'If You Can't Win The Game, Change The Rules': John Cornyn Shreds Dems Over Proposed SCOTUS Reforms

3 months ago

During remarks on the senate floor, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) spoke about proposed reforms for the Supreme Court.

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Transcript

00:00Senator from Texas

00:03Mr. President, I'm glad I was in the chamber to witness this passage of these bills pertaining to the scourge of alzheimer's

00:11By unanimous consent. This is a rare bright spot in

00:15Our activities where we actually all come together and agree on good policy

00:23We've also taken the step to

00:26pass

00:27another

00:28Piece of bipartisan legislation a day something that used to be standard operating procedure in this chamber

00:35We would call up bipartisan legislation that would address everything from the opioid crisis to medical innovation

00:43Members would debate the bills we'd offer amendments and in the end hold an up-or-down vote

00:50But sadly this has become too rare a phenomenon in recent years the Senate

00:57Controlled by our friends on the Democratic side have strayed from our core legislative duties

01:04Instead of voting on bipartisan bills marking them up in committee where everybody can participate

01:11this chamber devotes instead

01:15The vast majority of its time to things from relatively

01:20unimportant nominations to

01:23partisan show votes

01:25As a result major tasks like funding the government

01:29Strengthening our defense are left in the to the last possible moment and then rushed across the finish line

01:38But I'm glad

01:39For today that the Senate has gotten back to basics and passed a strong

01:45Bipartisan package to help keep our kids safe online

01:49every day

01:51our children

01:52See content online about

01:55suicide

01:56eating disorders and drug use and other topics that are not suitable for

02:02children at the same time online bullying and

02:07harassment run rampant and the statistics on teen suicide and mental health paint an alarming picture

02:15for the next generation

02:18The bill that passed today includes two important pieces of legislation to help address that crisis

02:25The Kids Online Safety Act introduced by Senators Blumenthal and Blackburn

02:31Provides children and parents with the tools and safeguards they need to keep harmful content out of children's social media feeds

02:40more than two-thirds of the Senate sponsored these bills and

02:45Including this one and I'm proud to be one of them

02:48We also passed another bill that I was proud to co-sponsor called the Children and Teens Online Privacy Protection Act

02:57introduced by Senators Markey and

03:00Cassidy

03:01that bill prohibits internet companies from collecting personal information from their youngest users and

03:08Establishes better safeguards to protect children's privacy

03:13It protects and prevents big tech from tracking and targeting kids with the most addictive

03:21content possible

03:24Congress has been working on

03:26Legislation in this area for many years and I want to commend Senators Blackburn and Cassidy for getting us to this point

03:33There are a number of other bills that have passed the Judiciary Committee on a bipartisan basis as the presiding officer knows

03:40And I hope we'll be able to turn to those soon

03:44but these bills we passed today struck the right balance between the First Amendment and

03:50Safety, which is no easy task, which is perhaps one reason why it's taken us so long to get here

03:57But I appreciate these Senators leadership and I'm proud the Senate has finally taken an important step to help keep

04:05America's children safe online

04:10Mr. President on another matter. I want to speak briefly about President Biden's proposal to

04:17Essentially

04:19Unconstitutionally transform the Supreme Court into another political branch of government

04:25every student of government every high school civics class

04:29teaches that

04:31Ours is a government of three co-equal branches the two political branches being the Senate and the and the in the house

04:39the legislative branch and then the

04:42Executive branch the reason they're political is because they're accountable to the public through regular elections

04:50Conversely the judiciary is unique in that it is unaccountable to the voters

04:59Judges are nominated by the president and then confirmed by the Senate. But as long as they are they

05:05They are

05:08Conducting themselves appropriately

05:10They can serve as long as they live

05:13literally have life tenure

05:16Rarely, very rarely. There's the remedy of impeachment for extraordinary cases. But as I said that happens almost not at all

05:26but in recent years our Democratic colleagues have floated a litany of

05:31Institutional changes to try to tilt the balance of power in the judiciary in their favor

05:37They're not content to allow

05:40The courts to do their job which is to call balls and strikes

05:45again judges are supposed to interpret the law and the facts and apply that to a given case and

05:50Not decide ahead of time who should win and who should lose

05:55Judges don't take public opinion polls and decides what's popular

06:00Because they take the same oath we do to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States, but they do so

06:08in a

06:10framework of judicial independence

06:13Former Justice Scalia used to say the

06:17Independent judiciary is the gold standard is the secret sauce for the United States form of government

06:25Because there has to be some neutral arbiter to basically decide contested cases and that is our

06:32independent judiciary

06:34But our Democratic colleagues not

06:40Since they have been upset about

06:44Some of the decisions of the court have gone so far as to suggest that the court be

06:51restructured

06:52This was tried back in the

06:55administration of

06:56Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the famous court packing cases

07:00he wanted to add additional justices to the Supreme Court because he thought that would change the

07:06The receptivity of the case to causes that he supported

07:13But we've also seen changes advocated here in this Senate

07:18Institutional changes by our Democratic colleagues who were unhappy with the fact that they don't win a hundred percent of the vote

07:25They've advocated eliminating the filibuster to clear the path for radical and unpopular policy ideas

07:32they've attempted to federalize or nationalize our voting laws and

07:37Take over America's elections as opposed to having those decided at the state level

07:43They push for statehood for the District of Columbia

07:47and as well as Puerto Rico and

07:49presumably each of those would get two United States senators and a member of Congress and

07:55Thus tilt the balance of power here in the Senate

08:00But when it comes to the Supreme Court

08:03It's clear that the left is outraged over some of the courts recent decisions

08:08as a matter of fact

08:10Not that long ago

08:11the majority leader stood on the front steps of the Supreme Court and called out two sitting justices by name and

08:19Essentially threatened them if they decided these cases in a way that he disagreed with

08:25That was an extraordinary

08:28Act of bad judgment by the majority leader. He actually went so far as to say

08:35Justice Gorsuch justice Kavanaugh. You won't know what hit you

08:40and

08:42Again shocking to I think

08:46most of us who regard the court as an independent and separate branch of government immune from

08:53politics

08:55but of course the many Democrats are

08:58Upset that the court's decision in Roe versus Wade has now returned the issue of abortion to the states

09:06Where so on a state-by-state

09:09Basis

09:10legislators and

09:12Voters will decide what the appropriate limits are on abortion which

09:17divides much of our country

09:20They're upset about the decision on presidential immunity

09:23They want they want the president to be subject to ordinary litigation on a regular basis

09:30using what has now come to be known as lawfare to achieve political objectives and

09:36They're concerned that the court has done away with something as arcane and

09:42Relatively poorly understood as

09:45Chevron deference basically saying if an agency decides something there's not much the courts or that

09:52Congress can do about it

09:54Our colleagues don't want to keep losing cases in the courtroom. So they've adopted a new strategy

10:01If you can't win the game

10:03change the rules

10:05And their playbook has gone something like this number one

10:09villainize the Supreme Court, I

10:13mentioned the comments of the

10:15Majority leader which are not unique

10:19The strategy is to make the justices seem evil or biased or out of touch

10:25When they rule against progressive causes in the courtroom

10:29the second step in the playbook is to offer a solution or a

10:34Proposed solution to address the problems that Democrats have manufactured

10:40that involves an act which itself is unconstitutional and

10:45Irresponsible, which is the overhaul of the court the court packing. I mentioned a moment ago and three

10:52It's to go on the attack and stay on the attack and vilify anyone who dares oppose

10:57These changes as somehow corrupt and anti-democratic

11:03From packing the court with liberal justices to dictating recusal requirements for the justices to holding

11:10security funding hostage

11:12If the Supreme Court doesn't do what our Democratic colleagues want them to do

11:19Our colleagues have offered many plans to fully assert

11:23control over this independent branch of the

11:27government the judiciary

11:29For a long time these proposals were only supported by a fringe of the Democratic Party, but now

11:36They've become more commonplace and infiltrated the Oval Office itself

11:43President Joe Biden

11:44used the pages of the Washington Post to advocate for exactly the sorts of dramatic and

11:51Unconstitutional changes that I just mentioned

11:54He wants to somehow

11:56establish term limits for justices

11:59He wants to craft a schedule for new appointments

12:03force a code of ethics on the justices written by Congress and destroy the long-standing precedent of

12:11presidential immunity

12:13These proposals are not to enhance the fairness of the court or promote equality or justice or any other good government

12:22Objective they're about power

12:24about control

12:27They would turn our most independent branch of government into a partisan branch

12:32To ensure that our Democratic colleagues are the ones who ultimately wield the power

12:39It's not bad enough that President Biden has promoted these radical changes

12:44But even more concerning that his protege Vice President Harris has fully embraced him

12:51She made it clear that if she's elected in November the assault on

12:57Independent judiciary and the Supreme Court will not go away. It will accelerate a

13:04Potential Harris

13:06Administration would stage a full-blown coup to overtake the Supreme Court and eviscerate judicial independence

13:14she basically would disregard the Constitution itself and

13:18Attempt to turn the court into an institution that serves at the pleasure of a political party hers

13:27We need to call it what it is, Mr

13:29President the Biden Harris proposal is not about protecting democracy or ensuring accountability

13:36It's about consolidating power and undermining institutions that stand in the way of their agenda

13:43If these radical ideas were to become a reality

13:47They would dangerously shift the balance of power and erode the independence of the Supreme Court

13:53Again the crown jewels of our form of government

13:58They would ultimately politicize the one branch of government that was designed to be insulated from partisanship

14:07Our founders deliberately designed a federal government with three distinct but equal branches

14:13They established a set of checks and balances to prevent any one branch from forcing another to bend to its will

14:22But unfortunately, that's exactly what President Biden and his party are trying to do today

14:27to blur the lines between executive legislative and judicial branches to secure

14:33partisan political wins and

14:36accrue more power

14:38but here in the United States Senate an

14:43Institution created for this purpose cooler heads must prevail

14:49We cannot stoop to the level of the mob

14:52we have to stand up for an independent judiciary and the Supreme Court as an

14:58Essential institution in our form of government regardless of how we feel about the decisions

15:06Many decisions by the Supreme Court I have disagreed with in the past and I'm sure I will in the future

15:13But as

15:15One justice said the Supreme Court is not

15:21Final because it's right. It's right because it's final

15:27that's the only way to preserve the integrity of the judiciary and our

15:32Invaluable checks and balances is with an independent judiciary one that isn't politicized and doesn't bend to the will of a political party

15:43Republicans will continue to fight to protect the integrity of America's judicial system

15:48And we will not allow this president or any president or any political party to hijack

15:55the federal judiciary

15:57for their own partisan benefit

16:02President I yield the floor

'If You Can't Win The Game, Change The Rules': John Cornyn Shreds Dems Over Proposed SCOTUS Reforms

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