http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/03/01/obama-and-senate-remain-impasse-over-supreme-court-vacancy/81149046/WASHINGTON — President Obama met with top Senate leaders Tuesday at the White House in an attempt to bridge the stand-off over whether the Obama should send a Supreme Court nomination to the Senate.
They left 40 minutes later with no hints of progress, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. and Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sticking to their position that the next president should fill the vacancy left by Justice Antonin Scalia's death last month..
"They were adamant. They said, 'No, we're not going to do this at all,'" Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told reporters outside the White House. "They think they are going to wait and see what President Trump will do, I guess."
No names were discussed at the meeting, Reid said. "One thing the president made very clear: If they have any names, he'll seriously consider them," he said.
The top GOP leaders slipped out of the White House without addressing reporters. Instead, they continued to make their case Tuesday in newspaper op-eds, blog posts and speeches, arguing that the nomination should wait until voters elect a new president in November.
Grassley made his case Tuesday on the web site SCOTUSblog, the same venue where Obama laid out the qualities he'd like to see in a Supreme Court justice last week. Obama's post used the words "appoint" or "appointing" six times, which Grassley noted is a power shared "by and with the advice and consent of the Senate."
"From that fundamental misunderstanding, he reveals that the person he will nominate, not appoint, will be someone whose decisions are not tied to the Constitution’s text," Grassley argued.
The White House said the president's willingness to meet shows that Obama understands the Senate's role in the process, and that Obama will seriously consider any names Republicans put forward. "I can tell you that the offer was not a one-time only offer," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Tuesday. "The president is serious about this consultation, and we’d like to see Republicans engage in it seriously, too."
But McConnell, in a floor speech to the Senate Tuesday, said he would follow the procedure articulated by Biden when he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1992 and argued that election-year nominations should wait until after election day.
"We will reiterate that the American people will have a voice in the vacancy on the Supreme Court as they choose the next president, who in turn will nominate the next Supreme Court justice," McConnell said. “In other words, we will observe the ‘Biden Rule.’"
