Nomination of Amy Coney Barrett

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, at this time last week, the Nation did not know whom President Trump would be nominating to the Supreme Court, but, amazingly, we did know what kinds of false attacks the far left would deploy against whoever it was.

Democrats and special interests have been telling the country for 45 years--45 years--that every Supreme Court vacancy under a Republican President was going to bring about the apocalypse. John Paul Stevens, they said, was anti-woman. David Souter, they said, wanted to hurt vulnerable people. John Roberts was out to get health insurance.

And wouldn't you know, the President had barely finished saying Judge Amy Coney Barrett's name before the same old attacks began rolling in. Our 77-year-old male former Vice President and our 69-year-old male Senate Democratic leader have tried to inform American women that this 48-year-old working mom wants to roll back her own rights as a woman--roll back her own rights as a woman.

Democrats have tried to fearmonger around a 4-year-old academic paper that reinforced one unfair penalty in ObamaCare, which Congress, by the way, already eliminated 3 years ago.

As an aside, if the American people are interested in which Senators are serious about protecting Americans with preexisting conditions, they can simply look up the vote Senators took last night--just last night. Every single Democrat voted against legislation from Senator Tillis that would have cemented protections for these vulnerable Americans.

Democrats voted to block protections for preexisting conditions just like they voted to block hundreds of billions of dollars for coronavirus relief and just like they voted to block police reform--and a thousand other things they tell Americans they support but vote against to block bipartisan progress.

So here is another one of the made-up attacks: Democrats are demanding that Judge Barrett commit in advance--in advance--to recuse herself from entire categories of cases for no reason. This is another totally invented standard. Nobody has ever suggested that Supreme Court Justices should categorically sit on the sidelines until the President who nominated them has left office. What an absurd suggestion.

Justices Ginsburg and Breyer were confirmed during President Clinton's very first term. Justices Sotomayor and Kagan were confirmed during President Obama's first term. All four of these Justices went on to participate in election-related proceedings while the President who had nominated them was on the ballot.

Justices Breyer and Ginsburg participated actively in Clinton v. Jones and other matters connected to President Clinton's eventual impeachment. In fact, they urged and attempted to get the Supreme Court even more involved.

This is a sideshow--a sideshow. If Judge Barrett is confirmed, she will swear an oath. She will have a lifetime appointment. Nobody seriously is suggesting she lacks any bit of the integrity which everyone trusted Justice Ginsburg, Justice Breyer, Justice Sotomayor, Justice Kagan, and countless others to exercise. In fact, her integrity and independence are precisely what Judge Barrett's peers across the political spectrum go out of their way to applaud.

Judge Barrett has no obligation to make any of the bizarre--bizarre-- prejudgments that our Democratic colleagues are demanding. Like I said, much of the script has been entirely predictable.

I will tell you one thing I did not predict. I honestly did not expect the Democratic leader to come to the Senate floor and say that concerns about anti-religious discrimination are ``manufactured hysterics.'' I didn't expect that.

I do not expect we will hear the leader of the Democratic conference stand on the Senate floor and say that America's freedom of religion is ``an imaginary issue.''

The Democratic leader claimed indignantly that his fellow Democrats would never--never--make an issue out of a nominee's personal religious beliefs. He took great offense that such a thing would even be suggested.

But the whole country knows that, 3 years ago, when the Judiciary Committee was considering this very nominee--this one--for her current position, Senate Democrats did precisely that, exactly that. The senior Senator from California literally implied in front of the entire country that Judge Barrett was too Catholic--too Catholic--to be a judge. Here was the quote: ``The dogma lives loudly within you,'' she said. ``And that's of concern.''

The senior Senator from Illinois asked Judge Barrett in the official record--listen to this--``Do you consider yourself an `orthodox Catholic?' ''

The junior Senator from Hawaii felt compelled to tell the nominee-- listen to this--``You would be a Catholic judge.'' ``You would be a Catholic judge.''

No one imagined these exchanges, but they happened on video before the entire Nation. Multiple sitting Senators fretted in an open hearing that Judge Barrett's religious views created doubts about her fitness to serve.

Outside the Senate, it was not imaginary when one faith group in which Judge Barrett and her family participate reportedly came under cyber attack a few days ago. Their membership directory was reportedly hacked, just as Judge Barrett emerged as a frontrunner.

Nobody had to imagine the ominous articles from AP, Reuters, the Washington Post, and POLITICO, all implying there was something questionable--questionable--or problematic about Judge Barrett's faith practices.

Nobody had to imagine POLITICO sending a contributing editor to snoop around the church buildings and report what a youth group had written on their whiteboard.

So, no, Americans don't have to imagine this elite disdain. All they have to do is read it.

It is not just this one nominee. Nobody imagined it when the junior Senator from Vermont accused a different nominee of hatred and Islamophobia because he had previously expressed a personal view that Christianity gets things right, which Islam gets wrong.

It is not imaginary when the junior Senator from California cast aspersions on yet another nominee for--listen to this--belonging to the Knights of Columbus. And another Democrat implied he should quit this mainstream Catholic group if he wanted to hold public office. Quit the Knights of Columbus if you want to hold public office? In America?

The Democratic leader says these are manufactured hysterics. He says people who call this out are hysterical. Frankly, it would be better for our country if that were true, but that is not the case.

Just yesterday, 24 hours after the Democratic leader swore that Democrats would not make this an issue, the junior Senator from Hawaii tried to say Judge Barrett's faith is ``irrelevant'' but immediately proceeded to question ``whether her closely held views can be separated from her ability to make objective, fair decisions.'' No one--no one-- should be deceived by these thinly veiled euphemisms.

This is the exact form that religious discrimination had taken in America for decades--for decades--especially when it comes to public service.

We do not often hear people say they simply dislike a particular religion altogether. Thank goodness we are mostly past that kind of bigotry. No, going all the way back to Jack Kennedy, the more common accusation has been something a little more subtle--that people of deep faith or certain faiths are incapable of being fair or objective; that they are incapable of doing certain jobs well; that such Americans are torn between divided loyalties and not to be trusted.

Here is what the left is trying to say: Oh, we have no problems--no problems--with Judge Barrett's faith in an abstract sense. We just think it disqualifies her from this promotion.

Madam President, that is the definition of discrimination.

About a century ago, openly anti-Catholic political cartoons pictured the Pope or the Catholic Church as an octopus wrapping its tentacles around the institutions of American Government. Thankfully those displays are long gone, but the core attitude clearly is not.

Americans of faith are not imagining the increasingly hostile climate that the political left and the media have spent literally years sowing. And, no, there is no free pass, as some commentators have suggested, because many prominent liberal voices or prominent Democrats themselves identify as Catholic. You don't get a free pass just by calling yourself a Catholic.

More than one-fifth of our country belongs to the same church as Judge Barrett--one-fifth of our country. Tens and tens of millions of Americans--all of them--like all Americans, must be free to live their faiths in diverse and different ways without being barred--without being barred--from public service. These kinds of aspersions do not become any more acceptable if the call is coming from inside the house.

Sadly, none of these problems are imaginary. The American people's concerns are not manufactured.

The Little Sisters of the Poor did not wake up thinking it would be good fun if the Obama-Biden administration tried to force them to violate their own consciences. These nuns did not manufacture their lengthy legal battle for the fun of it. It was the secularizing left that went on offense.

Churches all across America did not go looking for one of this cycle's Democratic Presidential contenders to suggest places of workshop should lose their tax exempt status if they preach or practice traditional teaching. It was the secularizing left that went on offense.

If parts of the elite American left have become this out of touch with mainstream religious beliefs held by millions and millions of their fellow citizens, it will take more than victim blaming to dig out of it. They could start this week. They could start today.

They could commit to evaluating Judge Barrett on her credentials and her qualifications, and they could stop gawking at deeply religious Americans like they have encountered extraterrestrial life or bought a ticket for a safari

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