Schumer Floor Remarks on Bipartisanship, Judge Gorsuch and the Affordable Care Act

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today delivered remarks on the Senate floor discussing Senate Democrats’ openness to true bipartisanship, President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch and the letter Senate Democrats sent to President Trump offering to work together on improving the ACA. Below are his remarks:

Mr. President, I rise this morning on a few topics, but first I wanted to mention that last night many of us spent some time at the White House, (where we were regaled by the wonderful Marine and Army Chorus), where there was talk about renewing a spirit of bipartisanship in Washington.

I’m all for it. Of course, we Democrats hope that the president and Republicans in Congress will sit down with us in a true spirit of bipartisanship.

…Because so far in this Congress, the Republican idea of bipartisanship has meant: “we come up with our plan and you Democrats should support it.” That’s not bipartisanship. The president, the Republican Leader, and the House Speaker have come up with issue after issue, including the Supreme Court nominee – no Democratic consultation – and then said the only way you can achieve bipartisanship is to vote with us.

• You can’t try to improve the health care system with only Republican votes, on reconciliation, without consulting any Democrats -- without a single sentence of input from Democrats -- and call that an attempt at bipartisanship.
• You can’t do an infrastructure package of tax credits and no real spending and then ask for bipartisan support.
• And you certainly can’t limit your entire selection of Supreme Court justices to those handpicked by the Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society and then ask for us to vote for that nominee as a show of bipartisan support.

Bipartisanship means sitting down with Democrats, getting our ideas, and hashing out a compromise. It does not mean proposing your policy – particularly when it is so far to the right -- making an exhortation to bipartisanship, and bemoaning the absence of it when Democrats don’t go along with your way.

I truly hope the president and Republicans want to renew a spirit of bipartisanship – but it has to be real, it has to be meant, and their actions have to follow suit.

Well, let’s talk about the Supreme Court because that exemplifies exactly what I’m talking about.

Over the last several weeks, my Republican friends have tried to paint Judge Neil Gorsuch as the beau ideal of a neutral, impartial judge. They have insisted that Judge Gorsuch is a straight down-the-middle guy, someone who will just call "balls and strikes." The Majority Leader even likes to cite the letter of a friend of the Judge who says “there is no principled reason” to oppose his nomination.

Of course, there are several principled reasons to object to Judge Gorsuch. Today, I'd like to focus on one in particular - Judge Gorsuch's long career of ties to conservative interests and conservative ideological groups.                                                       

This idea that Judge Gorsuch would be simply a neutral, mainstream Justice is belied by his career, his judicial record, and perhaps most of all, the manner with which he was selected to serve on the Supreme Court.

He was culled from a list handpicked by the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation -- conservative organizations that have spent the past few decades systematically trying to shift the balance of the courts to the right. Most of my colleagues on the other side know how far right even the Heritage Foundation is. And they often grumble at how they are pulling the party too far over.

Instead of consulting the Senate, President Trump outsourced his Supreme Court pick to the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, long before the election even took place.

The Constitution doesn’t say the President shall appoint Supreme Court justices with the advice and consent of right wing special interest groups. It says it he should appoint them with advice and consent of the Senate.

President Trump didn’t consult the Senate…he never even considered it...he just consulted this list.

Surely my Republican friend from Utah, Senator Hatch, must remember when President Clinton consulted him about his Supreme Court picks. Senator Hatch told the president not to select Bruce Babbitt, and offered instead the names “Ginsburg” and “Breyer.” President Clinton listened to Senator Hatch, and nominated them instead.

Surely my Republican friend from Utah also remembers when he suggested to President Obama that Merrick Garland be nominated to the Supreme Court, calling him a “fine man.” President Obama listened and made him his pick.

President Trump, different than all of the past presidents in so many ways, so many of them unfortunate… President Trump, before even being elected to office, swore off this entire process – outsourcing the “advice and consent” process to a list selected by two ultra-conservative organizations.

Take the Heritage Foundation, for example. Are they down-the-middle? Are they unbiased? Let’s listen to some of the things they believe, way different than most Americans. This is a group that believes "freedom" means businesses have the right to discriminate against LGBT people. This is a group that believes "limited government" means eliminating resources for the Violence Against Women Act. This is a group that believes a strong national defense means discriminatory executive orders that bar immigrants and refugees from Muslim-majority countries.

Mr. President – this is a group that holds extreme right-wing positions, a group that is far, far outside the American mainstream … and they want Neil Gorsuch to have a seat on the highest court in the land.

Does anyone think they’d put a judicial moderate on their list who'd only call "balls and strikes?" Does anyone think there’d be all this outside, dark, undisclosed money being spent to support Judge Gorsuch’s nomination if he was just someone who’d call “balls and strikes?”

No, there’s a reason all this dark money is being spent to support him. There's a reason the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation liked Judge Gorsuch enough to put him on the president's shortlist. And there's a reason the president pledged only to select from the list -- he wanted to curry favor with skeptical conservatives during the campaign. So this idea that Judge Gorsuch would simply be some neutral Justice...no, that doesn't hold water.

So when Republicans say that if the Democrats won’t support Judge Gorsuch, we won’t support any Republican-nominated Judge -- that’s simply not true. We have several reasons to be concerned with Judge Gorsuch specifically – and specifically, one of those things we’re concerned about is that he was supported and pushed forward by the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society, and groomed by billionaire conservatives like Mr. Anschutz.

Judge Gorsuch had a chance…most of us waited until after the hearings because at the hearings, he had a chance to distance himself from these views, but he refused to substantively answer question after question in the hearings.

So if Judge Neil Gorsuch fails to reach sixty votes, it’s not because Democrats are being obstructionist…it’s because he failed to convince 60 Senators that he belongs on the Supreme Court. In that event, the answer is not to permanently changing the rules and traditions of the Senate; the answer is to change the nominee.

The Majority is trying to make this a binary choice: confirm Gorsuch or change the rules. Not so. That’s just not so. The idea that if Judge Gorsuch can’t get sixty, we must move immediately to change the rules of the Senate is a false narrative. If the Majority chooses to go that route, they do so of their own volition. No one is forcing them to do so, except maybe the Heritage Foundation and groups like the Federalist Society.

Now, one thing I want to say on the wall. I talked about the wall yesterday. I’m not going to elaborate, but I’d just like to add to the record a quote on the wall from none other than the Secretary of the Interior, former Republican Congressman Mr. Zinke from Montana. Here’s what he said. This is his quote on the wall and I hope my colleagues will listen.

“The border is complicated, as far as building a physical wall…The Rio Grande, what side of the river are you going to put the wall? We’re not going to put it on our side and cede the river to Mexico. And we’re probably not going to put it in the middle of the river.”

Finally, Mr. President, on the Affordable Care Act.

Today, 44 Senate Democrats are sending a letter to the president that puts onto paper our official offer to work with him to improve the existing law.

Last Friday, in the wake of the TrumpCare’s defeat in the House, I was deeply concerned to hear the president say that he wants Obamacare to “explode.” The president and his HHS Secretary Tom Price have significant latitude to either improve the law or undermine it. So far, the president has tried to undermine the law: discontinuing the advertising campaigns to get people to sign up for coverage and working behind the scenes to give insurers flexibility to offer less generous health care. And still, the president’s executive order directing agencies to help repeal and replace the ACA is hanging out there, causing instability in the market and giving federal agencies the permission to undermine the law. That should be rescinded.

What our letter today says is that, if the president drops these efforts to undermine the law, we Democrats are ready to sit down with him and Republicans in Congress in good faith to discuss a bipartisan approach to improving our health care system.

It's time to work together to make healthcare even more affordable, not encourage of root for failure of the law that would have devastating consequences for millions of Americans.