The positions of Deputy Attorney General and Solicitor General are extremely important and sensitive leadership positions at the Department of Justice. I hope that today’s hearing on the nominations to fill these important posts will be both full and fair.

The position of Deputy Attorney General is a crucial one. The Deputy is number two in command and plays a key role as a top advisor to the Attorney General. The position was firmly established in the Eisenhower Administration almost 50 years ago-- just after the Attorney General and President Eisenhower had established the arrangement by which the American Bar Association began providing peer review to the President of possible judicial nominees. While a number of our longstanding traditions are being upset by the current Administration, the position of the Deputy Attorney General appears to be one that continues. Former Deputies include William Rogers and Byron White, Nicholas Katzenbach and Warren Christopher, Harold Tyler, Jamie Gorelick and Eric Holder. The Deputy has traditionally assumed responsibility for the day-to-day operations of the Department. The Deputy often has direct oversight of a number of divisions and units within the Department, including the FBI and those with criminal jurisdiction. The Deputy position may assume even greater significance in this Administration since we have not read of any designation of an Associate Attorney General with whom the Deputy might share those leadership responsibilities.

This is a critical juncture for the Department and for our federal law enforcement efforts. I remain concerned with reports that the Bush Administration intends to cut Justice Department funding significantly. The early reports were that those cuts would amount to more than $1,000,000,000 annually. I want to explore where President Bush and Attorney General Ashcroft intend to absorb such massive cuts.

I know that Mr. Thompson served previously as a United States Attorney. I am sure that he appreciates, as those of us who served as local prosecutors understand, what it would mean to cut positions in our United States Attorneys offices and how unwise that would be.

I am concerned that the Senate is being called upon this week to vote on the federal budget without having seen a detailed submission of where the Bush Administration intends to make its cuts in law enforcement. I, for one, would hate to see cuts in our federal assistance to State and local law enforcement. Those programs to help acquire bulletproof vests, reduce DNA backlogs, encourage modern communications, provide modern crime labs, and place cops on the beat have been so helpful to our crime control efforts.

Under Attorney General Reno, and due in part to her emphasis on a coordinated effort with State and local law enforcement, crime rates fell in each of the past 8 years. Violent crimes, including murder and rape, have been reduced to the lowest levels in decades, since before the Reagan and Bush Administrations. We need to redouble our efforts, not cut them short or leave them short of funds. When the Bush budget highlights in his "Blueprint for New Beginnings" says that the President intends to cut federal assistance to State and local law enforcement by 30%, by "redirecting"over $1,500,000,000, that troubles me. With school shootings continuing to occur across the country and the use of heroin, methamphetamine and other dangerous drugs in Vermont and across the country in rural and urban settings, now is not the time to be redirecting $1,500,000,000 away from federal assistance to State and local law enforcement. Now is not the time to be pulling back from the strong national commitment we should be making to continue to assist those on the front lines in the fight against crime and battle over illegal drug use.

Senator Hatch and I began this year by cosponsoring with other Senators a bill to focus increased effort and resources in the battle against illegal drug use. Our bill, the Drug Abuse Education, Prevention and Treatment Act of 2001, will require a significant commitment of additional resources to this effort. If we are finally ready to make the type of commitment to drug abuse education, prevention and treatment that we need in order to make a difference, that will require increasing federal funding of our anti-drug efforts by over $1,000,000,000 during the next three years, not cutting law enforcement funding by more than $1,000,000,000 each of the next four years.

I was impressed by Larry Thompson when we met and spoke informally earlier this week. When we are working together well, the contact between this Committee and the Department is so frequent and important that we will need a candid and responsive relationship with the Deputy. I enjoyed our brief visit earlier this week and look forward to getting to know Mr. Thompson better through the course of these proceedings.

A nomination to as significant a position as the Deputy Attorney General has traditionally been treated by this Committee as worthy of its own hearing. Indeed, the hearing on the nomination of former President Bush’s last Deputy Attorney General included a number of public witnesses in addition to testimony from the nominee. Instead of proceeding along that model, Senator Hatch has ordered this matter to be interwoven with the nominee to be Solicitor General, without any opportunity for witnesses other than the nominees to testify. I recall that Chairman Thurmond heard witnesses in connection with the nominations of both Rex Lee and Charles Fried to be Solicitor General during the Reagan Administration. Having public testimony in connection with nominations can be a helpful aspect to this process and useful to the Senate as it performs its constitutional responsibilities in considering whether to confirm presidential nominations.

The Solicitor General fills a unique position in our Government. The Solicitor General is responsible for the integrity of our laws. The Solicitor General is not merely another legal advocate whose mission is to advance the narrow interests of a client, or merely another advocate of his President’s policies. Rather, the Solicitor General is much more than that. The Solicitor General must use his or her legal skills and judgment to higher purposes. For this reason the Solicitor General has often been called the 10th Justice of the Supreme Court.

On this Committee, Republicans and Democrats have reviewed nominations to the position of Solicitor General seeking the highest levels of independence and integrity, as well as legal skills. He or she must argue with intellectual honesty before the Supreme Court and represent the interests of the Government and the American people for the long term, and not just with an eye to short-term political gain. It is our obligation here on this Committee to help the Senate determine whether a nominee understands and is up to this extraordinary role. From Benjamin Bristow in 1870, to William Howard Taft and Charles Evans Hughes, Jr., from Robert Jackson to Archibald Cox, Thurgood Marshall and Erwin Griswold, we have had some extraordinary people serve this country as our Solicitors General.

Part of my deep regret last month when President Bush chose to withdraw the nominations of the judicial nominations that had been pending before this Committee over the last several years without action was that, along with the nominations of Roger Gregory and Judge Helene White and Judge James A. Wynn, Jr. and Bonnie Campbell and so many others, President Bush chose to withdraw the nomination of Kathleen McCree Lewis.

That name is familiar not only because her nomination was before this Committee without action for more than one and a half years, from September 16, 1999 until withdrawn by President Bush on March 19, 2001. That name is also familiar because Ms. Lewis is the daughter of one of our most distinguished Solicitors General and federal judges, Wade McCree. Ms. Lewis is herself a highly-respected appellate lawyer at the Detroit firm of Dykema Gossett. She had served as a member of the Detroit Civil Service Commission and of the Detroit Civic Center Commission. She was strongly supported by both Senator Levin and Senator Stabenow for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Had this Committee held a hearing on her nomination and had the Senate considered her, I have no doubt that she would have been confirmed. She would have been the first African American woman ever to serve on the Sixth Circuit. Although a consensus candidate, she was denied that opportunity to serve.

I had a brief opportunity to chat with Mr. Olson earlier this week. I am familiar with his work as a part of the Reagan Justice Department. In addition, I had the opportunity along with Senator Hatch, to attend the oral arguments before the United States Supreme Court last December and witnessed his aggressive representation of George W. Bush in that historic presidential selection case.

His role in that case and on behalf of a number of other causes, such as ending affirmative action and defending VMI’s policy of excluding women, are matters that I anticipate will be covered in the course of these hearings. Unlike the litmus test that has been used by anonymous Republicans over the last several years to disqualify the choices of a Democratic President, I will not oppose this nomination merely because of Mr. Olson’s clients and his clients’ activities. I understand the role of an advocate in our legal system.

What adds controversy to this nomination are Mr. Olson’s activities and outspoken partisanship over the last several years. A key question that this hearing will raise is whether Mr. Olson would put his partisanship and activist politics aside in the formulation of the Government’s litigation positions. Mr. Olson was very critical of the last Administration for what he saw to be the exercise of political influence over the Department of Justice, and he was extremely critical of Attorney General Reno for failing, in his view, to maintain a standard of independence and nonpartisanship. Given his rhetoric over the last several years, Mr. Olson is now confronted with the question whether he will disregard partisanship and narrow political ideology in carrying out the important responsibilities of the Solicitor General.

I know that Senator Hatch is expediting this hearing, going so far as to notice it last week before all the required reports had even been received on both nominees. He is taking the unprecedented step of combining both of these critical nominations in a single panel in a single hearing on a single day. Indeed, he has chosen to proceed today knowing that for some time the Republican leadership has planned to devote today to Senate consideration of this year’s budget resolution. So, in addition to our participation today in the work of the Senate as it considers the budgetary framework for the Federal Government, we have a doubly full hearing agenda as we begin the process of considering these critical nominations.

Moreover, this has already been the Committee’s busiest week of the session having already held more hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week than the Committee held in all of February or all of March. This will be our fifth hearing this week. Finally, I should note for the record that we are not proceeding in our normal Judiciary Committee hearing room or in one of the other larger hearing rooms that we sometimes employ. Instead, we are proceeding for the first time in a basement room of the Capitol with less accessibility and availability to the public. In spite of all these circumstances, we will do the best that we can to fulfil our responsibilities. I want to commend the Members of the Committee who are adjusting their schedules to participate in the hearing today. I will do all that I can to accommodate them and all Members of the Committee to ensure that they have had the opportunity to review these nominations and question the nominees.

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