-9999

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, yesterday evening, in the tradition of another Democrat President and his infamous Court-packing scheme way back in 1937, President Biden announced a proposal to interfere with the Constitution's separation of powers and permanently politicize the Supreme Court. He dressed it up with appeals to permanent American values, but what it all boiled down to was this: Democrats don't like some of the Supreme Court's recent decisions, and so they have decided to change the rules of the game. That is it.

I have disagreed with more than one Supreme Court decision in my time--I have disagreed with Supreme Court Justices nominated by Presidents of my own party--but I have never thought that my not agreeing with a Supreme Court decision meant that the Court itself was illegitimate or that my party should attempt to change the law to make over the Supreme Court in our image.

Well, not so for Democrats. The Supreme Court releases a handful of decisions the Democrats don't like, and they decide that the Court is illegitimate and that it is time to remake the Court to their liking. More than one Democrat has already introduced legislation in Congress to do just that.

And now, with the President's announcement yesterday, it has become clear that those plans have accelerated and that if Democrats take the White House and Congress in November, we can expect them to lose no time in destroying the Court as we know it.

While the President's proposals are troubling enough, with a measure to circumvent the Constitution's lifetime appointments for Justices and replace the Supreme Court's own code of conduct with a code of conduct mandated by Democrat Members of Congress, who knows--who knows if Democrats will stop there? After all, while their proposal would conveniently start by retiring Republican appointees, Democrats would only be able to retire one Justice every 2 years. What is to say that would be fast enough for Democrats?

We all know that Court-packing, which is expanding the Supreme Court until you get a sufficient number of Justices to endorse your policies, has gained significant traction in Democrat circles. Indeed, President Biden's term limits proposal is a version of Court-packing by another name, and it would not surprise me at all if Democrats didn't stop there, because--make no mistake--this is a slippery slope. Once you start interfering, there is no going back.

If the Democrats implement this plan, it is easy to see a future where each subsequent administration acts to ``return balance'' to the Supreme Court, with the result that the Supreme Court changes wildly from administration to administration, losing all independence and credibility and any resemblance to the Supreme Court as established by the Constitution.

I would like to remind my Democrat colleagues of what happened with the filibuster for judicial nominees here in the Senate. Back in 2013, Democrats, frustrated that they could not rubberstamp all of President Obama's appointees, abolished the filibuster for lower court nominees. It turned out to be a quick step from that to abolishing the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees a few years later, and I am pretty sure that I have heard more than one of my Democrat colleagues express regret over that 2013 decision. But it seems that Democrats are resolved not to learn from history and are perfectly willing to sacrifice the long- term stability of the Supreme Court for their own short-term political gain.

Even worse than any specific element of President Biden's proposals yesterday is the incredibly dangerous precedent they would set for meddling in what is supposed to be a separate, independent branch of our government. If Democrats were really, really concerned about impartiality and the rule of law and promoting faith in the Supreme Court, the last thing they would be doing is interfering with the Court's makeup.

If there are any Democrats left in Congress who are willing to put the long-term health of our institutions over some temporary political gain, I urge them--I urge them--to join Republicans in opposing this power grab.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source