Hillary Clinton Calls on Sen. Chuck Grassley to 'Step Up and Do His Job'

— -- Hillary Clinton blasted Republican lawmakers today for not holding a hearing for President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland.

She called on Sen. Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to “step up and do his job.”

“He should hold a hearing, and he should schedule it as soon as the Senate returns from recess,” Clinton said today at an event at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Sen. Grassley responded that a new Supreme Court justice would influence the direction of the court for a generation.

“The American people shouldn't be denied a voice,” Grassley said in a statement today. “This year is a tremendous opportunity for our country to have a sincere and honest debate about the role of the Supreme Court in our constitutional system of government.”

Clinton addressed Grassley’s words and said that as an Obama voter, her voice was not being heard, blaming GOP obstructionism. “We chose a president. We chose him twice,” Clinton said. “And now Republicans in the Senate are acting like our votes didn’t count, and that President Obama is not still our nation’s leader.”

Clinton also argued that the battle over a new Supreme Court justice was revealing the worst in Republicans during this current presidential election cycle.

“The same obstructionism that we've seen from Republicans since the beginning of the Obama administration, the same disregard for the rule of law that's given rise to the extremist candidacies of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz -- it's corroding our democracy, and it has to stop,” Clinton said. “But Donald Trump didn't come out of nowhere. What the Republicans have sewn with their extremist tactics, they are now reaping with Donald Trump's candidacy.”

Clinton has previously said she expects the next president to nominate between one and two justices, but she has stayed fairly quiet on the nomination of Merrick Garland.