Relating to A National Emergency Declared By the President on March 2020

Floor Speech

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Mr. REED. Madam President, I understand that there is a vote scheduled at 5:45, and in order to clarify the voting procedure this evening, I would initially ask unanimous consent that I be able to complete my remarks and the following Senators be permitted to speak for five minutes each prior to the scheduled vote.

I also presume that Senator Tuberville will speak while he reserves his right to object; is that correct? So you do not need time?

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Mr. REED. Madam President, I rise to discuss the promotions and appointments of general and flag officers in the United States military, including several appointments to lieutenant general and vice admiral.

These are officers who would hold positions of particular importance and responsibility to the Nation. The promotions of these military leaders were reported out of the Armed Services Committee over the past 2 months.

There have been no substantive objections raised against these nominations. For the benefit of my colleagues who may not appreciate the nature and volume of military promotions and nominations considered by the Armed Services Committee, last year, the Committee considered and the Senate confirmed nearly 20,000 military officers, including 656 general and flag officers.

The Senate confirmed 20,000 nominations through bipartisan unanimous consent because the tradition of the Committee and of the Senate is to consider military nominations as apolitical and thus process them in a timely and respectful manner so our troops do not experience delays in their promotion or appointment or in their pay and benefits.

Moreover, the sheer volume of nominations we consider means we cannot subject them to the ordinary political gamesmanship we see with civilian nominations.

The senior Senator from Alabama has made these promotions a political matter. He and he alone placed a blanket hold on these officers, unrelated to their qualifications, because of a policy disagreement with the administration that these officers played no part in deciding.

This, in my view, is a profound assault on the professionalism of the men and women of the armed services.

The vast majority of these officers were selected by promotion boards, which are panels of military officers who decide promotions purely on merit, considering the skill, talent, and the military's collective assessment of their potential to lead in the grades for which they have been nominated.

Blanket political holds on military officers, in an attempt to overturn a civilian policy decision, sets a dangerous trend for our military, our political process, our Nation, and this Senate.

The senior Senator from Alabama placed his hold on February 16th, and as a result, not a single general or flag officer nominated in this Congress has been confirmed.

Let me repeat that.

Due to the senior Senator from Alabama's hold, not a single general or flag officer has been promoted.

As the Senator's hold moves into its third month, we will quickly reach a critical mass of backlogged nominations, if we are not already there, that will imperil our national security, degrade unit readiness, and place undue, and undeserved, hardships on military families.

It may not be his intent, but he is effectively accomplishing what our adversaries could only dream of: denying our military of its leadership and degrading our ability to fight and win the Nation's wars.

The bottom line is that military promotions are not a political matter and they are not toys for political gains, and military officers are not tokens in such a game. They are not hostages to issues that are determined by civilian authorities.

An administration's civilian nominees may be fair game, and they have been repeatedly, but not professional military officers. That has long been the Committee's and the Senate's tradition and practice.

And I want to turn to some specific claims made by the Senator from Alabama. He has asserted a number of times that the Department changed the law or that DOD somehow lacked authority. That simply isn't true.

To be clear, under its new policy--and this is with respect to reproductive rights for female soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and guardians--the Department of Defense will provide administrative leave and paid travel if a member of the military or their dependent is stationed in a State or country that does not provide the healthcare needed.

The Department has broad statutory authority to provide travel benefits to servicemembers and their dependents, and it does so routinely, including for the provision of healthcare services. I am not aware of any assertion from anyone knowledgeable of the law and of the Department's actions that the Department does not have the authority to do this. Indeed, to the best of my knowledge, no serious lawyer has made this argument, and there has not been a single lawsuit filed on this matter.

These policies are, again, travel and administrative leave policies. They do not violate the Federal prohibition on DOD paying for noncovered reproductive health services. Such reproductive health services will still be paid for by members and dependents out of their own pockets. These policies merely facilitate the provision of health services for servicemembers and dependents who may be stationed in an area that does not provide the needed healthcare, including overseas locations.

Further, the senior Senator from Alabama has publicly stated:

``If Democrats are so worried about the nominations, then they can bring them up for a vote. We have more than enough time to vote on nominees.''

Setting aside the deeply troubling implication that certain Members of the Republican Party do not care enough about our national defense to ensure that senior military leaders are in place in a timely manner, it would take several months of constant attention on this floor just to move through the current batch of general and flag officers that are presently on the Senate calendar. And this is not even accounting for all the nominations still to come.

If we took this path, this Senate would be consumed entirely by nominating and confirming military officers ad infinitum, unable to do anything else.

And there are currently 184 general and flag officers, including 11 to be promoted to lieutenant general or vice admiral, subject to this political hold.

And let me highlight just three to show you the impact and the consequences of these holds.

One nominee is nominated to be Commander of the Navy's 7th Fleet. It is the largest of the Navy's deployed fleets and has responsibility for the Indo-PACOM area of operations.

And I hear constantly in the Committee and elsewhere on the floor: The Chinese threat--we have got to do more. We just listened to a long diatribe about TikTok and how dangerous it is.

I think what might be more dangerous is not having a confirmed leader for this fleet in the Pacific able to move out immediately to any type of threat coming from the Chinese.

In addition, the Commander of the Navy's 5th Fleet is responsible for the naval and combined maritime forces in the Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, and it is under the overall command of U.S. Central Command. And we hear every day--we heard it just recently--about how the Iranians are taking advantage of us. They say we are not responding strongly enough.

Well, how effective will our response be if we are not quite sure who the Commander of this fleet is? We have got a nominee, but the officer is not confirmed. We have an officer who may have to leave for another assignment. This causes readiness problems, morale problems, and undermines the military that we all seem around here to suggest is our primary concern.

Another one: the U.S. Military Representative to NATO, who is the senior uniformed representative to NATO during a time when NATO is critical to our support of Ukraine, therefore, against Russia.

And, again, my colleagues would stand up and say: We have got to do more for Ukraine. We have to make sure they get the support they need, through coordination with NATO. We have to do all these things, but we really don't need anyone in Brussels to help with military advice and assistance. We will just ignore that.

These are just three examples, and I would like to look ahead because this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Within the next 8 months, we expect the Department to nominate approximately 650 general and flag officers, including 80 three- or four-star nominees, all of whom will come through the Armed Services Committee and require Senate confirmation.

These include the nomination of the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. By law, General Milley will retire in September. If this hold persists, then we will be without a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

We also expect nominations for the service chiefs of the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps. The Chief of Staff for the Army, the CNO of the Navy, and the Commandant of the Marine Corps are scheduled to retire.

If this hold persists, we will not have leadership in the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps, and that would be devastating to readiness, to morale, to the whole history of our government in which we move nominees based on merit, not as political hostages.

We are also talking about major combat commands--Cyber Command. Does anyone have to talk about the relevance of Cyber Command? Again, we just listened to a long, long discussion about cyber security and the stealing of information and governmental interference with that. Cyber Command is the key actor from the Department of Defense standpoint in all of those efforts. And, frankly, without a Commander of Cyber Command, I think the TikTok issue sort of diminishes in importance.

We also have SPACECOM and NORTHCOM. They are responsible for the defense of the United States so that we do not find ourselves here at home devastated by any type of attack, which, today, includes cyber, missile, hypersonics--all those possibilities.

There are also three Deputy Commanders who are coming on--CYBERCOM, CENTCOM, and AFRICOM.

So what you can see is, if this policy continues or this practice continues, we are wiping out the leadership of the Department of Defense and doing an extraordinary disservice to the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States.

We have always treated military nominations appropriately, as beyond the political fray, and we must continue to do so for the good of the service and all those who take the oath, and their families, too, because no military member serves alone. The families serve with him or her.

Now, I believe in a very strong military based on constitutional and professional values. We must not inject political theater into this process.

If we do not have a coherent, organized leadership at the Department of Defense, then we are putting our troops at risk. That is quite simple, and, to me, it is unacceptable.

With that, I would ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations en bloc: Calendar Nos. 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, and 107; that the nominations be confirmed en bloc; the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate; and that no further motions be in order to any of the nominations; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action and the Senate then resume legislative session.

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Mr. REED. Mr. President, first of all, the notion that we can simply start confirming these officers is patently absurd. There are 184 nominations that are on hold now. We anticipate another 650 general and flag officer nominations throughout the remainder of this year.

Because we get very little cooperation--in fact, none at all--from the Republicans, we average about three nominations a week--Senator Durbin knows this well--because we have to wait, during quorum calls, to exhaust the hours necessary before we can take the final vote. So we would be working many months, just on this batch of 184, to confirm these officers. And then when we add 650 additional nominations--and they will keep coming and coming--that is absolutely preposterous. It is impossible. So that is not an answer to the problem.

He mentioned Senator Duckworth. Senator Duckworth held nominations for 3 weeks. She was not trying to change the policy of the Federal Government under the Trump administration. She wanted factual information whether President Trump had had politicized the military by interfering with Colonel Vindman's promotion. That is the exact opposite of what the Senator from Alabama is doing. He is holding everybody's nomination as a political action, just like President Trump was trying to do with Colonel Vindman, as reciprocation and as retaliation.

We had a hearing on recruitment at the request of the minority. What are the issues there? The issues are that we have a 3-percent unemployment rate. One of the most significant issues facing the military services is the low percentage of individuals who are eligible and interested in military service.

The issue of whether or not this policy affects recruiting, I think, was refuted by the Senator when he has indicated that he expects 4,000 people to take advantage of this policy. Well, that is not a trivial number. And I would suspect women considering the military would think hard, regardless of their moral position. They would not like to be in a place where they cannot get access to reproductive care. Twenty percent of the military are women. It is going to have an effect on women. Just look at the polling across the United States about Roe v. Wade versus the Dobbs decision, and I think you will find that there is a significant number of women who are concerned.

So this is very simple. We are either going to politicize and completely ignore military nominations, using military officers as hostages for political decisions, or we can return to tradition and confirm expeditiously. And one final point, this issue will be considered in the usual order because during the Armed Services Committee markup, I presume there will be amendments on both sides that will be considered fairly, and this issue will be addressed, as it should be, in the context of the National Defense Authorization Act.

What the Senator of Alabama is doing is damaging the military of the United States, perhaps catastrophically, if he continues this policy for many more weeks. That is not appropriate.

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