Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) says Democrats will filibuster the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch. (Screen grab from C-SPAN)

(CNSNews.com) – Speaking on the Senate floor Thursday morning, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he has come to a decision about the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch.

“After careful deliberation, I have concluded that I cannot support Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court,” Schumer said. “His nomination will have a cloture vote. He will have to earn 60 votes for confirmation.

“My vote will be no. And I urge my colleagues to do the same.”

Schumer had a message for his ‘Republican friends” who may contemplate changing Senate rules so Gorsuch can be confirmed with 51 votes instead of 60.





“I say, if this nominee cannot earn 60 votes – a bar met by each of President Obama’s nominees and George Bush’s last two nominees – the answer isn’t to change the rules. It’s to change the nominee.”

Schumer listed the reasons why he won’t vote to confirm Gorsuch:

-- First, Judge Gorsuch was unable to sufficiently convince me that he’d be an independent check on a president who has shown almost no restraint from executive overreach.

-- Second, he was unable to convince me that he would be a mainstream justice who could rule free from the biases of politics and ideology. His career and judicial record suggest not a neutral legal mind, but someone with a deep-seated conservative ideology…

-- And finally, he is someone who almost instinctively puts the powerful over the weak; corporations over working Americans. There could not be a worse time for someone with those instincts.

Schumer said Gorsuch declined to answer the “outstanding” questions put to him by Democrats at his confirmation hearing “with any substance.” So, “all we have to judge the judge on is his record.”