Hello, and welcome to ATP’s Dumb Things, They Said. I’m Barry Nussbaum.

When President Joe Biden was Senator Joe Biden, Democrat from Delaware, he argued vehemently against any kind of court-packing. He used a very wise historical reference to make his point. Here’s the quote.

“Let me describe in some detail the summer of ’37. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had just come off a landslide victory against Alf Landon. He had Congress made up to solid new dealers, but the nine old men of the Supreme Court were thwarting his agenda.”

In the late 1930s, the Democratic Congress and the Judiciary Committee stood up to the President and blocked his court-packing scheme. It was dropped, and Roosevelt never brought up that crazy idea again. It has never really been seriously brought up until, well, last week.

Now, President Biden has come full circle, and he’s creating a commission to explore the idea of doing exactly what he strongly objected to in 2005. If they get away with it, even though every single Supreme Court justice that has been asked, conservative and liberal, Republican nominee and Democrat nominee unanimously oppose court-packing-in other words, putting more specific judges on the court to approve your policies, regardless of what the Constitution says. That is court-packing.

It destroys the balance, the checks and balances of power. It’s a highly destructive idea, Mr. President. It’s really dumb.

Please remember what you said 15 years ago. Otherwise, we’re going down a really, really dumb path.