Barrasso Says Filling Judicial Vacancies Remains Top Senate Priority

WASHINGTON, DC – With more than 125 seats currently sitting vacant on the federal courts, U.S. Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) appeared yesterday morning before a breakfast meeting of The Ripon Society to discuss the effort to fill those vacancies, and the possibility that Senate rules may have to be changed to overcome Democratic obstruction and achieve that goal.

“We’re going to continue to put young conservative people on the courts,” Barrasso stated. “That’s the biggest impact that any President can have – to fill judiciary vacancies. But we’re dealing with historic obstruction and will likely have to change the rules of the Senate in terms of the time needed between the nominations and getting them confirmed on the floor. Because the Democrats have been dragging it out.”

“You get down to about four nominations a week. Even if you started at eight o’clock on a Monday morning and you forced the issue all the time, by the next Monday morning at eight o’clock you’d still only get four done … You can’t get any more unless you actually change the rules. We’ve been working for about a year to make sure we could get the number of votes that we needed. We now have a commitment by Republicans. We would rather have the Democrats join us in a bipartisan way. This is primarily to make sure that the President can get his team in place.”

Barrasso was reelected to his third full-term in the Senate last November. He currently serves as Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference — the third-ranking member of the Senate GOP leadership. In this position, he has not only helped lead the effort to fill judicial vacancies, but has also helped spearhead the effort to strengthen security along America’s border.

He talked about this effort yesterday, as well as the vote in the Senate that would overturn the President’s declaration of a border emergency.

“I’m going to support the President,” he said in reference to the vote. “The great majority of Republicans are. Some are not. I was with the President yesterday at the White House talking about this. He knows what’s going to happen. He’s going to veto, the veto is going to be sustained in the House, and he’s going to continue to focus on the issue of border security. Some of our Members who have concerns about the constitutionality of it read the law one way. Others don’t like the emergency law as written. So we’ll change that law. I think that the President does have too many powers. But that’s a different discussion. To me, the discussion today is about border security. I support the President, and a great majority of us will.”

The Wyoming lawmaker also shared his thoughts about the ill will that some have toward the Chief Executive, and the Far Left shift among some Democrats on Capitol Hill.

“The fascinating thing to me as a Republican is that the hatred of the President by the Democrats is so much,” he stated. “Their emotions are so involved. From the day he got elected, they’ve been saying, ‘We’re going to do everything we can to stop him.’ They couldn’t believe he got elected, couldn’t believe Hillary didn’t win, and are astonished by the whole thing. And now, the energy of the party is so far to the left. They have taken a sharp left turn, to the point that Jonathan Martin in Sunday’s New York Times talked about the fact that they are now careening over the liberal cliff.

“I think even Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are unnerved by the idea of the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. And those are just two of the Far Left approaches that they’re taking … They want to stack the Supreme Court. Eric Holder was talking about it at Yale and at Columbia. He wants to go to 11 members … One of the guys running wants to take it to 15. There’s also the late term abortion issue that we dealt with. Every one of the Democrats essentially voted for infanticide. You cannot believe how Far Left they are heading.”

To view Barrasso’s remarks before The Ripon Society breakfast discussion yesterday morning, please click on the link below:

The Ripon Society is a public policy organization that was founded in 1962 and takes its name from the town where the Republican Party was born in 1854 – Ripon, Wisconsin.  One of the main goals of The Ripon Society is to promote the ideas and principles that have made America great and contributed to the GOP’s success.  These ideas include keeping our nation secure, keeping taxes low and having a federal government that is smaller, smarter and more accountable to the people.