Post by bot on Apr 9, 2017 19:23:28 GMT -5
Hoyer Statement on the Senate Rule Changes For Supreme Court Nominee Neil Gorsuch
WASHINGTON, DC - House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer (MD) released the following statement today on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's decision to change the Senate rules, invoking the "nuclear option" for Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch:
“Today’s procedural changes by Senate Republicans imperils the future of the Senate as a deliberative body and risks eroding the constitutional framework that safeguards the rights and representation of the minority under our system of government. Furthermore, it increases the chances that future presidents with a simple majority in the Senate will have no incentive to nominate justices who can appeal to the broad center. The result would be a Supreme Court populated with the most extreme partisans of each side.
“This change also represents a new low in Republicans’ unabashedly partisan campaign to deny President Obama his Supreme Court nominee. After refusing to consider Judge Merrick Garland’s nomination for ten months last year in an unprecedented and shameful move, they have now decided that handing President Trump a symbolic victory in the aftermath of last month’s health care fiasco is more important than maintaining the Senate’s integrity and tradition of respect for its minority.
“Earlier in our history, the French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States and, in writing about our government, warned of the hazard of denying the minority a check against the power of the majority. ‘Liberty is endangered,’ he wrote, ‘when this power finds no obstacle which can retard its course and give it time to moderate its own vehemence.’ I urge Senate Republicans to reconsider their decision and to place the long-term health of our democracy ahead of political expediency.”