05/24/05 Judicial confrontation impact

05/24/05 Judicial confrontation impact

The long drawn out debate over how the U.S. Senate should confirm judicial nominations and attempts to block such nominations through the use of filibuster could soon have an impact on aspects of future agricultural policy and future judicial rulings that affect the Pacific Northwest. It had gotten to the point that today Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was to ordered a test vote on the nomination of Texas Judge Priscilla Owen to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Under current Senate law, a supermajority of sixty votes is needed to approve the nomination. But Senate Democrats have been successful in the past year stopping such approvals by holding up the voting process through filibuster. Frist would have declared that if a vote was not allowed, then he would let the President of the Senate, Vice-President Dick Cheney, declare that filibusters of Supreme Court and federal appellate judge nominees are illegal. The Republican majority expected to have backed Cheney in a vote. And that could have set off a nasty round of politics between both sides of the aisle. Fortunately, the so called Nuclear Option never occurred as late last night, Senators reached a compromise allowing some judicial nominations to come to the floor for a vote. But there are still the impacts. Let's start with the farm side. Democratic Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa says as all this debate has been going on; little has been done as far as considering bills pertaining to agriculture, energy, and rural components in various Senate committees. HARKIN: We'll because of this so called "nuclear option" and what it portends for the Senate, nothing's being done. The majority party is not bringing up anything. The Energy Bill, the Water Resources Development Bill & these are all just sort of put on the back burner. What Harkin is not saying is that Democrats, as well as Republicans, held up Senate Committee work by claiming the need to debate full time the filibuster rule and judicial nominations, and not granting routine customary time extensions for committee meetings. No matter which party is holding up what, the bottom line is routine matters like mark-up of the Energy Bill that started last week in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee are expected to drag on. But to those judicial nominees caught in the middle of this debate & including one from the Northwest & that is nothing from a time standpoint. More on that, and how ag is getting involved with Bill Myers' nomination, will be discussed in our next program.
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