Hatch: Biden’s comments on Supreme Court vacancy rewrite history

U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said on Thursday that Vice President Joe Biden’s remarks about Senate confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Court nominees amount to a revision of history.

In an address at Georgetown University Law Center, Biden said that Senate Republicans were “undermining the norms that govern how we conduct ourselves” by denying a confirmation hearing for President Obama’s U.S. Supreme Court nominee.

“Try as he might, Vice President Biden can’t re-invent his statement in 1992 that the Senate should defer the confirmation process until after the election,” Hatch, the longest serving member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said. “He did not even try to distinguish 1992 from today’s very similar circumstances. In fact, each of the factors leading then-Chairman Biden to recommend deferring the confirmation process for a Supreme Court nomination in 1992 is present, in equal or greater measure, today.”

Biden said that in his 36-year career as a senator, half of which he served as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he had “never seen the spirit of interdependence and reciprocity at a lower ebb.”

Hatch drew comparisons between deferred confirmation hearings in 1992 under Biden’s leadership and those of today.

“If the Constitution requires a hearing for every nominee, then Vice President Biden violated the Constitution in 1992 when, as Judiciary Committee chairman, he denied a hearing to more than 50 Republican nominees,” Hatch said. “If the Constitution requires a floor vote every nominee, then he sought to violate the Constitution nearly 30 times by voting to deny floor votes to Republican nominees.”