[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 5] [Senate] [Pages 6625-6626] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]SECRET HOLDS ON NOMINATIONS Mrs. McCASKILL. Madam President, I came to the floor of the Senate last Tuesday to make 74 unanimous consent motions to trigger a law this body voted for by a vote of 96 to 2 back in January of 2007, and this law says that once a unanimous consent motion is made for a nomination, that people who are secretly holding the nomination must come out into the sunlight. The law requires that 6 days after that motion is made, whoever is holding the nominee must identify themselves and, in fact, that must be published in the Congressional Record. Tomorrow would be the day for publication for all the dozens of different nominees being held up by who knows who for who knows what reason. I wished to make sure the leaders of both parties were aware that this time had run and, today, I will ask unanimous consent that a letter I sent to the minority leader and the majority leader acknowledging that the rule has been triggered, with the list of the various nominees, asking that they make sure the Members of their party have, in fact, come forward and identified themselves for the Record tomorrow. I ask unanimous consent that the letter I sent to Leader McConnell and Leader Reid be printed in the Record. There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: U.S. Senate, Washington, DC, April 29, 2010. Hon. Mitch McConnell, Minority Leader, U.S. Senate, The Capitol, Washington, DC. Minority Leader McConnell: Last week I went to the Senate floor to raise the issue of ``secret holds'' and to call attention to the need for openness and transparency within the United States Senate. As you know, a secret hold refers to the practice where one member of the Senate puts an anonymous hold on a nominee or legislation without publicly raising their objections. In spite of efforts in 2007 to end this practice, we now know that secret holds remain the status quo in the Senate. While efforts are being made to strengthen this rule and eliminate secret holds, I am concerned that Senators continue to ignore the current requirements for disclosure of holds. Under the existing rule, after a unanimous consent request is made to confirm a nomination or pass legislation, the Senator with objections to the particular measure or nominee must notify their party leader and then submit a notice of intent specifying the reasons for their hold. Within six- session days of the unanimous consent request, the notice must be printed publicly in the Congressional Record. The rule is clear that it is incumbent upon the leaders of each party to enforce the rules should members fail to comply. Today marks the sixth session-day since I made seventy-four unanimous consent requests to confirm the non-controversial nominations on the Senate Executive Calendar (a complete list is attached). These nominees were reported out of committee by voice vote or by a unanimous vote of the committee and have no known opposition. To date, there have not been any notices filed in the Congressional Record despite the fact that all seventy-four motions were objected to by Senator Kyl on behalf of his Republican colleagues. While, several of these nominations have since been confirmed by the Senate, the bulk of the nominations remain stalled without any public notification. Therefore, I write today to ask if you have been notified by any member that he/she has objections to any of the confirmation requests I made last week. If so, I urge you to enforce the member's obligation to place a public notice in the Congressional Record stating their objection. Should there be no known opposition to these nominees I ask that they be immediately confirmed by unanimous consent of the Senate. Thank you for the consideration of this request. Should you or your staff have any additional concerns or questions, please feel free to contact Nichole Distefano of my staff at [email protected]. Sincerely, Claire McCaskill, United States Senator. ____ U.S. Senate, Washington, DC, April 29, 2010. Hon. Harry Reid, Majority Leader, U.S. Senate, The Capitol, Washington, DC. Majority Leader Reid: Last week I went to the Senate floor to raise the issue of ``secret holds'' and to call attention to the need for openness and transparency within the United States Senate. As you know, a secret hold refers to the practice where one member of the Senate puts an anonymous hold on a nominee or legislation without publicly raising their objections. In spite of efforts in 2007 to end this practice, we now know that secret holds remain the status quo in the Senate. While efforts are being made to strengthen this rule and eliminate secret holds, I am concerned that Senators continue to ignore the current requirements for disclosure of holds. Under the existing rule, after a unanimous consent request is made to confirm a nomination or pass legislation, the Senator with objections to the particular measure or nominee must notify their party leader and then submit a notice of intent specifying the reasons for their hold. Within six- session days of the unanimous consent request, the notice must be printed publicly in the Congressional Record. The rule is clear that it is incumbent upon the leaders of each party to enforce the rules should members fail to comply. Today marks the sixth session-day since I made seventy-four unanimous consent requests to confirm the non-controversial nominations on the Senate Executive Calendar (a complete list is attached). These nominees were reported out of committee by voice vote or by a unanimous vote of the committee and have no known opposition. To date, there have not been any notices filed in the Congressional Record despite the fact that all seventy-four motions were objected to by Senator Kyl on behalf of his Republican colleagues. While, several of these nominations have since been confirmed by the Senate, the bulk of the nominations remain stalled without any public notification. Therefore, I write today to ask if you have been notified by any member that he/she has objections to any of the confirmation requests I made last week. If so, I urge you to enforce the member's obligation to place a public notice in the Congressional Record stating their objection. Should there be no known opposition to these nominees I ask that they be immediately confirmed by unanimous consent of the Senate. Thank you for the consideration of this request. Should you or your staff have any additional concerns or questions, please feel free to contact Nichole Distefano of my staff at [email protected]. Sincerely, Claire McCaskill, United States Senator. Mrs. McCASKILL. Madam President, we have gone back and looked at the Executive Calendar from a historic perspective. At the beginning of this week, we had 84 pending nominations. At the exact same time in President Bush's Presidency, we had eight. That is what we call a lopsided score--84 to 8. Of the 49 nominations we have voted on as a body since President Obama took office, 38 of them were confirmed by more than 70 votes. That is a pretty lopsided margin. Twenty of them were confirmed by more than 90 votes. I am confident that if we took the time--which I think may be the desire of my friends on the other side--to file cloture and go through individual votes on all these nominees, the vast majority of them would receive those kinds of lopsided confirmations. This is a game we need to quit playing. The secret hold needs to end. I have written some colleagues of mine, including Senator Mark Warner and Senator Whitehouse, and we have composed a letter--and we asked our colleagues to sign it--saying we will no longer participate in the secret hold. No more secret holds for us. We don't need the law to tell us we only have 6 days to secretly hold. We have asked in the letter that the secret hold be abolished. There is not a good reason for it. There isn't. Why does anything such as that need to be a secret? It is something that needs to be done publicly. The people whom everyone works for need to know why they are holding up a nomination or blocking a bill. The secrecy needs to stop. You can hold somebody; it is your prerogative as a Senator to hold a nominee. Work against that nomination. Try to defeat them in committee. Keep in mind that all these nominees came out of committee without an objection--no objection in committee. If you want to object, that is your prerogative. Come out and tell the world why this is the wrong person for the job but don't hide. Don't hide. I will be watching with interest tomorrow the Congressional Record. I [[Page 6626]] am very worried we are going to have the old switcharoo, which means if you withdraw your hold in 6 days, then you can hand it off to somebody else. You can say: I no longer have a secret hold, and then you whisper to your buddy: Why don't you do it now and then we will have 6 more days and then another 6 days. I wish to serve notice that I will be making these unanimous consent requests every time there is a secret hold, so anybody who does it is only going to have 6 days. Seriously, if we start the switcharoo and continue to go week after week without knowing who is holding these people or why, that is when people should get angry. That means they voted for a law that they had every intention of evading. People are mad enough at us. That is liable to get them over to the ``flat furious'' category if we go into that territory. I am hopeful this Congress will be the Congress where we end the secret hold. I wish to again acknowledge the work Senator Grassley and Senator Wyden have done for years. They have definitely tilled this ground, and they, in fact, put this in the law that we voted on in 2007. I compliment them for their work on this issue. We are continuing to work together on this issue. Senator Wyden and Senator Grassley are continuing to try to find a way to reform and make this place more open and transparent. I invite all my colleagues to sign the letter--Republican, Democratic, Independent. Sign the letter. We have 43 signatures. That means we are almost halfway there. If we can get to 60--we can move mountains here when we get that magic 60 number. I hope we can get to 60 by the end of next week. That means we will have more than a majority to say: I don't need a rule or a law; I am willing to make any hold I have open to public inspection. I wish to also make another unanimous consent request today. We have a very important function in government; that is, investigating accidents. We are getting ready to enter into the travel season. The National Transportation Safety Board is a very important body. In fact, they are going to be considering, in the next week, the ``miracle on the Hudson'' accident and the problem with aviation as it relates to the danger of birds and possible engine failure. In June, they will be investigating the tragic Metro accident here in Washington, when 9 people died. This is one of those boards where a Democrat and a Republican are both appointed. The Democrat has been waiting since last December, ostensibly, for the Republican. Dr. Earl Weener has been on the Executive Calendar for a number of weeks. Dr. Rosekind and Dr. Weener are needed on the NTSB. If any Member has a reason to recuse themselves, they would not have enough Members to go forward with these investigations. This is the kind of work that needs to be done. This is what people want the government to do. There is a lot of stuff the government does they don't want us doing. They want us to figure out what is going on with accidents in our transportation system and come up with answers so we can avoid these deadly accidents in the future. I think it is important, in light of that, that I go ahead and make another unanimous consent request to try to confirm these two people so they can begin working on the National Transportation Safety Board as we enter into the most heavily traveled period in America--the summer vacation months, when so many more Americans are traveling with their families. ____________________