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Floor Speech

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Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I want to say a very special thank-you to Senator Klobuchar for her thoughtful and passionate words about the harm that the Senator from Alabama is imposing on our military and on our Nation.

As the Senator from Minnesota said, we are here fighting to try to protect our Nation while Senator Tuberville, in the view of the former Secretaries of Defense of both parties, is undermining our national security.

I also want to thank Senator Reed for his leadership and his steady hand in trying to persuade the Senator from Alabama that it is time to end this blockade.

This is the third time that I have come to the Senate floor to ask the Senator from Alabama to reconsider his unprecedented action of blocking hundreds of promotions earned by our men and women in uniform.

The Senate votes on nominees appointed by the President to occupy top roles in government--Cabinet Secretaries, judges, and Ambassadors. The Senate's role in approving nominations also extends to thousands of military promotions every year. If a colonel does an exceptional job and their military services promotion board decides that they are ready to be a brigadier general, the Senate must hold a vote for that promotion to go through.

In the vast majority of circumstances, this vote is a formality. Most of these promotions are considered in big batches rather than one at a time. Most of the time, there isn't even a recorded vote.

We are confident in the process, and we pass these people through. They have been thoroughly vetted, and their promotions are essential for our security.

But now, for 5 months, the Senator from Alabama has blocked all-- all--senior military nominations and promotions from moving forward without a recorded vote. That means one Senator is personally standing in the way of promotions for 273 of our top-level military leaders.

One Senator is preventing the Marine Corps from having a Commandant for the first time in 100 years.

One Senator is setting the Army on a similar course not to have a senior leader.

One Senator is blocking the confirmation of the President's top military adviser, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

One Senator is holding up pay raises for hundreds of men and women in uniform. One Senator is jeopardizing America's national security.

The Senator from Alabama has taken this dangerous step because he disagrees with a policy the Department of Defense announced after last year's abortion decision by the Supreme Court. After that decision, the Department clarified that, if a member of the armed services needs to travel to access abortion care or other kinds of reproductive healthcare that are not available where they have been stationed--for instance, because a State where they have been stationed has banned these forms of healthcare--then they can leave to do so. This is a commonsense policy that is completely legal under the Department's existing authorities, as established by Congress.

The Senator from Alabama disagrees. I think he is wrong. But, look, we all have executive branch policies that we disagree with. As I previously pointed out, as Senators, we have many tools to influence policies. We can hold hearings. We can write oversight letters. We can vote. We can pass laws.

In fact, the Senate Armed Services Committee recently voted on a bill that would get rid of the policy that the Senator from Alabama opposes. The proposal to get rid of the policy failed to get a majority. It was rejected. And if we held that vote among the full Senate, I believe it would fail here as well.

In short, the Senator from Alabama doesn't have enough support to actually pass a law to change the Department's policy. So the Senator from Alabama, instead of accepting what the majority has decided here, instead has decided to hold our senior military leaders and their families hostage as a protest against the fact that he doesn't have enough votes to change a perfectly legal policy that he just doesn't like.

Since I was here last asking for these promotions to be approved, the situation has only become worse. The Senator from Alabama's hold has left the Marine Corps without a Commandant and will soon leave the Army without its most senior leader as well. If this continues through the fall, the President will be deprived of his top military adviser.

The Senator from Alabama is decapitating the leadership of our own military. And make no mistake, the real people being punished by these holds are the military families who had expected to make a move as part of taking up a new post in service to their country.

We must address the damage this hold has inflicted on our Armed Forces, and we must do so by immediately approving every single one of the 272 leaders being held hostage by the Senator's actions, not pick up 1 or 2, not 10 or 20 whom the Senator from Alabama decides would buy him some time--every single person.

This summer is a critical time for families moving across the country or across the world to try to find new housing, to enroll their kids in new schools, and, generally, to get ready for the new school year. But, now, all of that is on hold because those families don't know where they are going to be in the fall.

The Department of Defense has shared stories of students who are disenrolled from their current school because they thought they would be somewhere else in September. But now they don't know if they can enroll in their new school because their parent doesn't know if they will be able to relocate by then.

Spouses who assumed they would be moving or even ended a job now don't know where they may live or work.

These hundreds of nominees and their families can't wait for us to figure this out when we get back from the August recess. The Senator from Alabama needs to fix this now. If the Senator from Alabama refuses to lift his hold, he will be forcing families to either pull their kids out of classes in the middle of the school year or spend the year hundreds or even thousands of miles away from their loved ones.

Over 500 Active-Duty military spouses recently delivered a petition to the Senator from Alabama urging him to release his hold and to end this uncertainty for military families. They said it was ``highly inappropriate and unpatriotic to wage a political battle by using military servicemembers as pawns.''

These Active-Duty military spouses got it right. Spouses and families support our servicemembers. If we treat them and their service with this level of profound disrespect, we will only be exacerbating our country's military recruiting challenges.

We recently held a confirmation hearing for Gen. C.Q. Brown, the President's nominee to be the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As the Senator from Alabama noted, General Brown has had to move 20 times over the course of his military career. General Brown was very clear about the consequences of the holds that the Senator from Alabama has imposed. He says that ``we will lose talent.''

Our senior military leaders don't want to be a political football, but even they are starting to speak out about the impact of these holds. The Deputy Commanding General of the U.S. Army Europe and Africa called these tactics ``reprehensible, irresponsible, and dangerous.''

Our civilian leaders are deeply concerned as well. In April, I sent a letter to Defense Secretary Austin asking about the impact of holding up these military promotions. Secretary Austin wrote: ``[T]he longer that this hold persists, the greater the risk the U.S. military runs in every theater, every domain, and every service.'' General Austin went on to point out that these unprecedented and unnecessary holds are creating ``rising disquiet from our allies and partners, at a moment when our competitors and adversaries are watching.''

As I have mentioned before, there is bipartisan opposition to the Senator from Alabama's actions. Seven former Defense Secretaries, including ones who served under President Trump and President George W. Bush, sent a letter stating that leaving senior positions ``in doubt at a time of enormous geopolitical uncertainty sends the wrong message to our adversaries and could weaken our deterrence.''

The first time I came to the floor to ask the Senator from Alabama to let these promotions move forward, he was holding up 184 nominees. The second time I asked him to step aside, the number was up to 221 top- level servicemembers. Now, we have 273 leaders who have been blocked from assuming leadership positions that they have earned and that we need them to occupy in order to keep our country safe.

The Senator from Alabama is single-handedly holding up 10 four-star commanders, 54 three-star commanders, multiple Silver Star and Purple Heart recipients, the next Commandant of the Marine Corps, the next Chief of Staff of the Army, and the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

We have voted on this abortion policy. The Senate Armed Services Committee has held a briefing with the Department of Defense on this issue. We have held a briefing with the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice has issued a legal opinion that DOD is well within the law. Secretary Austin has personally called the Senator from Alabama to urge him to relent.

I am hopeful that the Senator from Alabama will finally do the right thing and allow these servicemembers to carry out their responsibilities to our Nation. We owe this to the people who put their lives on the line for Active service for our country and to the families who serve by making these lives possible.

The Senator from Alabama should relent for the families, should relent for the Active-Duty members of the military, and should relent for the security of our Nation.

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