Speaking Tuesday evening on the topic of Judge Neil Gorsuch, President Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, one freshman Democratic senator said, “Everybody I have talked to agrees he should get an up-or-down vote.”
This statement is not in keeping with the Democrats’ strategy of refusing to say whether or not they would filibuster the nominee, forcing the senator, New Hampshire’s Jeanne Shaheen, to walk back her comments the next day.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer welcomed Shaheen’s statement on Wednesday. “We hope more Democrats will continue to join their colleagues in fulfilling their constitutional duty to offer advice and consent on the president’s nominee,” Spicer said.
After that statement from the White House, Shaheen backtracked.
The freshman senator tweeted:
To be clear @PressSec, I meant a cloture vote
— Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (@SenatorShaheen) February 8, 2017
But a check of the record shows there was no qualifier about cloture attached to Shaheen’s statement.
WATCH:
Shaheen’s exact words were, “And to suggest that we should not get a fair hearing on the nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Gorsuch, I think is not just something that’s going to be good for the American people. Unlike the Republican majority, I haven’t heard any Democrat saying we don’t think that Judge Gorsuch should get a hearing or that he should get an up-or-down vote. Everybody I talked to agrees that he should get a hearing and an up-or-down vote.”
A cloture vote is not an up-or-down vote for confirmation, it is to end Senate debate on the nomination and proceed to a vote. Some Democrats have suggested they may filibuster Judge Gorsuch’s confirmation vote, thereby preventing an up-or-down vote.