http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/loretta-lynch-delay-gop-possible-plan-116228.htmlDemocrats are up in arms over the GOP’s handling of Loretta Lynch’s nomination to be attorney general, arguing that Republicans are engaged in unconscionable delays over a history-making choice to head the Justice Department.
Republicans are not breaking a sweat.
“Zero,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) said when asked how much pressure his party is feeling to confirm her to the Justice Department position.
Why not? “Because there’s zero,” he reiterated.
Lynch, who was nominated by President Barack Obama to replace Eric Holder at the Justice Department in November, has been stalled in recent days because of an unrelated fight over an anti-abortion provision in a bill aimed at cracking down on human trafficking. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has refused to take up Lynch’s nomination until Democrats relent on their demands to remove the abortion language. Republicans believe that Democrats will feel the heat for blocking, on five separate occasions, a bill that would aid roughly 100,000 mostly young girls who fall victim to sex trafficking.
Despite her qualifications and reputation as a fair-minded prosecutor from the Eastern District of New York, Lynch’s nomination has generated growing criticism from the right. The opposition stems mostly from her assertion that President Barack Obama acted constitutionally in deferring deportations of roughly five million illegal immigrants after the election in November.
So giving Lynch a confirmation vote could only provoke a backlash from the right, something Republican leaders are not eager to endure without some give from Democrats.
“What we need to do is finish the trafficking bill and then move on to the Lynch nomination,” McConnell told POLITICO Thursday when asked whether Lynch’s confirmation vote could be held over for another month.
Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, the president pro tempore of the Senate who voted for Lynch in the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, said he felt no pressure to move on Lynch, either.
“The leader is right on that,” Hatch said. “He sees them playing a pure political ploy to satisfy Planned Parenthood and NARAL and abortion rights activists. And he can’t let them get away with that.”
What became abundantly evident this week is that each side sees a political upside to the fight. The National Republican Senatorial Committee launched multiple rounds of robocalls targeting independent women voters against endangered Democrats like Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet and Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, the minority leader. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, meanwhile, sent out fundraising pleas expressing outrage over the delay of the Lynch vote.
Democrats argue that Republicans are unfairly holding up a barrier-breaking nominee. Lynch, who is the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, would be the first African-American woman to head the department and has been widely praised for having solid credentials for the job.
Absent a deal, senior Republicans are warning that the confirmation vote could be held up until at least mid-April. That’s because the Senate is poised to take up its annual budget resolution next week before adjourning for a two-week recess.
“I think for them to say that women’s health has to take a step backwards in order for the attorney general to get a vote is just completely untenable,” said Sen. Patty Murray, a member of her party’s leadership.
Other Democrats took a sharper line.
“It is clear to me there is hidden racism rampant in the House and the Senate,” said Rep. Corrine Brown of Florida, an African-American. “Let’s call it what it is. I know it is not comfortable to talk about.”
Cornyn brushed aside a question about whether he’s worried about holding up the first black woman to head DOJ.
“We have an African-American attorney general currently serving, so there’s no vacancy,” he said. “And unfortunately, people’s hearts have hardened to the point that they are unmoved by the policy arguments and by who would benefit and who is getting hurt from blocking this legislation, and now it’s a matter of leverage.”
The flap over Lynch and the trafficking bill has become an embarrassing spectacle, even by Senate standards. Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted for the trafficking bill during that panel’s consideration earlier this year. But later, several top Democrats said they didn’t read the bill and were unaware of the abortion language, demanding that McConnell strip it out before they agreed to advance it further on the floor.
Since then, the Senate has ground to a halt, a partisan stalemate that has undermined McConnell’s election-year promise to make the chamber function again.
No one has questioned whether Lynch, who has enough votes to be confirmed, is qualified for the job. Moreover, the longer she waits for her confirmation, Republicans are stuck with a man they universally despise at the post: Holder.
“We’ve been stuck with him for a long time,” Cornyn said when asked about the fact that Holder will remain on the job.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky. ,accompanied by Senate Republican leadership, speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2015, following the Republican policy luncheon.
The anger comes as Senate Republican leaders offered a way out of the bitter battle Thursday — only to be met with Democratic resistance. And a bipartisan duo sought to broker a deal — only to be rejected by Senate Republicans.
The original bill creates a restitution fund that is bankrolled by fines slapped on traffickers, with a key restriction on using that money for abortions. The compromise suggested from GOP leaders would instead route the money through the federal government accounts before going to victims, where it is already subject to that abortion restriction, according to aides familiar with the process.
Republicans trotted out a series of comments from top Democrats, suggesting that is what they wanted all along.
“Can they take yes for an answer?” Cornyn, the GOP author of the trafficking bill, said on the floor. “I can’t wait to hear their response to that proposal.”
But Democrats said it was an end-run around the so-called Hyde Amendment, which prohibits public funding on abortions. Democrats continued to object to any reference in the trafficking bill to abortion restrictions, which Cornyn’s compromise contains.
Asked if the Cornyn plan falls short, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said: “It does. It leaves the language in. … We want that language out.” And Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), said, “It keeps the expansion of Hyde. We’re not going to expand Hyde, you know that.”
Others tried to find ways to end the impasse to pass the bill and ease confirmation for Lynch. Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) drafted a compromise intended to further assuage Democratic concerns about abortion. Even before they formally unveiled it Thursday, Republicans poured cold water on it.
“They’ve been very constructive in trying to get us to ‘yes.’ I’ve made some concessions in terms of the way it’s structured,” Cornyn said. “The one thing we can’t retreat on is the application of the Hyde provision … a complete stripping of the language would strike me as erosion of the Hyde Amendment and change the status quo of the last 39 years. And I don’t support that.”
He added, “The Democrats want to be able to say to the abortion lobby that they’ve eroded the Hyde Amendment. And that’s not acceptable.”
The fight has gotten especially heated in recent days. Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said the GOP was making Lynch sit at the “back of the bus,” a reference to civil rights icon Rosa Parks’ role in the fight for racial equality.
Republicans, outraged by the comments, demanded that Durbin apologize.
“What is beneath the decorum and dignity of the United States Senate — I would say to the senator from Illinois — is for him to come to this floor and use that imagery and suggest that racist tactics are being employed to delay Ms. Lynch’s confirmation vote,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). “Such inflammatory rhetoric has no place in this body and serves no purpose other than to further divide us.”
Durbin fired back.
“All I’m saying is she deserves the same fair treatment we have given to other nominees for this job,” Durbin said. “She has now been pending before the Senate longer than any nominee for attorney general in the last 30 years.”
