Sen. Chuck Grassley leaves White House with no change on Supreme Court hearings.
By Brent Griffiths | [email protected]
President Obama summoned Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and another top Senate Republican to the Oval Office on Monday to discuss the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court. But after a 40-minute meeting, the GOP position remained as resolute as the famous desk the president sits behind. There will be no hearings.
“Whether everybody in the meeting today wanted to admit it, we all know that considering a nomination in the middle of a heated presidential campaign is bad for the nominee, bad for the court, bad for the process, and ultimately bad for the nation,” Grassley said in a prepared statement. “It’s time for the people to voice their opinion about the role of the Supreme Court in our constitutional system of government.”
As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Grassley would oversee any hearings.
But he and almost all of his Republicans colleagues have pledged to stick with their unprecedented move to scuttle such proceedings until after the presidential election. They they announced the inaction before the president named a nominee to fill the opening left by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death.
Democrats have responded by lambasting the party of Lincoln as obstructionists who are failing to do their jobs.
“All we want them to do is fulfill their constitutional duty and do their job, and at this stage, they decided not to do that,” Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said afterwards outside the White House. “They think that they can wait and see what President Trump will do, I guess.”
Reid, who has made Grassley a target of his ire last week, was joined by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the ranking Democrat on the committee, and Vice President Biden in the Oval Office. Obama had requested the courtesy meeting to discuss how to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court.
On one occasion, Reid remarked that Grassley’s refusal to hold hearings would make him the most obstructionist chairman in the history of the Judiciary Committee. He then followed up his claim by making sure everyone knew that included a Democratic Southern segregationist who during 1960s stifled civil-rights legislation.
Grassley stressed that the conversation also included discussion on opioid epidemic, criminal justice reform, and Puerto Rico. Left unsaid are that those issues have a much better chance of cooperation between the Republican Congress and Democratic president.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., joined Grassley for the meeting and took to the Senate floor before it to defend his party’s position that the American people should be able to weigh in on the next justice through the presidential election. Republicans have sought to use comments made by then-Sen. Biden, who also chaired the Judiciary Committee, as support for their views.
The senior Iowa senator’s decision to deny hearings has engendered criticism back in his home state — including the possibility that he might face a fourth Democratic challenger and a more widely known candidate in former Iowa Lt. Gov. Patty Judge. Grassley is up for re-election for a seventh term this November.
On Tuesday though, the closest Grassley came to any harm is when reporters got too close during a photo spray, prompting Biden to liven up the atmosphere.
“Don’t hurt Sen. Grassley,” Biden joked. “We need him.”
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
