Today, I spoke on the floor of the Senate to explain how the president is trying to take power that is not his, and why his wrongheaded decision will cause me to no longer provide the level of cooperation with his nominees that I had been providing up to this point. Here is a transcript of my remarks:

I rise today in opposition to this nomination. I do so not because of the qualifications of this particular nominee, but instead I do so in defense of the U.S. Constitution. In opposing President Obama's appointments, I've repeatedly made clear that this is a Constitutional issue. Each time I've spoken out, and I've done so on numerous occasions, I've set forth in detail the reasons why I believe on a legal basis, on a constitutional basis, why President Obama's recent purported recess appointments are unprecedented and unconstitutional. I've also made absolutely clear that my opposition to President Obama's appointments is not partisan, and that I will hold a Republican president equally accountable whenever any Republican president makes a similarly unconstitutional claim of power.

This president has enjoyed my cooperation up to this point. I've voted for many, if not most, of his nominees. That cooperation can't continue, not in the same way that he has enjoyed it up until this point, in light of the fact he has disrespected our authority, within this body. He's disrespected the Constitution.

Unfortunately, many of my colleagues have refused to engage on the real substance of this issue. Instead, they repeatedly changed the subject to partisan politics, the nominations process, and Richard Cordray's qualifications to head the CFPB.

Even worse, and despite my repeatedly making clear that I intend to hold any Republican president to the same standard to protect the institutional and constitutional prerogatives of the Senate, rather than the interests of any political party, given that those are at stake, the Democrats, including the president himself, have accused me of playing politics. I want to be clear again, this is not the case. I'm here to defend the constitutional prerogatives of the Senate and the separation of powers and the system of checks and balances that are at the heart of our constitutional system.

The Senate's advice and consent role is grounded in the Constitution, the constitutional system of checks and balances. In Federalist number 51, James Madison wrote that the great security against the gradual concentration of the several powers in the same branch of government consists in giving to those who administer each branch the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. Among those constitutional means is the Senate's ability to withhold its consent for a nominee, forcing the president to work with Congress to address that body's concerns.

The key conclusion that the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel memorandum on which President Obama relied in making these recess appointments is that the president may unilaterally decide and conclude that the Senate's pro forma sessions somehow do not constitute sessions of the Senate for purposes relevant to the recess appointments clause, in clause 3 of article 2, section 2. If allowed to stand, this deeply flawed assertion would upend an important element of the Constitution's separation of powers.

Under the procedures set forth by the Constitution, it is for the Senate and is not for the president to determine when the Senate is in session. Indeed, the Constitution expressly grants the Senate that prerogative, the power to determine the rules of its own proceedings. Commenting on this very provision in his authoritative constitutional treatise, Joseph Storey noted that "the highest assembly of men has the power to make its own rules and it would be absurd to deny the counsels of the nation their own authority." This is precisely the result of the attempt of President Obama's attempt to tell the Senate when it is or is not in recess.

I'm saddened that some of my colleagues are not more jealous of this body's rightful institutional prerogatives. As they well know, the Constitution's protections do not belong to any one party and its structural separation of powers is meant to protect against the abuses, present and future, of presidents of both parties. Acquiescing to the president may result in a temporary political gain for the president's party, but relinquishing this important piece of the Senate's constitutional role has lasting consequences for Republicans and Democrats alike.

Because of the oath that I've sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States, I find myself duty bound to oppose this nomination, and I strongly urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to take seriously their obligation, both to the Constitution and to the institutional prerogatives of the Senate, and to do the same.