This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Now might be the time to ask Sens. Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee what they really think of the dysfunctional Congress that they helped create and continue to abet.

The shoes are on the other feet — theirs — when it comes to the consequences of lawmakers unable and unwilling to do the job voters sent them to Washington to do.

Last week, Utah's senators made the case for the confirmation of Ronald G. Russell to the U.S. District Court for Utah. President Barack Obama, after consulting with Hatch and Lee, nominated the former Centerville mayor in December.

Now, Russell is stuck is a queue behind 20 other judicial nominees, not to mention Obama's choice to the U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Judge Merrick Garland.

It could be called hypocritical arrogance or, more kindly, pretzel logic, as one Public Forum writer generously called it last week, for Hatch and Lee to refuse to consider the president's Supreme Court choice while pressing their own nominee to a federal judgeship.

The double standard is particularly troubling in Hatch's case, as he has been an enthusiastic advocate for Garland, but says even a worthy nominee should wait given the "toxic" political atmosphere. This in spite of the obvious handcuffs such non-action puts on the eight justices left in the wake of the death of Antonin Scalia. Essentially, it replicates on the high court the gridlock plaguing Congress.

It's too much to expect that Utah's junior senator show leadership. Lee has no problem with impotent, ineffective government. For him and his compatriot Sen. Ted Cruz, it is political strategy, damn the consequences. They proved that in October 2013.

Hatch seems recently to be following the Lee-Cruz tea-party model. Last week, he chose merely to add to the political rhetoric on the Senate floor, chastising Democrats for their poor memory when it came to high court nominees from Republican presidents.

But Utah's elder statesman has two good reasons to break from the pack, stop the partisan melodrama and show leadership, to spend some of the political capital that he has accumulated over four decades. Merrick Garland and Ronald G. Russell are nominees he admires. Instead of contributing to poisonous politics, he could actually do something to fix it, something to loosen the appointment logjam and help courts function the way they are intended.

After all, Sen. Hatch, you have a pair of dogs in this fight.

Obama acted on your choice to fill a federal judgeship in Utah. You should reciprocate. It is what Utahns elected you to do.