The Senate plans to take up the nomination of U.S. Appeals Circuit Court Judge Amy Coney Barrett on Oct. 23 with a final vote expected the following week, CBS News reported Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as saying.
"We'll go to the floor on Friday the 23rd and stay on it until we finished. We have the votes," CBS quoted McConnell, R-Kentucky.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, which concluded four days of hearings on Barrett, announced later in the day that it would vote Oct. 22 on Barrett’s nomination to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died on Sept. 18.
The full Senate will then have a debate, a procedural vote and more debate before a final vote. Only two Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have said they would not vote for a nominee before the election.
While no Democrat is expected to vote to confirm Barrett, the Republicans still have 51 votes to approve her nomination, led by McConnell.
''Judge Barrett exhibited every bit of the intellectual brilliance, legal expertise, and open-minded judicial temperament that we need on the Supreme Court,'' McConnell said in a statement posted to Twitter. ''I will proudly vote to confirm her.
''Even the Democratic Senators who had pre-committed to oppose the nominee could not question her qualifications. Democrats just recited the same hysterical policy predictions they have recycled for every nominee from every Republican president for a half century.''
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