Video: Ben Sasse Schools Democrats on What 'Court-Packing' Is and Isn't During ACB Hearing

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Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., returns to a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing after a break on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Sept. 27, 2018, with Christine Blasey Ford and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
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Over the weekend, Democrats and their mainstream media allies all began parroting a ridiculous claim on the issue of court-packing, in what was obviously a last-minute effort to deceive the American people on the big question Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his vice presidential running mate Sen. Kamala Harris refuse to answer.

According to Biden and Democratic senators like Dick Durbin, Mazie Hirono, and Chris Coons, “court-packing” now conveniently means a member of the opposing party filling existing judicial vacancies, not adding judges.

During the start of Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearings today, Republican Sen. Ben Sasse lit up Democrats for attempting to redefine the term, and set the record straight on what court-packing is and isn’t, in just a little over a minute:

“Court-packing is the idea that we should blow up our shared civics, that we should end the deliberative structure of the Senate by making it just another majoritarian body for the purposes of packing the Supreme Court.

Court-packing would depend on the destruction of the full debate here in the Senate, and it is a partisan suicide bombing that would end the deliberative structure of the United States Senate and make this job less interesting for all 100 of us. Not for 47 or 53, because it’s hard to get to a super-majority that tries to protect the American people from [various Senate swings].

What blowing up the filibuster would ultimately do is try to turn the Supreme Court into the ultimate super-legislature. Court-packing is not judicial reform, as some of you who wrote the memo over the weekend got a lot of media to bite on.

Court-packing is destroying the system we have now. It is not reforming the system we have now. And anybody who uses the language that implies filling legitimate vacancies is actually just another form of court-packing? That’s playing the American people for fools.

And the American people actually want a Washington, D.C. that depoliticizes more decisions, not politicizes more decisions.”

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Watch:

Sasse made a similar argument on “Fox News Sunday”:

“Claiming that court-packing is filling open vacancies that obviously isn’t what court-packing means,” Sasse said. He also called it “grotesque” that Joe Biden is refusing to answer the “really basic question” of whether or not he will support court-packing as president.

[…]

“What they’re really talking about is the suicide bombing two branches of government,” Sasse added, noting that if Senate Democrats — should they get a majority and Joe Biden be elected president — were to attempt to pack the Supreme Court they would likely have to do away with the legislative filibuster as well.

“Court-packing” is a term associated with Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s unsuccessful 1937 proposal to pack the Supreme Court with up to six additional justices, in hopes of reversing his luck on New Deal legislation the SCOTUS had previously ruled as unconstitutional.

After the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last month, Democrats like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez either suggested or otherwise did not rule out the possibility that Democrats should explore court-packing options, should they win control of the Senate and the presidency next month.

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Biden and Harris have repeatedly refused to answer questions about the idea when asked, with Biden falsely claiming that Republicans were the ones who made court-packing an issue in the campaign, and saying voters “don’t deserve” to know until after the election.

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