March 26, 2004
Senate Democrats Threaten to Block More Bush Nominees
By DAVID STOUT
ASHINGTON, March 26 — Senate Democrats threatened today to block all of President Bush's judicial nominations unless the White House promised not to name any more judges while Congress was away.
"These actions not only poison the nomination process," the minority leader, Senator Tom Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota, said. "They strike at the principle of checks and balances that is one of pillars of American democracy."
Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called Mr. Bush's use of recess appointments "a finger in the eye of the Constitution."
Five weeks ago, President Bush used a Congressional recess to install William H. Pryor Jr., the Alabama attorney general, in a federal appeals court seat to get around a Democratic filibuster that had blocked his nomination.
Mr. Pryor will be able to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, until the end of the next session of Congress — meaning sometime in the fall of 2005.
The Pryor appointment was the second time this year that Mr. Bush used a president's power to make appointments when Congress is not in session to name judges directly to the bench and thus skirt the Senate confirmation process.
In January, Mr. Bush named Charles W. Pickering Sr., whose nomination had also been blocked by Senate Democrats, to a seat for the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, based in New Orleans. He, too, will have to step down before many months, unless there is a huge shift in the Senate and he is able to win confirmation.
"We will be clear," Senator Daschle said today. "We will continue to cooperate in the confirmation of federal judges, but only if the White House gives the assurance that it will no longer abuse the process and that it will once again respect our Constitution's essential system of checks and balances."
President Bush and his chief spokesman, Scott McClellan, were in the Southwest today and thus not ready to respond immediately to the Democrats' move.
Senator Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, the majority leader, called the tactic "posturing" and told reporters no administration would rule out recess appointments.
Senate Democrats have blocked several of Mr. Bush's nominations on grounds that his choices are out of the judicial mainstream and have shown an insensitivity to civil rights. Mr. Bush has said the Democrats are playing politics and in so doing thwarting honest, highly qualified people.