and i strongly oppose this nomination now and i will be urging my colleagues to stand with me in rejecting him and calling on president trump to send up someone who will stand with women and workers and families and who will truly commit to respecting the law and the rights and freedoms we hold so dear and i will be urging people across the country to stand up, speak out and make their voices heard. this is a critical moment right now. they have the power to stop the court from swinging against the rights and freedoms and every senator needs to know that they will be held accountable or there vote. thank you and i will yield the vote. >> spoke to the leaders in the senate confirmation process saying they expect to hold a confirmation vote by the full.

[inaudible conversations] good afternoon everyone. the rollout of the supreme court last night was quite impressive and had a chance to meet a whiff of the judge. the president couldn't have done a better job of making extraordinarily well-qualified nominee. i think the comments over have been rolling in, not just from people that are conservative but also others about his brilliance on his talent and temperament and all the things the american people would like to have in a

judge. somebody that has been trying to follow the law as it is written and not try to get the results you want to get. they said you are not a good judge if you are uncomfortable with the outcome you reach because it is dictated by the law or the constitution. so i think the president has made a great appointment, great nomination. we will work our way through the process. we believe that it is possible to handle this nomination only by the fall. i know the chairman believes as he already said in the statement today he believes we can work our way through the process at a normal length of time and have the nominee in place sometime this fall. >> i know people must be wondering what in the world is going on where that senate

democrats are opposing a nominee yet to be named. unfortunately it is pretty clear resolve this with the judge as well that democrats given the current state of the politics are unwilling to display the base andestroy thebase and votee well-qualified nominees, so they find a safer political version to oppose all nominees by president trump, but i agree with the leader of the judge is an extraordinarily well-qualified judge and the reason i think the left is so afraid of the nomination is because they view the judiciary as a policymaking arm of the federal government. we disagree and we are in good company with people like james madison and alexander hamilton and the founders who view the judiciary as the least dangerous branch because they are the policymaking arm of the government of this congress and the executive branch that is where policy needs to be made so

we need good judges who will interpret the law as written and not as they would wish it to be so that they can dispense policy without having to bother. >> one of the amazing thing is that democrats have the expected would attack whoever the nominee of the individual that is going to nominate its pretty clear there is a knee-jerk reaction as the senator cornyn pointed out a few of the judiciary is very different in that the judiciary is the means to an end to get outcomes, policy outcomes.

very qualified and well respected and has all of the qualities that will serve him well if he ends up on the court. we have a process that we follow into a lot of our members are going to be paying very careful attention setting up meetings with the judge. there'there is a hearing process examining the record and they end up eventually with a vote. all of that can happen in a timely way. it doesn't have to be delayed. i know democrats do whatever they can to throw roadblocks at the way, everything but the kitchen sink at this nominee. but if you look at the last two nominees, they were from the time of the nomination to the time of confirmation 66 days in the process. so that is the standard we could complete this in time for this justice to be on the court.

in the meantime we are going to keep working on other things. the last period we got a lot done we passed a farm bill that we have to reconcile with the house. we passed the three appropriation bills and got them through the process and passed the dod bill. so there's been a lot of work that has been done and we intend to continue on that even at the same time as this process is ongoing. under my committee's jurisdiction we've got the water resources act under the jurisdiction and more appropriation bills to do. there's a lot of things we will keep working on over the course of the next few weeks in addition to processing the nominee through the process that we have here. when we got to the judiciary part and we talked about the republican president nominating

someone that respects the rule of law and the constitution that is exactly what the president trump and his nomination of judge kavanaugh, someone that realizes the rule is to play the -- apply the rule book for rigid enough flexibility. so looking at someone that has the character and the intelligence and the judicial philosophy that i would look for in someone to be serving on the supreme court. it is interesting that even before the nomination was made, the democrats rolled out the same arguments that have been rolled out when gerald ford made a nomination back in the 70s, the same complaints that they've rolled out with justice kennedy

nominated 30 years ago and with justice roberts. it's the same playbook again and again and again. for the nomination was made nancy pelosi came out to say that her goal was to avenge president obama and reject anybody. we have a nominee ahead of us who is mainstream highly qualified, stellar credentials and it is time now to have the hearings and the discussions in the debate to go to the floor of the united states senate. >> we also got in the last period three of the appropriation goes off before both the house and senate. we need to get together and get the bills on the president's desk. all 12 of the appropriation bills are out of the senate committee before the end of june

and that work needs to continue to go on. things like the opioid crisis hasn't slowed down, hasn't been sold, still the number one cause of accidental death in the country and it is a higher cause of accidental death of an auto accident in the last four years by reprioritizing other spending we've increased money available to address the problem by 13 times. for the money to be available to the states a lostates a lot of e in state-by-state grants where the states can try to do things that work in their state and then share that information with other people. to be available, we've got to get these bills passed as well and so hopefully we will continue to work in the house and the senate to get some of these bills on the president's desk to see the problems they are trying to solve in the priority as we said it gets

solved. >> in colorado that you're dealing with a number of forest fires in the past several the congress passed a number of policies to address the concerns including those that ended the practice of buyer borrowing allowed others fighting forest fires to do a better job at making decisions and have the right decisions being made to help protect our communities and to keep our forests from the catastrophes that we have seen. i also want to touch on the supreme court nomination last night. what we saw last night from many on the left simply mindless partisanship i'm going to read a press release that was sent out from an organization in response to the nomination of the supreme court of the united states the following statement was releas

released. apparently the nominee it didn't matter who he chose, what he selected they would have opposed it simply because of mindless partisanship [inaudible] >> we are going to go through the process and give an opportunity to meet with an open mind. sounds like there are not a whole lot of open minds on the other side. >> we have a great nominee that it deserves bipartisan support and we have a few democrats and we are hopeful that we will have a few of them on the nomination as well. >> i don't have any advice to give the president.

he just left this morning on a trip to europe. there is nothing inherently wrong with him meeting th with e head of the russian government. and i won't get an give any advn how it should be conducted. >> what would you say when they couldn't even get a hearing? [inaudible] >> let me go over this for those that have not heard it yet. for the two-term presidency in the middle of an election the

question was is it appropriate to wait and see who they want to make the nomination have to go back to find the last time a vacancy created was confirmed by the senate of a different party. joe biden when he was the chairman told that if there were a vacancy he wouldn't fill it. they said i that they vacancy occurred they wouldn't fulfill it. we know the shoe is on the other foot sending the nomination to the senate in the middle of a presidential election year they wouldn't have acted.

where we are now is in the first two years of the first term. we frequently confirm nominees in off year elections three of them were voted on in the middle of the off year election so there is no comparison between 2016 and 2018 when it comes to acting on the supreme court. [inaudible] >> i think the nominee speaks for himself. the reason the justice was confirmed as because he was a superb choice and i think the president had done it once again.

he's one of the premier talents in the country he has a long record people can examine what we would like to see about this extraordinary talent maybe we will see more than we have at the beginning as several colleagues pointed out it is clear is significant number didn't care who the nominee was all. now you've got an individual with extraordinary credentials and we will see what kind of an argument they make in the qualifications.