Senate Debate on Empathy
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(  ) 2009-06-17 - Richard Durbin

http://www.c-spanarchives.org/congress/?q=node/77531&id=9000669

 

 


Durbin, Richard [D-IL]
 
Begin 2009-06-17 16:46:35  4:46 ET
End   17:07:33
Length 00:20:58
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I listened carefully to the statement of my colleague, Senator Sessions, from Alabama, who is the ranking Republican in the Senate Judiciary Committee, who is charged with a special responsibility at this moment in history. Because with the retirement of Supreme Court Justice David Souter and the vacancy that has been created, the Senate Judiciary Committee has the responsibility to work with the President to fill that vacancy.

I am honored to be a member of that committee and to be facing the third vacancy since I have been elected to the Senate. It is rare in one's public political life to have a chance to have a voice or a partial role in the selection of one Supreme Court Justice. But to have a chance to be involved in the selection of three, for a lawyer, is quite an amazing responsibility.

Senator Sessions and I are friends, and we see the world somewhat differently. But I would say to him that I would quarrel with the notion that our laws are so clear that a judge, given a set of facts, could only draw one conclusion. What we find often is the opposite. Well-trained attorneys who become judges can look at the same law and the same facts and reach different conclusions. That is why, when it comes to appellate courts, it is not unusual to have a split decision. Different
judges see the facts in a different context.

So to argue that we want judges who will always reach the same conclusion from the same laws and facts defies human experience. It is not going to happen. People see things differently. People read words differently. People view facts differently. Occasionally judges, faced with cases they may never have envisioned, see a need for change in our country.

There are times when I might agree with that change and times when I might disagree. In 1954, right across the street, in the Supreme Court, a decision was reached in Brown v. Board of Education. Fifty-five years ago, they took a look at the schools of America, the public schools of America, that were segregated, Black and White, and said: No, you cannot have separate and equal schools. That brought about a dramatic change in America: the integration of America's public education.

The critics said that Supreme Court had gone too far, they had no right to reach that conclusion. Well, I disagree with those critics. But some of them said they should have been strict constructionists, they should have left schools as they were; it was not their right to change the public school system of America. I think they did the right thing for this Nation.

Having said that, there are times when a Supreme Court has reached a decision which I disagree with. Most recently, this current Court--which is dominated by more conservative members, those who fall into the so-called strict construction school--had a case that came before them involving a woman. She was a woman who worked at a tire manufacturing plant in Alabama, if I am not mistaken. She spent a lifetime working there. Her name was Lilly Ledbetter. Lilly rose through the management ranks and
was very happy with the assignment she was given at this plant.

She worked side by side, shoulder to shoulder, with many male employees. It was not until Lilly announced her retirement that one of the employees came to her and said: Lilly, for many years now, you have been paid less than the man you were working next to, even though you had the same job title and the same job assignment. This company was paying less to women doing the same job as men. She thought that was unfair--after a lifetime of work--that she would not receive equal pay for equal work.

So she filed a lawsuit under a Federal law asking that she be compensated for this discrimination against her--the reduction in pay she had faced and the retirement reduction which she faced as a result of it. It was a well-known law she filed her case under, giving each American the right to allege discrimination in the workplace, and she set out to prove it.

Her case made it all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States, across the street--the highest court in the land. This conservative, strict construction Court departed from all the earlier cases. The earlier cases had said something that was, I think, reasonable on its face. They looked at the statute, the law the case was brought under, and said Lilly Ledbetter had a specific period of time after she discovered the discrimination to file a lawsuit. I believe the period was 6 months.
I may be mistaken, but I think that is a fact--that she had 6 months after she discovered she was discriminated against to file a lawsuit. And Lilly Ledbetter said: That is exactly what I did. When I learned I was discriminated against, I filed within that statutory requirement.

But the Supreme Court, across the street--the strict constructionists that they are--reached a different conclusion. Their conclusion was that the law did not mean that. The law meant she had to file the lawsuit within 6 months after the first act of discrimination. In other words, the first time she was paid less than the man working next to her, she had a clock starting to run, and she had 6 months to file the lawsuit.

Well, those of us who have worked outside government--and even those working in government, for that matter, to some extent, but those working in the private sector know it is a rare company that publishes the paychecks of every employee. You may be working next to someone for years and never know exactly what they are being paid.

That was the case with Lilly Ledbetter. She did not know the man standing next to her, doing the same job, was being paid more. She did not discover that until many years later.

So the Supreme Court said: Mrs. Ledbetter, unfortunately, you did not file your case in time. We are throwing it out of court. And they did. Strict constructionists, conservatives that they were, they departed from the previous court's decisions, which had given her and people like her the right to recover and limited that right to recover.

Well, in the name of Lilly Ledbetter, we changed the law to make it abundantly clear, so that neither this Supreme Court nor any Supreme Court in the future will have any doubt that it is 6 months after the discovery of discrimination, not after the first act of discrimination.

It was one of the first bills, if not the first bill, President Barack Obama signed. I happened to be there at the signing, and standing next to him, receiving the pen for that signature, was Lilly Ledbetter. She may not have won in the Supreme Court, she may not have come back with the compensation she was entitled to, but she at least had the satisfaction to know this Congress and this President would not allow the injustice created by that Supreme Court decision to continue.

So the Senator from Alabama came here and said: We do not need judges with empathy. That word has been stretched in many different directions. But if empathy means we do not need judges who understand the reality of the workplace, if empathy means we would say to Lilly Ledbetter: Sorry, you missed it, girl, you had 6 months to file that lawsuit from the first act of discrimination, the first paycheck--you missed it, and you are out of luck--if empathy would say that is not a fair or just result,

I want judges with empathy. I want them to know the real world. I want them to know the practical impact of the decisions they make. I want them to follow the law. I want them to be fair in its administration. But I do not want them to sit high and mighty in their black robes so far above the real world that they could not see justice if it bit them. I think that is what empathy brings--someone who is at least in touch with this real world.

For the last several--2 weeks, I guess--the nominee of President Barack Obama for the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, has been meeting with the Members of the Senate. She had an unfortunate mishap and broke her ankle at La Guardia Airport, so I allowed her to use my conference room upstairs on the third floor, and there was a steady parade of Senators coming in to meet her.

I asked her this morning. She said: I have seen 61

Senators, and I have 6 [Page: S6700]
more today. She may break a record for actually meeting face to face with more Senators than most Supreme Court nominees. But regardless, she is doing her level best to introduce herself and to answer any questions Senators have. I think--and I told the President when I saw him at an event today--he has made an extraordinary choice.

Sonia Sotomayor was first selected to serve on the Federal court--the district court--by President George Herbert Walker Bush. She was then promoted by President Bill Clinton to a higher level court--the circuit court--and now is being nominated for Supreme Court service. She has more experience on the Federal bench than any nominee in 100 years, so she is going to be no neophyte if she is fortunate enough to serve on the Court.

She is a woman with an extraordinary life story, having grown up in the Bronx in public housing. Her father died when she was 9 years old. Her mother raised her and her younger bother, who ended up becoming a doctor, incidentally.

She was encouraged to apply to Princeton, which was a world she knew nothing about as a young Latino growing up in the Bronx, but she applied and was accepted. At the end of the 4-year period, she graduated second in her class at Princeton. I do not believe Princeton University is an easy assignment. I think it is a challenging assignment. Clearly, she was up to it.

She went on to graduate from Yale Law School. She was involved in prosecution. She was involved in working in private law practice. She has an amazing background in law, and I think she would be an extraordinary member of the Supreme Court.

So Senator Sessions came earlier and talked about his philosophy and certainly expressed it very capably. I did not have any prepared remarks on the subject. Although I disagree with him, I respect him very much, and I hope at the end of the day we can do the Senate proud and serve our Nation by giving her a fair and timely hearing.

Let's not use a double standard on this nominee. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Patrick Leahy has suggested a timely hearing on her nomination. It is a hearing within the same schedule of those who went before her, such as Chief Justice Roberts or Justice Alito. So if she is given the same standard of fairness, that hearing will go forward. I certainly hope it does and think she will do well.

TOURISM
Mr. President, this bill we are considering on the floor at this time could not come at a better time. On October 2, the International Olympic Committee is going to select a site for the 2016 Olympic games.

I am proud to say that Chicago is one of the final global candidates--one of the final four in the world. Winning that bid would bring 6 million tourists from all over the world into the United States and generate as much as $7 billion in tourist revenue.

This bill, by encouraging international tourism--the one before us--will welcome international visitors to our country, and it will demonstrate to the world that the United States is open for visitors. That can only help improve the chances that the 2016 Olympic games actually come to the Windy City.

Tourism and travel generate approximately $1.3 trillion in economic activity in the United States every year, including 8.3 million travel-related jobs.

Overseas visits to the United States, unfortunately, are still being hampered by the specter and memory of 9/11. That has cost the United States an estimated $182 billion in lost spending by tourists in our country and $27 billion in lost tax receipts in the last 8 years. The current economic downturn is expected to cost another 250,000 travel-related jobs just this year alone.

So this bill addresses some of the problems underlying this downturn in overseas visitors.

Through a public-private, nonprofit Corporation for Travel Promotion, the United States will coordinate its efforts to encourage international tourism.

The new Office of Travel Promotion within the Department of Commerce will work to streamline entry procedures, making travel to the United States more welcoming and efficient.

The bill does all this while reducing budget deficits by $425 million. In other words, this is one of the few bills we will consider that actually is going to make money. Bringing more tourists to the United States, generating more tax revenue, is going to be to our economic benefit and the benefit of our government.

By setting up stronger entities to promote internationally the benefits of visiting America, this bill certainly advances Chicago's chances to be awarded the 2016 Olympic games.

But the bill also offers an opportunity to showcase internationally all the other reasons to visit America, and they are many.

Even in my home State of Illinois, a lot of foreign travelers come to walk the streets that Abraham Lincoln walked in Springfield, IL. Looking for Lincoln highlights sites all across our State, with a series of stories about the President's life in 42 different counties of Illinois where his journeys took him.

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum in Springfield, IL, was a pet project of mine I thought of about 18 years ago and today is a reality.

This Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum draws almost half a million tourists a year to Springfield, many of them families with children who leave with a better understanding and a very enjoyable visit after seeing Lincoln's life portrayed in very positive terms.

Saline County, IL, down in southern Illinois, draws visitors to its Garden of the Gods--the gateway to the Shawnee National Forest, one of the prettier areas in our State.

Quincy, IL, features historic architecture and fun along the mighty Mississippi River.

We have our unusual tourist attractions in Illinois as well. Near my old hometown of East St. Louis, you can visit Collinsville and see the world's largest catsup bottle or the two-story outhouse in Gays, IL, or the home of Superman, including a 15-foot Superman statue in Metropolis, IL, and a 6-foot Popeye statue in Chester, IL. A lot of photographs have been taken in front of the statue.

Every State has these historic, amazing places to visit and those curiosities that bring people from all over the United States and all over the world.

Illinois offers the international visitor a truly American experience. In fact, Illinois tourism adds $2.1 billion to State and local tax coffers and supports more than 300,000 jobs annually. In 2008, there were about 1.4 million international visitors to my State. These travelers spent $2 billion in all sectors of the economy, from transportation, to lodging, to food service, to entertainment. These international visitors generated an additional $521 million in wages and salaries for Illinois
residents.

I encourage my colleagues to support this bipartisan bill. I am sorry it was delayed today. There was no reason for that. We sat here idly today making wonderful speeches when we should have been passing this bill. I hope we get to it soon, and I hope, with passing it, we will help this economy get back on its feet.

Mr. President, I see the Senator from Ohio is in the Chamber. I have one last short statement I have to make.

CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION AGENCY
Mr. President, today I went to the White House to hear President Obama announce a significant, sweeping change in the regulation of financial services. It is the most important change since the Great Depression. At the heart of President Obama's proposal is the creation of an independent new agency. It is called the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. It is going to put the interests of American families and consumers above the interests of a lot of businesses and banks.