Sen. Graham good morning. I appreciate all of you, all of my colleagues being here promptly. As you know, our Democratic Politics informed the Committee Last night that they will not participate in the hearing. That was their choice. It will be my choice to vote the nominee out of committee. We are not going to allow them to take over the committee. They made a choice not to participate after allowing judge barrett four days to be questioned. I thought she did an exceptionally good job of handling the questions asked. I thought she was aggressively challenged, but not inappropriately. I want to complement my democratic colleagues for not going down the kavanaugh road. I want to complement the republican members for asking questions that matter to you, but showing a tremendous amount of discipline to make sure that on our side the hearing went well. And each of you, when this is over, i hope you feel like a sense of accomplishment. This is why we all run. It is moments like this that make everything you go through matter. It is moments like this where you can tell young conservative women, there is a place at the table for you. This is a groundbreaking, historic moment for american legal community, and really, politically. Senator blackburn and ernst spoke eloquently of what it is like to be a conservative woman in america. You try to be marginalized and i just want to thank both of them for their participation. And a bit about the judge, and then we are going to vote. I have been here a while and i have never seen anyone more capable than judge barrett on the law. Two days without a note. That was made obvious to us. I did not know that she did not have any notes until you mentioned it. But a deep and wide understanding of the law. The most important thing to me, understanding what a judge does versus what we do. And to all of the people out there wondering about judge barrett, i can tell you this the law of amy will not be applied to a case in controversy. It will be the law as written and the constitution, or by statues, or whatever regulatory body she is going to review. She will take her job on without agenda. Important to me is that it is ok to be a complete person and be on the Supreme Court it is ok to be prolife. She embraces the prolife cause in her personal life, but understands that judging is not a cause. It is a process. She embraces her faith, like millions of other americans. There are some things said about her and her family that are disgusting. Hert want to compliment family for giving her the backing she needed to take on this job. I want to thank the members of this committee for standing up against some pretty vile themes. Pretty vile things. Again, my democratic colleagues did not go too far, in the opinion. We will end with this. Forget about what think as political people for a moment. All of us are, in the political process, in 2013 when they changed the rules to require a simple majority to pack the d. C. Circuit court, you could see days like this coming. It was a decision that senators schumer and reid made in collaboration. I remember the night before the rules changed votes, senator schumer called me and informed me of it and i was very disappointed. I had been in a bunch of groups here trying to keep the traditions alive. By having a 60 vote requirement i remember telling senator schumer, he will regret this. Today he will regret it. And all i can say is that judge gorsuch was filibustered two or three times, requiring us to change the rules. They started this, not me. If it were up to me, it would be a 60 vote requirement today. Denying judge gorsuch the votes necessary to go to the floor was just the beginning of the end of a process that had served the country well. How could anybody in their right mind believe that judge gorsuch was not as qualified as sotomayor and kagan . How could anybody in their right mind, after listening to judge barrett, not understand she is not just qualified, she is incredibly qualified . Qualifications apparently dont matter anymore. It is about trying to create a situation for your favor, politically. I dont know where this ends or how this ends, but i do know this. After listening to Vice President bidens explanation about court packing, i am more confused than ever. One thing i can say is that the real energy in the Democratic Party is to pack the court. It is to expand it from nine to whatever number they need to make it liberal. As to my good friend senator feinstein, what happened to her by showing an act of human kindness tells you all you need to know about what awaits a senator who gets in the way of the agenda they have for our nation. Beginning with the court. The day we start changing the number after every election to make it the way that we would like politically, partisanwise, is the end of the independence of the court. Lots at stake in this election but today i want to celebrate , the fact that judge amy barrett will be reported out of this committee unanimously. That, to all of the young women out there like amy barrett, this is a big day for you. To the country as a whole, youre going to have an associate justice on the court that you should be proud of. This is a good day. If you dont believe me, just listen to what the aba said. The American Bar Association is not high on senator lees list. And many of you. I think they do give some republican nominees a hard time, but i have continued to use them because i keep as many traditions in place as i can. But the folks who are watching this hearing, their job is to evaluate the nominee in three categories. Professional competency, character, judicial disposition. They spent hundreds of hours, talk to talked to hundreds of people, from all walks of life, about this judge. Judge barrett. Here is what they found. The American Bar AssociationStanding Committee on the federal judiciary has completed the evaluation of the professional qualifications of judge amy barrett. As you know, the Standing Committee confines its evaluation to the qualities of integrity, professional competence, and judicial temperament. A substantial majority of the Standing Committee determined that judge barrett is wellqualified. A minority is of the opinion that she is qualified to serve on the Supreme Court. The majority represents the Standing Committees official rating, which is the highest you can get. I asked the two presenters a question. Would both of you feel comfortable going before judge barrett . They replied, absolutely. Another piece of information was from ms. Ohara. She was the dean of Notre Dame Law School while judge barrett was a professor. Remember what she had to say. I have only communicated with this august committee on two occasions. The first was 10 years ago and i wrote a strong letter in support of nowjustice elana kagan. Whose term as dean of Harvard Law School overlapped with my own. The second is today introducing and endorsing Amy Coney Barrett, in equally strong terms. Some might find these recommendations in juxtaposition. But i find them entirely consistent. So do i. I voted for both. The committee will hold over s4632. Online consent policy modernization act. I ask unanimous consent that, notwithstanding the motion of october 15, setting the vote on the barrett nomination at 1 00 p. M. , the committee proceed immediately to vote on the barrett nomination. Any objections . Without objection. On the motion to report the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to being associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, the clerk will call the roll. Favorably to the floor, the clerk will call the roll. [voting] mr. Chairman, the boats are the votes are 12 yeas, 10 novotes. Sen. Graham senator cornyn. Sen. Cornyn mr. Chairman, i will take a couple of minutes. I find this to be a surreal environment we are in, where our democratic colleagues announced they are going to boycott one of the most important votes this committee will have, probably during our entire senatorial tenure. That is a vote to confirm, to provide advice and consent to a nominee for the Supreme Court of the United States. I just want to comment on the pictures that are in their chairs, like this is some sort of sporting event during covid19 and rather than show up and do their job, they choose to continue the theater that was part of the hearing. And of course, this is all pretextual. Their argument, as i understand it, is somehow Amy Coney Barrett will violate her oath of office, contrary to everything she has done and who she is, and somehow that the Affordable Care act is in jeopardy. She explained, i think with great skill, the issue before the Supreme Court. It is one of severability, which is a very technical doctrine. It doesnt have anything to do with the merits of the Affordable Care act. It has to do with whether you can sever the unconstitutional portion from the rest of the aca, and that it will survive. But the fact is, democrats have already moved on from the aca. Senator cruz and my state, the premiums for an individual under the aca have gone up, i believe, 57 . The average deductible is about 3000. For a family of four, the deductible is 12,000. Which means that in essence, you do not have insurance. You are essentially self insured. Democrats have realized that all of the promises that were made to the American People leading up to the passage of the aca, they have been broken. I remember president obama saying, if you like your policy, you could keep your policy. If you like your doctor, you could keep your doctor. None of that is true. They said we would have essentially universal Health Insurance coverage. That is obviously not true. So aca has failed our democratic , colleagues recognize that. That is why they have, from the president ial candidates running in the primary, all the way down to people running in this election on november 3, have advocated a singlepayer system. Sometimes called medicare for all. Sometimes called the public option, but it is all a slippery slope toward a singlepayer system. I think it is important to point out what they are advocating. Because it is extraordinarily radical. For the 180 million americans who get their Health Insurance on the job, they would eliminate that. They would take that away from them in order to put them on a singlepayer government program. Medicare, as we know, has its own financial problems, and is something we obviously need to shore up. It is a commitment we have made to our seniors, that if you pay into the Medicare Health program you are going to have health , coverage when you become eligible. But dumping 330 Million People into the Medicare Program will bankrupt it. And we know that providers depend on a payment mix between medicaid, medicare, and private insurance in order to pay the bills. Without the private Insurance Premium or payments our health care providers, our hospitals, including those in rural parts of our states, would be bankrupt. So i just think it is important to just lay out the facts here. This is all for show. They have given up on the aca because they realize it did not fulfill the promises that were made when it passed. Now it is unaffordable to most ordinary texans and americans. So they have thrown that out the window in favor of a singlepayer system. Finally, senator schumer said, every thing is on the table. I think you have observed, mr. Chairman, that if the shoe were on the other foot, we have no doubt what they would do. But beyond that, senator schumer has said that the legislative filibuster is in jeopardy. That they will turn this into simply a partisan body, where you dont need to do the hard work to get bipartisan support. They would consider turning d. C. Into a state, and the state would get two senators. Puerto rico, a state and get two senators. They want to permanently transform this country. This is not about incremental change. This is about revolutionary changes in our country. Finally, as we have all observed, they are advocating packing the Supreme Court with additional partisan judges. As Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out, there goes the crown jewels of the american public, which is our independent judiciary. It becomes nothing but another political body. A second legislative branch. I wanted to take a minute and thank you for your patience to lay out my thoughts and observations with regard to these theatrics with which our democratic colleagues are presenting us today. This is all for show. This is to try to capture a narrative which is simply false and to cover up what they are really about. So, thank you, mr. Chairman. Sen. Graham thank you, senator cornyn. I agree with what you said. Why dont we do the business of the committee . Judge barrett is one of the most impressive legal minds in the United States. She is a thoughtful and fairminded lawyer. A daughter, wife and mother. Faceout believer in her and in the constitution. She was arguably the most impressive judicial nominee that i have ever seen in these hearings. I have been watching them intently since i was a child. Make anoing to outstanding Supreme Court justice and the people will be lucky to have her on the bench. It is a shame that our colleagues on the other side, having failed to lay a glove on judge barrett, have walked out on this process. And so doing, walk out on the American People. This is sad, but in context it is not surprising. I suppose we should be grateful that i walk out as all the democrats will do to judge barrett today. Not all nominees have been so lucky. This is an important point for those watching these proceedings who might be tempted to believe the pious pearlclutching and Performance Art of the media and the Minority Party about this particular nomination. I would like to take a few moments to set the record straight about this process and why America Needs and deserves to have judge barrett on the Supreme Court. For the first 200 years of the history of our republic, Supreme Court nominations of both Political Parties were almost always polite and even boring. Relatively nonpartisan, nonpolitical affairs. Judicial nominees were examined for their qualifications and rejected by the senate only in relatively rare instances. But that era of generally common Mutual Respect and in 1987. When a Democraticcontrolled Senate shamefully and slanderously defeated the nomination of one of the countries most respected lawyers and constitutional scholars. That is judge robert bork. The cynical attacks against judge bork, his only offense was that he was a conservative, were dirty and downright dishonest. But like the boy who cried wolf, Senate Democrats got away with it, at least the first time. Four years later president George Herbert walker bush nominated clarence thomas, then serving on the court of appeals for the d. C. Circuit judge democrats on the Judiciary Committee democrats, not republicans tried to do to judge thomas what they had done to judge bork. The public was now wise to the democrats game. That particular attack, while injurious, failed. So they resorted to the next tactic. Organizing what thomas rightly called a hightech lynching of a black man who dared disagree that the white liberals who ran the Democratic Party. When democrats won back the white house in 1992, when she was put on the other foot, Senate Republicans did not retaliate. Senate republicans did not retaliate. They did not respond in kind. In 1993, judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg was confirmed to the Supreme Court with 96 votes. In 1984, judge Stephen Breyer was confirmed with 87 votes. They went low, and in response we went high. Did republicans good faith behavior improve the democrats behavior . No. It only encouraged them. Within a decade democrats breached norms. The unilaterally escalated their war over the judiciary by filibustering for the first time in history a judicial nominee. Mr. Estrada was and remains to this day one of the most respected lawyers and constitutional scholars in the country. He was a natural and inspiring choice to serve as a federal appellate judge. The left, that was precisely the problem. Mr. Estrada was latino and brilliant and charismatic and young, and widely seen as a future nominee to the u. S. Supreme court. So the left decided to strangle mr. Estradas nomination with false, insincere attacks and unprecedented obstructionism. They filibustered his nomination. Not once, not twice, but seven times. Fan service to hateful leftist groups who are vilifying an honorable man and a tantrum of little cynicism and blatant racial condescension. During this ordeal mr. Estradas family suffered irreparable tragedy, but at least the New York Times was happy. The leftcenter clear message to latino americans about what they can expect if they dare question liberal orthodoxy. Thus, democrats ushered in