After three days of top Senate Democrats focusing their ire on Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican pushed back on Thursday on those who have critiqued him and his party about filling, or not, a vacancy on the Supreme Court.
“Mr. President, yesterday the minority leader came to the floor to disparage the work of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the Senate as a whole,” Grassley said on the Senate floor with top Republicans flanking him. “But childish tantrums aren’t appropriate for the Senate.”
Earlier this week, Senate Republicans led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Grassley announced that they would take the unprecedented step of denying a Supreme Court nominee confirmation hearings. President Obama has yet to name someone to fill the seat left open after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death on Feb. 13.
Senate Republicans have argued that the American people should have a voice in the process through the 2016 presidential election. Grassley has said the vacancy, which has left the court with possibility of a 4-4 deadlock, elevates discussion of the court during an election year.
“We’ve lost one of our great jurists,” Grassley said. “It’s up to the American people to decide whether we preserve his legacy. This is a debate we should have.”
Senate Democrats were unfazed. They gathered on the steps of the highest court in the land on Thursday to chastise the lack of hearings
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“We have obstruction on steroids,” Democratic Minority Leader Harry Reid said. “The president is going to nominate someone, but we’ve already been told that there is no hearing, no vote, and to make even unbelievable, they won’t even meet with this nominee. “We want them to do their jobs.”
On Tuesday, Reid suggested that Grassley, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, would go down in history as the most obstructionist Judiciary Committee head ever — including the Civil Rights Era, when a Southern Democrat stifled civil-rights legislation. Reid, a Nevada Democrat, then followed up on Wednesday by calling Grassley’s leadership “inept.”
While Obama may have lost one potential nominee after Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, a Republican, removed his name from consideration, he will meet with Grassley and McConnell next week.
Days after unnamed White House officials told the Des Moines Register that Grassley was ducking a meeting, both senators announced in a joint statement that they would meet with Obama on March 1.
— by Brent Griffiths