the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: calendar 537, s. 2074, a bill to establish a procedure for the conveyance of certain federal property around the jamestown reservoir in the state of north dakota and for other purposes. the presiding officer: is there objection to proceeding to the measure? without objection. mr. mcconnell: i further ask consent the committee-reported substitute amendment be agreed to, and that the bill as amended be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: so, mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9:30 a.m. friday, october 5. further, that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired. the journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders for their use later in the day and morning business be closed. finally, following leader remarks, the senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the kavanaugh nomination. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection.

mr. mcconnell: so if there's no further business to come before the senate, i ask it stand adjourned following the remarks of senators merkley, bennet, and portman. the presiding officer: without objection.

mr. merkley: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator for oregon. mr. merkley: mr. president, i ask that the quorum call be lifted. the presiding officer: the senate is not in a quorum call. the senator. mr. merkley: thank you. just moments ago i was outside

at a rally on the mall of the capitol, looking at the supreme court of the united states of america. when you look at that beautiful building you see the phrase, equal justice under law, above the big, beautiful doors of entry -- equal justice under the law. that's the concept behind the supreme court. every other court can make decisions but it can be appealed. the final determination, balancing the parts of the constitution against each other, understanding and exercising the fundamental vision contained in that beautiful we the people document, that's what those nine justices are all about. now, for an individual to become a justice it takes two steps. the first is that is it considered by the president as

to who to nominate, and having nominated, it comes over here to the senate, and this is the confirmation process. so the founders, when they wrote the constitution, really wrestled with how do you appoint individuals to these key positions? and they said, well, we could give the power to the assembly, so that would be a check on the executive or judiciary getting out of control, but they worried senator might trade favors. you put my friend in this position, i'll put your friend in that position. so they said that the nominating power needed to rest with one xid, and that -- individual, and that being, of course, the president of the united states of america. and then they said, what happens if a president goes off track? alexander hamilton spoke to this, he called a favoritism -- favoritism of a variety of types. what if the president goes off

track and starts nominating friends not qualified for particular positionings? what if he nominates people from his home state ignoring the qualities of people who might be better qualified. what if favors are done for the president in exchange for a position. so the founders said there needs to be a check, and that's the senate confirmation process. it's a pretty good design. i can't think of anyone better, and essentially the confirmation process is like a job interview. is this individual fit to serve in the executive branch? is this person fit to be a judge? is this person fit to be a justice of the supreme court of the united states of america? that's the term that alexander hamilton used when he was writing about the fundamental

goal of the founders to decide if an individual by experience and character was fit or unfit. so that's our job here. and throughout our history it's a clear separation of powers. the senate cannot intervene in terms of who the president nominates, and the president cannot intervene in terms of the review process of that nominee. well, now we have something that's happened in an extraordinary fashion that's never happened in the united states before as far as we're aware, and that's that the president of the united states, president trump, has violated that separation of powers, and he's done so in three fundamental ways. after nominating, he did not leave the senate to review the record. he, instead, had his team calm up senators who lead the judiciary committee and said

don't let the senate get their hands on any of the records for three years in which the nominee served as staff secretary. that's a direct intervention, a violation of the separation of powers. when i say he, i'm referring to his team, and so that intervention was unacceptable. then the senate requested the records for the time he served on the white house counsel, and in this case the president assigned an individual and gave him a stamp labeled presidential privilege, and that individual proceeded to stamp not ten pages of documents, not 100, not 1,000, not 10,000, but 100,000 pages of develop -- develop vant information -- relevant information were stamped

privileged. instead of responding for the records, proceeded to exercise what he referred to as presidential privilege or what we know to be executive privilege and prevent the senate from getting those documents. now why did that happen? we got some of the documents that made it through that censorship process but not all of them. and the documents we did receive we found some information. we found out that when he served he had been very involved in several nomination, discussions over nominations, even though he had indicated he had not played much of a roam. we found out that he was involved in the conversation over torture even though he had said he had not been involved. we found out that he had directly received documents stolen from senate democrats even though he said he had not received those documents. that's just in the documents

received. what's in the 100,000 documents that the president marked presidential privilege so that we could not get them? what is being hidden in those documents? this violation of separation of powers, a violation that has never occurred in this manner to this degree to this extent or anything close to it as far as any research has been able to ascertain, that violation is unacceptable. the senate must stand up for its right to be able to review the record of nominees. oh, sure, some of my colleagues are pretty happy that these documents got blocked because they don't want to know what's in them because they've already made up their mind. but reverse the situation. consider that maybe a different president is in place proposing a judge of a different judicial

philosophy. do we really want to compromise the fundamental rights of the senate, the responsibilities of the senate of advice and consent? we do not. it is wrong. each of us, every one of us took an oath of office to uphold the constitution. that constitution gives each of us, every one of us, the responsibility to review the record of nominees and decide if they are fit or unfit, and none of us can do that if we don't have those records. so let's stand up together and tell the president to deliver those documents. well, now, you might say isn't there some justification for this presidential privilege? well, consider this. that's not -- these are records that occurred under president bush, but it's not president bush asserting privilege.

it's president trump. how could his -- that is trump's conversations be compromised by records from a previous administration? doesn't this sound suspicious? the only reason anyone can think of is not that they compromise confidential information about the trump administration, but that simply they have information that would not look good in regard to our review of judge kavanaugh's record. so when you have this situation, this abusive of power, we sometimes turn to the courts to say stop that abuse, and that's what i've done. i filed suit and said stop this abuse of power by the president stepping in and blocking the senate from seeing those 100,000 documents for which no

justification has been provided. it isn't that the president said well, on this page, there is this type of sensitive information, and that's protected because it affects my administration. no. no justification. so that alone tells you that this senate should never confirm this individual because we have not had the opportunity to review his record. the president is hiding these documents. he does not want us to see them because it probably has a lot of information unbecoming to this nominee. you don't hear the nominee saying no, don't deliver the records. i want the senate to know everything about me. the nominee is not interested in us being able to actually see his judicial reviews or his character in that context. so this is one reason he should be rejected. but how about this? should anyone serve on the supreme court, that beautiful

place where we consider equal justice under the law, who has repeatedly lied to the u.s. senate during his confirmation hearings? he lied in 2006 time after time. my colleagues who served in 2006, i did not, have pointed this out in detail. he lied on key issues, key issues related to documents that i was referring to. and then we had his performance here in the senate just last week where he proceeded to tell all kinds of whoppers. the press has laid them out. some articles talk about 20-plus whoppers that he has told. by whoppers, i mean lies. i mean deceptions. i mean inaccuracies. i mean things he knew not to be true. that is unacceptable to put any individual on the court who cannot be truthful when questioned before congress.

and then we have the fact that he has this record of engaging in behavior abusive to women. now, it took a lot of courage for dr. ford to come forward and tell her experiences in high school, and it took a lot of courage for debbie ramirez to come forward and talk about her experiences in her freshman year, and she shared how mr. kavanaugh, judge kavanaugh, had directly engaged in massively inappropriate sexual behavior. and when women come forward to share these experiences, we need to treat them with respect. we need to treat them with dignity. we need to hear them. we need to understand their

pain. but what did the senators on the senate judiciary committee majority do? they hired a prosecutor in order to treat her as a criminal. yes, the 11 republican men hired a prosecutor to treat dr. ford as a criminal when she appeared before the committee. now, she asked for an f.b.i. investigation. the committee didn't want to give it to her. the leadership of the committee didn't want to give it to her. i praised my colleague from arizona who said it's so important to investigate the credibility of her story, to talk to those who have additional information. she asked for that. she invited that. she wanted that. and she provided a list of eight individuals that if you want to corroborate her story, these are the people you should talk to.

so the president at the request of my good friend from arizona said yes, we will reopen the background investigation, the f.b.i. investigation, but the president produces a scoping document that says who the f.b.i. can talk to. so of those eight women, those eight women who were on dr. ford's list, you would expect if the goal was to explore her experience as she presented it, the f.b.i. would be authorized by the president to speak to all eight. but to my colleagues, have you paid attention to how many individuals the f.b.i. was allowed to talk to by president trump who were on that list, dr? the answer is zero. so any colleague in this chamber who says that was fair treatment

of dr. ford i will contend is absolutely wrong because dr. ford presented individuals who had relevant information and the president's scoping document prevented the f.b.i. from talking to them. well, now let's talk about debbie ramirez. she is there and during the freshman year of judge kavanaugh in yale, in the dorm, and he behaves in a totally inappropriate manner, according to her information that she relayed and information about excessive drinking followed by this individual, this nominee exposing himself to her and laughing about it. she provided a list of 20 individuals who have corroborating information about

that experience, 20. so of course if the f.b.i. was going to reopen the background investigation and it was going to be an investigation with any form of integrity, any form of legitimacy, any form of fairness, the f.b.i. would be allowed to talk to those 20 people. but how many did the president allow in his scoping document the f.b.i. to talk to of those 20 people? none, zero. not a single one. that again is not fairness to the individual who came forward with their experience. now, why is it the president didn't want the f.b.i. to actually talk to these individuals? well, let's discuss one of them. one of them lived in the suite, lived in the -- right there in the same cluster of bedrooms

with a common area as did mr. kavanaugh that freshman year. and he heard about this story in real time. he heard about it, and he remembered it, and he thought it was outrageous that mr. kavanaugh had behaved in this fashion. now, he remembered it so clearly that when he was in a discussion with his roommate in his first year in graduate school, he shared that problem with his roommate years and years and years before kavanaugh was ever nominated to a judicial position. so here you have a suitemate who heard the story of what was done by mr. kavanaugh to debbie

ramirez, who relayed that story to another student in his first year of graduate school, and who went to the f.b.i. and said come and talk to me because i can tell you she's telling the truth. i may not have witnessed it, but i heard about it after it happened. and i'm not making it up now because i told somebody about it, and they're willing to come forward and talk to you. so it goes to the f.b.i. could the f.b.i. talk to him? no, they couldn't because the president of the united states prohibited the f.b.i. from talking to anyone who had real information about the two experiences these two women brought forward. that is just beyond wrong. think about how much worse this body is treating these two women than did this senate treat anita

hill in 1991. think about that comparison. you would think in the nearly four decades since, three decades since, we would have improved, 27 years, but have we? with anita hill, the president immediately reopened the f.b.i. investigation of his own volition, wanting to get a full background checking of the issue. the committee held hearings over multiple days, had multiple people come forward who have had corroborating information. they have heard them out. how many of those 28 individuals have been given an opportunity to come before the judiciary committee to share their experience? not a one. the leadership in the judiciary committee has blocked all of them, not invited one of them to

share their story. the president blocks the f.b.i. from talking to them. the leadership and judiciary blocks the judiciary committee of this body from hearing them out. this is perhaps the worst example of injustice we could envision in this body. and i'd like to call it an esteemed body, but how can i call it that when my colleagues are treating these women in such a horrific fashion? should an individual serve op the supreme court in this job interview that we're conducting, would you hire this individual into your company into a position of trust after the testimony of these two women? and wouldn't you go and say if i'm even giving a thought to hiring the individual, i will check out these stories, not block these women from being

able to have the corroborating information shared with the senate, not block the f.b.i. from being able to talk to them. no. this is a failure. we cannot allow this to stand. we have a responsibility particularly, more with the supreme court than any other organization, to exercise our advice and consent in a responsible process, a process of integrity, of fairness, of decency, of transparency, none of which is happening at this point. so we have deep differences over this man's judicial philosophy, but i know that if he is reject ed, then the president will propose somewhat of a similar judicial philosophy. so my colleagues who support that philosophy can be assured

they will have a chance to put another person in who hasn't lied to the senate, another person who doesn't have a record of abuse towards women. now, i heard some interviews this evening of some of my colleagues saying things like oh, it's so horrific that these women are trashing his reputation. are you really telling me that for women to share a horrific -- a woman to share a horrific experience from her life and who is willing to have the f.b.i. investigate it and who provides people who have corroborating information, you're calling that an attack you're calling that person the wrong person? how dare they come forward with their story, you're saying. that is just wrong. that is so completely wrong to treat women in that fashion. so to my colleagues who want somebody of a similar judicial

perspective, you will have a chance to have that person, but you will do incredible harm to this institution if this man after this record is put onto the court, and that's why he needs to be rejected. that's why the president should withdraw him. that's why my republican colleagues should call up the president and say withdraw this nominee and send us another. now i happen to disagree with his judicial philosophy as well. we are in a battle between the we the people vision of the constitution as it was written and a rewrite done by a group of lawyers who want to have a government not by and for the people but by and for the powerful. don't worry about those consumers. let the company run over the top of them. don't worry about those health care opportunities, snatch them

away. don't worry about those environmental laws, knock them down. government by and for the powerful, that is kavanaugh. kavanaugh has gone through decades of a process designed to prepare him to execute that philosophy, government by and for the powerful in the court, and they are so happy -- the powerful in this country are so happy to jam him through that they are putting extreme pressure on my colleagues to approve him despite this horrific personal record. i say to my colleagues, stand up for the integrity of the senate. stand up for the legitimacy of the supreme court. don't allow yourselves to be brought into a vortex of determined outside power saying this must be done and this must be done now and this must be done with this flawed

individual. so, mr. president, i'm deeply disturbed -- deeply disturbed about where we stand right now with a vote to close debate tomorrow, and send this body into 30 hours of final debate before a decision. that timeline gives us no chance that the court can provide us the documents that have been censored by the president of the united states. it gives no chance to reawaken the opportunity for the committee to hear from those 28 individuals that the f.b.i. could not investigate because the president of the united states wouldn't let them. no chance for us to get to true justice. remember that phrase across the front of the supreme court -- equal justice under law. that phrase will be tarnished.

the court deeply diminished, the people deeply divided if we proceed to confirmation of brett kavanaugh. thank you, mr. president.

a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator for colorado. mr. bennet: thank you, mr. president. the nomination of judge kavanaugh by donald trump has left this body and the american people deeply divided.

but i think it is also -- it has also united every american in the belief that this cannot be the standard for how the united states senate or the federal government should operate. this cannot be how our founders expected us to consider lifetime appointments to the supreme court of the united states. as recently as when i was in law school confirmations of a supreme court justice used to be a chance for the american people to learn about our system of checks and balances and the rule of law. what made america so special. no student in colorado watching our conduct over the past few weeks would have anything to be proud of. instead of modeling our checks

and balances, we are demolishing them. somewhere we began to treat the courts as another part of the partisan war with an opportunity for one side to bloody the other side. and t and the latest, lowest point in that story is this shambles of a confirmation process. weeks ago i announced that i intended to oppose judge kavanaugh's nomination. it was after the first round of hearings and before the later allegations of misconduct arose. then and now i worried about what his confirmation would mean to the people of colorado, for those with preexisting conditions who depend on the affordable care act for life-saving treatment. for our farmers and ranchers who are so worried about climate

change, for our children with asthma vulnerable to harmful pollutants. for same-sex couples in loving marriages and for the women across our state who have a constitutional right to make their own health care decisions. i worry that judge kavanaugh would threaten hard-won progress for all coloradans taking us from the independent majority under justice kennedy to an ideological majority deeply out of step with the values of people in my state and i would say throughout the united states i worry that judge kavanaugh would block reforms we need to break the fever gripping our politics, a fever on full display over the last few weeks. if confirmed, it is very likely that judge kavanaugh would provide a fifth vote against reforms to end partisan

gerrymandering or help workers organize, to help people vote and to curb the corrupting power of money in our politics and in the age of president trump, i had particular concerns about the nominee's expansive views with respect to presidential power and oversight, views that made me question the extent to which he would fulfill the court's role as a check on the executive branch. finally, i had concerns that judge kavanaugh had an unusually partisan background for judicial nominees, a concern borne out during the hearing last week. all this, mr. president, led me to oppose judge kavanaugh's nomination. soon after dr. ford came forward with these serious allegations of misconduct. she came before the senate judiciary committee and gave very credible testimony.

she had no reason to make anything up and she had every reason to stay quiet. but she came forward anyway because she believed as she said, it was her civic duty. and her courage has inspired hundreds of thousands, if not millions of women across the country, including debbie ramirez of colorado to share their own stories. it inspired other survivors from my state to call, write, even fly to washington and meet with me earlier today. for her courage alone, dr. ford deserved far better than the casual dismissal we saw from members of this body or the juvenile taunting we saw the other night by president trump

who continues the same politics of distraction and division that managed to get him elected and it continues now to threaten to tear our country apart. but president trump is not the issue here. for all the damage he has done, he is not the cause of our dysfunction. he is a stop of it -- he is a symptom of it. and that dysfunction is what we have to confront, especially now as we find ourselves days away from a party line vote for a lifetime appointment to the supreme court. i recognize that both sides have their own argument or story about how we got to this point. i know that ever since the -- i know that ever since the majority today moll lished the rule -- today demolished the ruo have 60 votes, there has been no

-- a mainstream candidate would can earn the support of both parties. in fact, all the incentives run in exactly the opposite direction. selecting a nominee who can appease the base of the party and earn the narrowest partisan majority in the senate. that reality helps explain why this process has been so divisive. if we still had the 60-vote threshold, it is hard to imagine the senate moving forward on a nominee without disclosing their full record, without giving the minority party time to review that record so they could ask informed questions of the nominee. that would never happened if you still needed 60 votes, if you still needed the other party as part of the decision making, as part of the advise and consent.

we'd expect the nominee to have to answer directly direct questions. and it would have been unfathom able that the majority would downplay serious allegations of misconduct and in the case of debbie ramirez, refuse to even interview many of the potential witnesses that she identified. none of this makes any sense if our interest is in protecting the integrity of the supreme court. it only makes sense if we have now reduced our responsibility and our duty under the constitution to advise and consent to a completely partisan

exercise. and that's where we've gotten to. i've said on this floor before that i deeply regret the vote that we took to change the rules for a lower level -- for lower level officials and judges. i don't think we should have done that. and i certainly don't think the majority leader should have prevented merrick garland from coming to a vote on the floor of the senate. that was outrageous, unprecedented in our history. and i don't think he should have invoked the nuclear option for the supreme court. i think that was a huge mistake. and we are going to have a partisan process forever, mr. president, unless we can find some way back there. this new majority rule when it comes to judicial nominees is

why we now have supreme court nominees auditioning on cable television networks. in this case, fox news. it's why the president hold a political rally and use it as an occasion to mock the accusers. it's why the white house limited the investigation to ignore key witnesses allowing the majority leader to declare as he did this morning that it uncovered, quote, no backup from any witnesses. well, they weren't interviewed. it is important to remember that because of what the majority leader did to judge garland when justice scalia died, left open a vacancy on the supreme court for more than 400 days, 400 days,

and we can't take the time to interview witnesses from a serious allegation? from somebody living in boulder, colorado? more than 400 days. i forget exactly how many days it was. more than 400 days. and then we have a four-day investigation that doesn't interview the witnesses that have been named and the majority leader has the gall to come to the floor and say that the investigation had uncovered, quote, no backup from any witnesses. all of this, all of this, most important that lack of investigation is evidence of a

confirmation process that has been overrun by politics, like everything else around here only unlike many other things, this is a solemn responsibility granted to this body exclusively by the constitution of the united states, by the founders who wrote that constitution and the americans who ratified it. this may help one party win presidential or senate elections, but it is toxic to our institutions. and we have exported what hopefully, mr. president, will be the temporary, mindless, empty, counterproductive,

unimaginative, meaningless partisanship from the floor of this senate to the united states supreme court. we should be ashamed of that. we should be ashamed of that on the floor of the senate, and we should be ashamed we're doing that to an independent branch of our government. earlier today, i had the chance to meet students that were visiting here from aspen, colorado. when i meet with students, i sometimes get the impression that they think, mr. president, that all of this was just here, that the capitol was here, the supreme court was here, the white house was just here, somehow it all just fell from the sky. and i always remind them that it wasn't just here.

the only reason that we have any of this is because previous generations of americans overcame enormous difficulty to write and ratify the constitution. we forget that americans were sharply divided over whether to ratify the constitution. some worried that the new government would grow too powerful and become the very tyranny that they had just fought a war to escape. by the way, think about that for a second. that generation of americans accomplished two things that it had never been done in human history before. they led an armed insurrection that was successful against the colonial empire and they wrote a constitution that was ratified

by the people who would live under it. no humans had ever been asked permission for the form of government that they would live under until americans got that opportunity. and we set an example for the world. it also must be said that the same founders perpetuated human slavery which is a terrible stain on their work. but another generation of americans who i think of as founders just like the people who wrote the constitution abolished slavery, made sure women had the right to vote, passed the civil rights laws in the 1960's. generation after generation after generation of americans has seen their responsibility to

demock ties the republic that the founders created and preserve the institutions that we created so that we could render thoughtful decisions in our republic, our process for advising and consent orvis and consent -- or advice and consent looks nothing like that heritage. when americans were having that big division about whether to ratify the constitution at all, alexander hamilton wandered into the debate and he responded to those who were worried that the government would become too powerful or become a tyranny just like the one they had escaped. he pointed out the importance of the courts and the rule of law as a check against tyranny. he wrote that, quote, the complete independence of the courts of justice is peculiarly

essential in a limited constitution. without this, he said, all the reservation of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing. hamilton did not say that independent courts were optional. he did not say they were contingent on political convenience. he said they were essential, essential to the working of this republic, and it's for this reason that the founders designed the extraordinary mechanism of checks and balances, including the unique duties we bear in the united states senate. the founders also knew that mechanism alone was insufficient. it required elected officials to act responsibly, to treat advice and consent, for example, as an opportunity to confirm judges of the highest intellect, integrity, and independence,

judges who could maintain the confidence of the american people in our courts and the rule of law, and today we have fallen so short of hamilton's standard. instead of insulating the courts from partisanship, we have infected the courts with partisanship. i have not met a single coloradan who believes that confirming judges with 51 republicans or 51 democrats instead of 90 votes from both parties serves the independence of our judiciary. it does the opposite. it makes the courts an extension of our partisanship. this is exactly what hamilton feared. he warned that, quote, liberty can have nothing to fear for the judiciary alone but would have everything to fear from its union with either of the other departments. hamilton's warning echoes loudly in the age of president trump, a man who is called for jailing

his political, banning entire religious groups, bringing back torture, quote, and a whole lot worse. a man who fired the f.b.i. director in the middle of an investigation into his campaign and who has tried to discredit that investigation with routine falsehoods ever since. if there were ever a time to stand up for our checks and balances and the rule of law, it is now, mr. president. instead, with this vote, the senate is once again acceding to the white house and undermining the supreme court in the process, and the result is that we are going to continue to barrel down this dangerous path unless we change what we're doing one of two things will happen. we will replay this process every time, confirming supreme court justices with the barest partisan majority and tearing the country apart in the process. or if the senate and the white house are not of the same party,

we will never fill a supreme court vacancy. that is not what the founders expected. it is certainly not what the people of colorado expect. we are playing with fire, mr. president. and unlike us, the founders knew their history. they knew about the fall of athens, and that history taught them that more than anything, the greatest threat to freedom is faction. the founders read the opinion of historian who tells us about a consumer war that consumed the city of pasyria 2,400 years ago. the city descended into factionalism. both parties spared no means in their struggle for ascendancy. in their acts of vengeance, they went to even greater length, not stopping at what justice or the good of the state demanded but

make the party caprice of the moment their only standard. as the civil war intensified, both sides struggled to end it because, quote, there was neither promise to be dependent upon nor oath that could command respect, but all parties rather glowing in their calculations upon the hopelessness of a permanent state of things were more intent upon self-defense than capable of confidence. how familiar that is today. in our acts of vengeance, mr. president, we have gone to greater and greater lengths and fallen to greater and greater depths. we have ignored what justice or the good of the state demands, and in doing so, we have degraded the courts as we have degraded ourselves. but this is a human enterprise. just as it has been since the founding of the united states of

america. and our situation is not hopeless. this dysfunction does not need to be a permanent state of things. we can and we must be capable of confidence in ourselves and our institutions once more. for unlike the stories told of ancient kingdoms and empires in history, we still live in a republic. and in the story of our republic, we alone are responsible for writing its ending or its continuance for the next 100 or 200 years. so i think every american is probably disturbed by what has happened, and they know we can create a better ending. the question they have is whether they are elected -- their elected representatives in washington will do so.

and we need an ending that upholds the independence of our parts where we return to an honorable bipartisan tradition in the senate. but we build a culture that has no place for sexual assault and that provides an opportunity for people that have been assaulted to be heard and to be able to do it in a way that doesn't shame them or embarrass them or makes their difficulties even worse. i know there are a lot of people out there. i agree with them, that don't see a lot of hope for that in the process that we have had here, but what i would say to them is that tonight there are

survivors from all over our country, including from my home state of colorado arrayed around the capitol. their being there testifies to the resilience of the human spirit, and it gives us all hope that however difficult this moment, in the united states, progress is always in our hands. it is always our responsibility. and we need to act with the kind of courage they are showing tonight by being here. mr. president, i want to say thank you to you, and i also want to thank my colleague from ohio for his indulgence. i have gone over about five minutes. i apologize for that. but with that, i yield the floor.

mr. portman: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from ohio. mr. portman: tonight i rise to talk about my vote on the confirmation of judge brett kavanaugh to serve on the supreme court. sadly, over the past couple of weeks, the confirmation process has become a bitter partisan fight. it has deeply divided this body, and it's divided our country. in the midst of all the passion, the anger, and the emotion, from both sides.

tonight i want to talk about something else. i'm going to talk about the facts. i want to talk about the facts as i know them. first, i know brett kavanaugh. i have known brett and his wife ashley for more than 15 years, since we worked together in the george w. bush white house. i have seen them in tough situations. i have seen them tested. i have seen their character. i have known brett not so much as a legal scholar or a judge or a professor, but as a colleague and a friend and a father and a husband, and i have known him as someone who is smart, thoughtful, and compassionate. among white house colleagues, i know that he is universally viewed that way. he was at the time and he still is today, as we have seen from the testimony of so many men and women who have worked with him. i also know that brett kavanaugh has been a widely respected

public servant for nearly three decades, including the last 12 years as a judge on the d.c. circuit court. what most view as the second highest court in the land. i know that he has received praise from his fellow judges, his many law clerks, the majority of whom have been women. the students in his classes at harvard, yale, and georgetown law schools. students from across the political spectrum. also the litigants who have been before him, including lisa black, a self-described liberal who has argued more cases before the supreme court than any other woman. when lisa blatt joined condoleezza rice and me in introducing brett kavanaugh before the committee, she said he is unquestionably qualified by his extraordinary intellect, experience, and temperament. all this seems to have been lost in the past couple of weeks.

i also know that brett kavanaugh is highly qualified to serve on the supreme court. in fact, frankly, i have heard that from a number of my democratic colleagues who are quick to say they don't support him for other reasons, but they don't question his legal experience and his qualifications. and you really can't. the american bar association, not known for being very friendly to conservatives, has given brett kavanaugh its highest rating, unanimously. i know that in more than 20 hours of testimony -- in fact, i think it was 32 hours of testimony before the judiciary committee, he showed an encyclopedic knowledge of the constitution of supreme court cases and appreciation for supreme court precedent and an overall impressive grasp of the law. only a couple of weeks ago, he had successfully navigated the arduous process of meetings,

interviews, tough questions during 32 hours in front of the senate judiciary committee. as a result, he had the votes in the committee, and he seemed headed toward confirmation here on the floor of the senate. after 12 weeks of consideration and five days of hearings -- by the way, more days of consideration and more days of hearing than we have had for any confirmation of any judge for the supreme court in recent history -- the committee was ready to vote. just before the vote in committee came the allegations of sexual assault and calls for delay. as wrong as it was for members of the u.s. senate to keep the allegations of dr. ford secret until after the normal process had been completed, then spring ton the committee, the senate, and the country, i thought that because of the seriousness of the allegations, it would also have been wrong not to take a pause and to hear from dr. ford and judge kavanaugh, and we did.

chairman chuck grassley of the judiciary committee was accused by some on my side of the aisle of bending over backwards when he should have pushed ahead, but he reopened the process and he allowed the painful ordeal to play out, as i think we were compelled to do. painful for dr. ford, painful for brett kavanaugh, the senate, and the country. i believe sexual assault is a serious problem in our nation, and many women and girls, survivors, victims, choose not to come forward, choose not to report it for understandable reasons. therefore, i think we should take allegations seriously. we must take allegations of sexual assault very seriously, and i do. dr. ford deserved the opportunity to tell her story and be heard, and of course

judge kavanaugh deserved the opportunity to defend himself. that's why i support it, not only having the additional committee investigation and hearing but also taking another week to have a supplemental f.b.i. investigation after the normal judiciary committee process was completed. i watched that additional judiciary committee hearing, and i listened carefully to both drs testimony. i'm sure many americans did. and i have now been briefed on and read the supplemental f.b.i. report which arrived early this morning. i went to a secure room here in the capitol. to do so, i went three times today to be able to be sure that i could be fully briefed on it and read it. again, my job, my obligation is to assess the facts. and the facts before us is that no corroboration exists

regarding the allegations. no evidence presented before or in the supplemental f.b.i. investigation corroborates the allegations, none. judge kavanaugh, of course, has adamantly denied the allegations. his testimony is supported by multiple other statements. simply put, based on the hearings, the judiciary committee investigation, and the f.b.i. supplemental investigation, there is no evidence to support the serious allegations against judge kavanaugh. of course, there had been six previous f.b.i. investigations also in his 25 years of public service. in america there's a presumption of innocence. when there's no evidence to corroborate a charge, there's a presumption of innocence that we must be very careful to pay heed

to. just one day after dr. ford's allegations were made public, 65 women who knew judge kavanaugh in high school sent a letter to the judiciary committee in dense of his character -- defense of his character. these 65 women put this letter together with a day's notice. the letter stated, and i quote, through the more than 35 years we have known him, brett has stood out for his friendship, charter, and integrity. in particular he's always treated women with decency and respect. that was when he was in high school and that has remained true to this day. end quote. these are women who knew brett kavanaugh. they knew him in high school. importantly, that's the brett kavanaugh i have known these past 15 to 20 years. this confirmation debate could have and should have unfolded

very differently. the process has become poisonous and it's up to us in this chamber to change it. it's going to take a while for the senate and the country to heal from this ugly ordeal, but for now let me make a modest suggestion. let's step back from the brink. let's listen to each other. let's argue passionately but let's lower the volume. let's treat disagreements like disagreements, not as proof that our opponents are bad people. let's see if we can glorify quiet cooperation at least every once in a while instead of loud confrontation. some may say this is trite or naive, but my colleagues, we have crossed all these lines in recent weeks. and for the state of this institution and the country, we have to step back from the brink and we have to do better. the way this process unfolded

risk candidates with the kind of qualifications and character we would all want deciding to think twice before entering public service. if the new normal is 11th hour accusations, toxic rhetoric like calling a candidate evil and those who support him complicit in evil and guilt without any corroborating evidence, who would choose to go through that? how many good public servants have we possibly already turned away by this display? how many more will we turn away if we let uncorroborated allegations tarnish the career of a person who is dead -- who has dedicated 25 of the past 28 years to public service and done so with honor. again, based on the testimony of so many people across the spectrum, men and women. these are questions the senate is going to have to grapple with for possibly years to come, but

again right now, i want to focus on something that hasn't gotten as much attention in the last couple of weeks. and that's what is known. i know judge kavanaugh as someone with a deserved reputation as a fair, smart, and imed judge -- independent judge. i know him as someone universally praised for his work ethic, intelligence and integrity by his colleagues. i know someone who respects women, someone's first introduction to law came to listening to his mom practicing closing arguments at the dinner table and perhaps most importantly, most importantly i know him as someone who has the humility to listen, something we need more of in this country and on the court during turbulent times. in following facts, as i'm obligated to do, i will support this nomination. and i will be proud to vote to confirm brett kavanaugh as the

next associate justice of the supreme court. mr. president, i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: mr. portman: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from ohio. mr. portman: i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. portman: mr. president, i understand there's a bill at the desk that is due for a second reading. the presiding officer: the senator is correct. the clerk will read the title of the bill for the second time. the clerk: s. 3532, a bill to authorize the united states postal service to provide certain nonpostal property,

products, and services on behalf of state, local, and tribal governments. mr. portman: mr. president, in order to place the bill on the calendar under provisions of rule 14, i would object to further proceeding. the presiding officer: objection having been heard, the bill will be placed on the calendar. mr. portman: i yield the floor. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the senate stands adjourned until