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Senior statesman offers views on Senate
Sen. Thad Cochran delivers 2006 Sanford Lecture
U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) Thursday discussed the workings of the
Senate and its unique powers to influence policy, confirm presidential appointees
and ratify treaties. Cochran addressed an audience at the Sanford Institute
as the 2006 Terry Sanford Distinguished Lecturer.
Despite flaws in the way the Senate operates, particularly with regard to confirmations, Cochran said the process is “the best you can expect in a democracy. I’d rather have this than a king. We have the greatest individual liberty and freedom and the strongest democracy in the world; let’s not get too carried away with a few problems.”
Through seniority, southerners in the Senate have acquired powerful leadership positions that give the region more political clout than it has had in the past, he noted. Cochran, a 28-year Senate veteran, began chairing the Senate Appropriations Committee in 2005. His committee will review more than $1 trillion in spending bills this session.
Today’s Congress is more balanced in its views and philosophies than ever before, he asserted, perhaps due to the Voting Rights Act or because “we are maturing as a democracy and as a nation.”
Confirmation hearings, however, sometimes become such a “mean-spirited, highly political process” that “I wonder why people would accept a position of national prominence.” Cochran recalled last year’s contentious confirmation hearings for Ambassador John Bolton, U.S. representative to the United Nations, as an example of Senate “over-reaching.”
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