrad. Judge Conrad had the strong support of his home State Senators. He received the blessing of the ABA, the Democrat's so-called gold standard, and he would fill a judicial emergency. Yet Judge Conrad could not even get so much as a hearing.

In fact, the Senate has been processing President Obama's judicial nominees, both district and circuit court nominees, faster than it processed President Bush's judicial nominees.

How has the President responded to our efforts to work in good faith? He recess appointed Donald Berwick before the Finance Committee could even schedule a hearing on him, and despite the fact that Republicans on that committee requested that a hearing be scheduled on his nomination.

Let me give my colleagues a brief timeline of the nomination of Donald Berwick.

On April 19, 2010, the President nominated Dr. Berwick to serve as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Less than 3 months later, and without a Senate Finance Committee hearing taking place, the President recess appointed Dr. Berwick. The reason offered was that the Republicans were blocking this vital appointment, so they could wait no longer to follow the constitutional process of Senate confirmation. Yet this position was vacant for the first 16 months of the Obama administration and has not had a confirmed Administrator since 2006, since my friends on the other side of the aisle were blocking the Bush administration nominee.

Democrats did not schedule so much as a committee hearing for Donald Berwick. The mere possibility of allowing the American people the opportunity to hear what he intends to do with their health care was reason enough for this administration to sneak him through without public scrutiny.

Given the President has been so dismissive of the Senate's right to provide advice and consent under the Constitution, I am not inclined at this

point to consent to the request proposed by my friend from North Carolina. Therefore, Mr. President, I object.

I say to my colleague from Arizona, I just came on to the floor and am not quite certain what happened earlier in this colloquy, but there is no doubt about it that they did not want Dr. Berwick's name to surface during the health care debate. They did not want any questions asked of him in public. We have had recess appointments, of course, by Presidents of both parties. Typically, they have gone through a hearing, a committee vote, and end up out here on the calendar so that at least there was some exposure to the nominee's views.

What we do know about this nominee is what he has said in the past about the British health care system. It is stunning that anybody in this country could look at the national health service in England and decide they were in love with it. So I would say to my friend from Arizona, and my friends from Wyoming and South Dakota, there is no question what they were up to here. They wanted to sneak this guy through with a minimum amount of exposure.

I say to my friend from Arizona, I do not know the answer to that. But we do know it was a curious, maybe not totally unprecedented but certainly unusual situation where a nominee is subjected to so little scrutiny and oversight--no questions, no opportunity to testify. This is a truly unusual situation. I think we know the answer as to why. This guy is in favor of rationing health care--openly, unabashedly, an advocate of rationing health care. I do not think they wanted to have him have to answer the questions. He may not have been very good at details, I say to my friend from South Dakota, but he got the big picture. And the big picture in his mind is:

The decision is not whether or not we will ration care--the

decision is whether we will ration with our eyes [wide] open.

That is what he intends to do.

I think my friend from Arizona has it exactly right. Every single Member of the Democratic Party in the Senate voted for a bill that is going to impose $500 billion of Medicare cuts over the next 10 years.

We have a physician, fortunately, in the Senate: Dr. Barrasso. He intends to reach that target, does he not, I would inquire of my friend from Wyoming, by rationing health care?

Mr. President, today I rise to recognize 35 Kentucky veterans who recently came to Washington, DC to visit the memorial they helped to inspire. A few weeks ago, this group of distinguished men and women were able to visit our Nation's Capital, some for the first time, because of the Honor Flight Program.

The Bluegrass Honor Flight chapter has brought over 600 veterans from Kentucky to Washington, DC, providing these brave patriots the opportunity to see firsthand the memorial built in their honor. The program provides transportation, lodging and food for these veterans, who otherwise may not have been able to visit the Capital or the monuments they inspired.

These brave individuals answered the call to duty by stepping up when their Nation needed them most. The sacrifices they made were extraordinary. With unyielding commitment to our great Nation, these men and women bravely served and defended the freedom and rights that we cherish. The courage shown by America's veterans will be long appreciated and never forgotten. And after their years of service, I am proud to be able to honor them today.

I would ask that my colleagues join me in honoring these Kentucky veterans:

Dewey Abrams, Charles Adams, Geneva Andress, Algernon Rowland, Jim Booher, Ralph Brewer, George Capito, Paul Chandler, Donald Cooper, Roland Davis, Miram Dewart, Cecil Dunn, Charles Wilson, Harris Gibboney, George Hauck, Joe Hutchins, Gerald Kincaid, Robert Koegel, Anne Laing, John Fultz, William Malcolm, Edward Martin, Cecil McGee, Frank Milburn, Howell Moore, Kenneth Oster, Obie Owens, Reverend Thomas Pittman, John Krabbenhoft, Dewitt Rowland, Elmer Susemichel, Donald Thom, Roger Tyler, William Warde and Richard Zapp.

Mr. President, I rise today to bring to my colleagues' attention the work of the Ursuline Sisters of Louisville, which will soon receive a special recognition from the Commonwealth of Kentucky for their decades of service.

The Ursuline Sisters began their ministry in Kentucky in 1858 when three Sisters from Germany, led by Mother Salesia Reitmeier, answered a call to teach at St. Martin School in Louisville. Within 2 weeks of their arrival, the Sisters were teaching 50 students and had plans to construct a convent and boarding school on the corner of Chestnut and Shelby streets in Louisville, KY. The building was completed in 1859 and became the home of the Ursuline Academy. The new boarding school for girls offered classes from elementary through high school.

Soon the Ursuline Sisters were asked to operate and staff other schools. They established Sacred Heart Academy in 1877. Within 100 years of their establishment in Kentucky, the Ursuline Sisters had staffed or were staffing 23 parochial schools in the Louisville area, as well as schools in other States. They owned and operated Ursuline College, Ursuline Academy, Sacred Heart Academy, Sacred Heart Model School and the Ursuline Speech Clinic. The original Motherhouse and Convent for the Ursuline Sisters is located near the original school in downtown Louisville that was established by those three German immigrants 152 years ago and is listed in the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places.

These Sisters serve as educators, spiritual ministers, health care professionals, and administrators. They operate programs for the poor and disenfranchised and continue to search for ways to assist others to grow personally and spiritually.

On July 25, 2010, the Ursuline Sisters' history of ministry and service will be recognized by the Commonwealth of Kentucky with the placement of a historical marker outside that original location on Chestnut Street. This marker will note the founding and mission of the Ursuline Sisters and inform people of the contributions these Sisters have made to the community.

While the true record of their good deeds will continue to be chronicled in a place not of this Earth, it is entirely appropriate for the Commonwealth to take note of the good work the Ursuline Sisters have done for my hometown. And I hope my colleagues will join me in congratulating the Ursuline Sisters for all their hard work of ministering to mind, body and spirit.

Mr. President, ordinarily Senators come to the floor to talk about the things that happen in Washington while we are here. Today I wish to talk about something that happened last week while we were not here. I am referring, of course, to the President's truly outrageous decision to take advantage of Congress's absence last week to sneak Donald Berwick in as the new head of Medicare and Medicaid.

As is well known, Congress has a constitutional duty to examine Presidential nominees such as Dr. Berwick. But apparently the prospect of giving the American people an opportunity to hear this nominee defend his past praise for government-run systems that ration health care was worrisome enough for the administration that it sought to ignore congressional oversight altogether.

As it turned out, the administration's plan backfired because even Democrats are outraged at this blatant attempt to prevent the American people from hearing this man talk about what he plans to do with Medicare and Medicaid. As usual, the administration wants to blame Republicans for its failures. But in this case, the administration's failure to respect the right of the American people to study Dr. Berwick's record is being criticized by just about everyone, including the Democratic chairman of the committee in charge of reviewing his nomination.

Here is what Chairman Baucus said shortly after the appointment was made. Senator Baucus said:

Senate confirmation of presidential appointees is an

essential process prescribed by the Constitution that serves

as a check on executive power and protects Montanans and all

Americans by ensuring that crucial questions are asked of the

nominee, and answered.

So despite what the administration wants people to think, this recess appointment had nothing whatsoever to do with Republicans. The fact is, Republicans were looking forward to the debate. We welcomed the hearing on Dr. Berwick, and anyone who looks at the facts knows any suggestion to the contrary is utter nonsense. So the charge is laughable.

This appointment had everything to do with the administration's fear of letting Americans hear Dr. Berwick's well-known views about government-run care and about how he plans to implement the President's plan to cut $\1/2\ trillion from Medicare while limiting the choices seniors now enjoy.

Here is the irony in all of this: In an attempt to silence debate about Dr. Berwick and its own plans for health

care, this nomination has only reignited the debate over the Democratic health care plan. By recess appointing a man who has sung the praises of the government-run British health care service, the administration is only inviting Americans to ask more questions about its own plans.

I would have thought that anyone would be able to understand the significance of getting answers from an avowed admirer of rationed care before putting him in charge of implementing this administration's $500 billion Medicare cut.

But by denying the American people an opportunity to hear Dr. Berwick defend his past statements and his future plans, the administration is now forcing the Democrats who voted for the Democratic health care plan to defend Dr. Berwick and his views themselves. The administration may have shielded this nominee temporarily, but it has only exposed Democrats in Congress who voted for this bill and everything that follows from it--including this truly outrageous appointment.

This appointment is the latest evidence of how little the administration has concerned itself with the views of the public. When a majority of Americans and an overwhelming majority of Kentuckians opposed its health care plan, they cut deals with Democratic Senators to squeeze it through Congress. Now they are not even bothering with Congress. They are unilaterally installing people such as Dr. Berwick to take charge of its plan for $\1/2\ trillion in Medicare cuts.

This has been the administration's approach all along: Go around the American people, and now go around Congress. The administration can try to blame Republicans for a debate they do not want to have. But by denying Congress the ability to scrutinize this nominee, it only raises Americans' suspicions about its health care plan and increases the burden on Democrats who supported it.

Back in March, Speaker Pelosi remarked that we would have to pass the health care bill to find out what is in it. This nomination is part of the same arrogant approach. The same administration that forced this bill on an unwilling public has now forced Don Berwick on to anyone with Medicare and Medicaid. Now Democrats who voted for this bill will have to answer for his statements and for his views.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, yesterday, President Obama invited a group of Senators down to the White House to talk about the kind of energy bill he would like Congress to pass sometime this summer.

The first thing we heard about this meeting is that the President said it was not a meeting about the oilspill. Let me say that again. The President said the purpose of this meeting was not to discuss the ongoing crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, where up to 60,000 barrels of oil are spewing into the gulf waters each and every day, and which have been for 72 days now.

Senator Alexander had to raise the issue himself, only to be dismissed by the President. Well, I am sure that will be of great comfort to the people of the gulf coast. When the President called Senators to the White House to talk about energy, I am sure most people in the gulf thought the crisis down there would at least be a topic of discussion. Evidently, they were wrong.

The second thing we heard about the meeting is that the President made what was described as a ``very passionate'' argument in favor of ``putting a price on carbon.'' This, of course, is code for the new national energy tax commonly referred to around here as cap and trade.

This is what the meeting was really about. And those of us who said that this is also what the President was talking about in his Oval Office speech a couple weeks ago were right: when the President urged Americans to view the gulf oilspill as a reason to embrace his vision of energy consumption in this country, he was talking about giving government vast new powers over industry and over the everyday lives of Americans through a new national energy tax.

In other words, at a moment when the American people were hoping to hear about what the White House was doing to fix the oil leak in the gulf, the President was using that moment to prepare the ground for yet another piece of legislation that would expand the reach of government, and which would do absolutely nothing to solve the crisis at hand.

The leak still is not fixed. For more than 2 months, this pipe has gushed oil into the gulf, polluting our waters and our beaches, wreaking havoc on the lives and livelihoods of millions along the gulf. I think it is most people's view that the left-wing wish-list can wait. Fixing this immediate problem should be the top priority right now.

One of the President's senior advisers said the other day that when the President was elected, he had to deal with problems that had been put off for too long. But the administration needs to solve the most urgent problems first, and the most urgent problem is not a new national energy tax, it is the crisis in the gulf.

Former President Clinton had it right the other day. He said the Federal Government's position on this issue ought to be very straightforward. The most important thing, he said, is to fix the leak. The second most important thing is to keep oil away from the shores. The third most important thing is to minimize the damage from the oil that reaches the shores. And the fourth most important thing is to find out who did what wrong, at BP and in the Federal Government, and to hold them accountable.

But the first thing is to fix the leak.

Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Snowe, I object.

Mr. President, let me just say briefly, once again, the majority wants to make this debate about Republicans opposing something. Let me make it clear that we have offered ways of paying for these programs, and we have been eager to approve them. But we cannot support job-killing taxes and adding tens of billions to the already unsustainable national debt. So the only reason the unemployment extension has not passed is because our friends on the other side simply refuse to pass a bill that does not add to the debt. That is it. That is the only difference between what they have offered and what we have offered.

In a moment, I will offer a 2-month extension of the expired unemployment insurance benefits. This extension would be fully paid using the very same stimulus funds 57 Democrats, including my friend the majority leader, voted to redirect for these same purposes. Let me repeat that. We would pay for this extension with a Democrat-approved stimulus offset. This extension we will offer would cover the month of June, when benefits have lapsed, and it would cover next month, so we will have time to further debate these proposals.

If the Democrats object to extending these programs using their own stimulus offset to pay for them, then they will be saying loudly and clearly that their commitment to deficit spending trumps their desire to help the unemployed. So let's be clear about the principle that is really at stake here: Are Democrats willing to extend these programs without--without--adding to the debt? That is the real question in this debate.

Therefore, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 4853; that all after the enacting clause be stricken and the McConnell amendment at the desk be agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table.

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

Madam President, the Senate's confirmation hearing for Gen. David Petraeus is now underway. Seeing Gen. Petraeus should remind all of us of the successful counterinsurgency campaign he led in Iraq and of the sacrifices made by coalition forces there before and after the surge of forces in 2007. Regimental and brigade combat teams protected the population and fought hard battles while a counterterrorism campaign, led by General McChrystal, was conducted against insurgent leaders.

Today's hearing also reminds us of the divisive debate that preceded that successful counterinsurgency campaign and of the skepticism and criticisms leveled against General Petraeus by some of our colleagues across the aisle at the time.

Fortunately, the critics did not prevail, either in their attacks on General

Petraeus or in their calls for a hasty withdrawal of troops based on political timelines rather than the security and stability of Iraq.

If we learned anything from that debate, it is that our national security and the stability of the region outweigh short-term political calculations.

It is clear that our Nation's efforts must be integrated in Afghanistan, just as they were in Iraq. It is worth remembering our forces in Afghanistan have been conducting a counterterrorism campaign for more than 8 years, and this has been insufficient to keep the Taliban from regaining the momentum in Afghanistan. American and Afghan security forces must do more to ensure the Afghan populace that it will be protected, something undermined by withdrawal deadlines.

The surge of forces into Afghanistan ordered by the President is not yet complete. General Petraeus is the right General to command this operation and he should be confirmed quickly.

Madam President, my understanding is that the senior Senator from Washington has a unanimous-consent request she would like to propound.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, and I will have to object on behalf of my colleague, Senator Coburn from Oklahoma, he has some concerns about this legislation, particularly, as he indicates in a letter I will ask to have printed in the Record, that it be paid for up front so the promises to America's veterans are, in fact, kept. So I object.

I ask unanimous consent that the letter from Senator Coburn to myself on this matter be printed in the Record.

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

Mr. President, I too wish to say a few words about our departed colleague. The first thing to say is that we are sorry, first and foremost, to the family and also to the staff of Senator Byrd for their loss. The next thing to say is that it is a sad day for the Senate. Everybody who has been here for a while has a few Robert Byrd stories. A couple come to mind I thought I would share.

Along with Senator Reid and Senator Dodd, who were here on the floor earlier, Senator Byrd, in the early part of the decade, responded to my request to come down to the University of Louisville, my alma mater, to speak to the students and to a broader audience. At his age and particularly given the fact that I was a member of the opposition party, there was, frankly, no particular reason for him to do that. But he did and made an extraordinary impression on the students and inconvenienced himself on my behalf, which I always appreciated.

My second--and really my favorite--recollection of Senator Byrd, I found myself a few years ago in a curious position, at variance with virtually everybody on my side of the aisle. I had reflexively, as I think many Members had, responded negatively to a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the late 1980s essentially holding that flag burning was a permissible first amendment expression of political speech. The first time that amendment came before the Senate, I voted for it. Then I began to have some pangs of discomfort about my position. Having spent a good portion of my political career focusing on political speech and the first amendment, I, frankly, decided I was wrong and in subsequent votes have opposed it.

A few years ago, it became clear it was going to be defeated in the Senate by the narrowest of margins. I remembered that Senator Byrd was always carrying around a Constitution in his pocket and had a feeling that upon reflection, he might reach the same conclusion I did. So I lobbied Senator Byrd. I thought initially it would be a futile act, but he reexamined his position. As a result, he too changed his position, and as it turns out, there was not a vote to spare the last time the Senate considered whether it would be appropriate to amend the first amendment for the first time in the history of the country to kind of carve a niche out of it to make it possible to punish an act we all find despicable. But, nevertheless, the most unfortunate of speech is probably what the first amendment was all about initially. So Senator Byrd did change his position. There was not a vote to spare, and the amendment was defeated. And from my point of view, the first amendment was saved on that important occasion.

We will all remember Senator Byrd for a variety of different things. As the majority leader pointed out, he was a unique individual in so many different ways. Those are two of my favorite stories about Robert Byrd.

More than anyone else in any of our lifetimes, Robert Byrd embodied the Senate. He not only wrote the book on it, he was a living repository of its rules, its customs, and its prerogatives. So it would be a mistake to think that Senator Byrd became synonymous with the Senate simply because he served in it longer than anybody else. Rather, it was a fitting coincidence that a man who cherished and knew this place so well would become its longest serving Member.

Yet it is probably true that he will be remembered above all for his longevity.

Everyone seems to have a different way of communicating just how long a time he spent here. For me, it is enough to note that Robert Byrd had already spent nearly 20 years serving in elected office in West Virginia and in the House of Representatives before he was elected to the U.S. Senate during the Eisenhower administration.

And over the years, he would walk the floor with 4 future Presidents, 4 of the 12 he would serve alongside in a 57-year career in Congress. I won't enumerate all the legislative records Senator Byrd held, but I would venture to say that the figure that probably made him proudest of all was the nearly 70 years of marriage he spent with a coal miner's daughter named Erma.

If he was synonymous with the Senate, he was no less synonymous with West Virginia. Here is how popular Robert Byrd was in his home State: In the year Robert Byrd was first elected to the U.S. Senate, 1958, he won with 59 percent of the vote, a margin that most people around here would consider a landslide. In a record 9 Senate elections, it was the smallest margin of victory he would ever get.

Members will offer tributes of their own in the coming days.

I will close with this. Last year, in becoming the longest serving Member of Congress in history, Senator Byrd surpassed another legendary figure, Carl Hayden of Arizona. Hayden was known to many as the ``silent Senator,'' a phrase few would use to describe Senator Byrd.

But what the two men shared was a devotion to the United States and, in particular, to the legislative branch of our Government, which the founders envisioned and established as coequal with the other two.

A few years ago, Senator Byrd's official portrait was unveiled at an event in the Old Senate Chamber. And I think that portrait pretty well sums up the image Senator Byrd wanted to leave of himself. It is the image of a dignified man, in the classical mold, supported by three things: the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, and his wife. A lot of people looked at Senator Byrd's record-long tenure in Congress, his immense knowledge of poetry, history, and the Senate, and wondered where he got the strength. With this painting, he gave us the answer. He showed us the anchors.

As I noted at that ceremony, Senator Byrd once wrote that if the question was whether to be loved or respected, he always chose to be respected. Yet his real accomplishment is that, in the end, he managed to be both.

So I join my colleagues, my fellow Americans, the people of West Virginia, and the Byrd family today in remembering our colleague. We will surely miss him.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, the Judiciary Committee just wrapped up its hearings on the first day of the nomination of Elena Kagan to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. These hearings will provide Senators on both sides of the aisle an opportunity to examine Ms. Kagan's record, legal experience, and background in light of the awesome responsibility that comes with a lifetime appointment on our Nation's highest Court. These hearings also provide an opportunity for the American people to focus their attention on a woman whom President Obama would like to see deciding cases on many of the most important and consequential issues we face as a people, long after the President's time in office is through.

In the near term, she would be ruling on the actions and policies of an administration of which she is now a member. So it is well worth asking why the President chose Ms. Kagan in the first place. We know the President and Ms. Kagan are former colleagues, and we know from the President himself that they are friends. We know he views her as an important member of his team and that he was especially pleased with her handling of the Citizens United case. The President is no doubt confident that Ms. Kagan shares his view that judges should be judged primarily on their ability to empathize with some over others; in other words, that she embraces the empathy standard he has talked about time and time again. But as I have said before, while empathy may be a very good quality in general, in a court of law it is only

good if you are lucky enough to be the guy the judge empathizes with. In those cases, it is the judge, not the law, who determines your fate.

In a nation such as ours, conceived from its very beginning as a nation not of men but of laws, this is a very dangerous road to go down. In the case of President Obama's previous nominee to the Supreme Court, Senators had many years of court cases to study in determining whether Sonia Sotomayor could be expected to treat everyone who came before her equally, just as Americans would expect in a judge and just as the judicial oath requires. In Elena Kagan's case, however, no such record exists. She has no experience as a judge, nor does she have much of a record as a legal practitioner. This is one of the reasons some have raised Ms. Kagan's experience as an issue.

It stands to reason that in order to know what kind of judge John Roberts or Sam Alito or Sonia Sotomayor would be, it was useful for Senators from both parties to look at the kind of judge these nominees had been. Since Ms. Kagan has not had the judicial or private practice experience common to most modern-day nominees, it is all the more important that we look more closely at the kind of experience she has had. A review of that experience reveals a woman who has spent much of her adult life not steeped in the practice of law but in the art of politics. To be more specific, when we look at Elena Kagan's resume, what we find is a woman who spent much of her adult life working to advance the goals of the Democratic Party.

As a young woman in college, she spent one summer working 14 hours a day for a liberal Democratic candidate for the Senate, and when her candidate lost, Ms. Kagan wrote that she believed the ``world had gone mad, that liberalism was dead.'' If all we had were the comments of an impassioned young student, they would not be worth all that much. Few of us would want everything we wrote as a college student put up on an overhead projector.

Yet the trajectory of Ms. Kagan's career, the testimony of those who know her work well, and the recently released records of her time as a political adviser in the Clinton White House, suggest otherwise. Taken together, they suggest someone, as one news story put it, who long after college and even at the highest peaks of political influence was ``driven and opinionated, with a flare for political tactics. . . .''

What else do we find in Ms. Kagan's resume? Well, she volunteered for the Dukakis Presidential campaign, working as an opposition researcher to defend the then-Governor of Massachusetts from attacks, and to look for ways to attack the Republican opposition. As an aide to President Clinton, Ms. Kagan did not serve mostly as an attorney, as she put it, but as a policy advocate, frequently looking for ways to advantage Democrats over Republicans.

If you believe the role of a judge is to be an impartial arbiter, these things cannot be ignored. Indeed, Members of both parties should appreciate the importance of confirming judges who are more interested in what the law says than in how the law can be used to advantage any one individual, party, or group. It is to no one's advantage if judges cannot be expected to rise above politics. As the chairman of the Judiciary Committee once put it:

No one should vote for somebody that's going to be a

political apparatchik for either the Democratic Party or the

Republican Party.

If there is one thing we can all agree on, it is that politics should end at the courtroom door.

So this is one of the key questions Senators will be looking to answer as these hearings proceed: Is someone who has done the kind of political work Ms. Kagan has done in her career more or less likely to restrain her political views if she were confirmed to a lifetime position on the country's highest Court?

Ms. Kagan has never made a secret of her professional aspirations. She has cultivated all the right friendships along the way, which is all well and good. No one ever rose to the heights of their profession by ignoring or upsetting the people who could get them there. But the question before us is whether Ms. Kagan's political views would be more or less constrained by the Constitution she swears to uphold once she reaches her goal.

Some of Ms. Kagan's supporters wish us to focus on her personality. They wish to point out she has a knack for making friends and for getting along well with different kinds of people in academia and among the political class. Once again, these are all fine qualities. No one has any doubt that Ms. Kagan is bright and personable and easy to get along with. But the Supreme Court is not a dinner club. If getting along in polite society were enough to put somebody on the Supreme Court, then we would not need confirmation hearings at all.

The goal here is not to determine whether we think someone will get along well with the other eight Justices; it is whether someone can be expected to be a neutral and independent arbiter of the law rather than a rubberstamp for any administration.

These are just some of the questions Senators will be asking and which Ms. Kagan will be expected to answer. No one should have any doubt that Republicans will treat Ms. Kagan with the same respect and professionalism they treated Judge Sotomayor. But questions must be answered and clear judgments must be made.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.