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Floor Speech
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Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, we are about to have a monumental vote out here on the floor of the U.S. Senate on who will become the next Secretary of Defense for the United States of America.
The defense budget in the United States is $900 billion. The person who is given that responsibility has to be exceptionally well qualified in order to deal with all of the responsibilities that are tied to those military and personnel decisions which have to be made because there are 3.5 million servicemembers, and there are hundreds of thousands of aircraft, ships, submarines, combat vehicles, satellites, and the nuclear arsenal. And a variety of sources, including his own writings, implicate him with disregarding the laws of war, of financial mismanagement, of racist and sexist remarks about Americans in uniform, of sexual assault, of sexual harassment, and other very troubling issues.
These are perilous times, and the position of Secretary of Defense demands a leader of unparalleled experience, wisdom, and, above all else, character. The Secretary of Defense carries an immense responsibility not only to the American people but to the servicemembers whom they lead.
If confirmed, Mr. Hegseth will have a responsibility to serve our servicemembers in a manner that is fair and nonpartisan and responsible. Yet Mr. Hegseth has demonstrated that he is incapable of doing so.
He has said:
I am straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles.
He is opposed to transgender people serving in the military, despite their willingness to serve and sacrifice for our country right now.
He called reproductive justice ``absolutely and utterly meaningless'' in the military. He opposed Pentagon policies to help servicemembers get reproductive care, including IVF to start a family. These are American servicemembers.
I find Hegseth's record extremely alarming. He is nominated to lead an Agency charged with defending American freedom abroad. Yet he does not stand for freedom and dignity and respect for the servicemembers of the United States of America in the military. Indeed, Mr. Hegseth's own writings and alleged conduct should disqualify him from holding any leadership position in the military, much less from being confirmed as the Secretary of Defense for our Nation.
Donald Trump dared to impugn the legacy of the late, honorable Congressman John Lewis by saying, ``John Lewis was all talk and no action,'' but then Trump nominates a Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, who perpetuates the lie, the racism that Black military officers are only promoted because of their race. Tell that to Colin Powell; tell that to Lloyd Austin, that they were only promoted because of their color. This is not just a failure of leadership; it is a moral crisis that strikes at the heart of who we are as a people.
It is not enough to just oppose Trump's vision. There are hundreds of thousands of women in the military right now, and 19 percent of our military is African American. These are Hegseth's own words about this very high percentage of the members of our military right now.
So the criticism of Hegseth is bipartisan. Senators from both sides of the aisle are opposed to this nomination. If you didn't know anything else about him--if we didn't have any more hearings, if we didn't have any more documents, if we didn't have any other people coming forward--we already have enough evidence and eye-watering detail sufficient to cast a ``no'' vote on the floor of the U.S. Senate on this nomination. That is because the position of Secretary of Defense is a serious job. We need someone who will bring their A game, 24/7, 365 days a year; and Pete Hegseth is not that person. His lack of experience aside, he has not shown the necessary morality, sense, or judgment to be Secretary of Defense.
Take the issue of nuclear weapons. Is this the person we want advising the President on whether or not he should launch a nuclear weapon against another country and possibly begin the end of life on Earth as we know it?
Secretary of Defense is a very important position. It puts him right at the heart of these nuclear decisions.
This nomination is a joke. Are you kidding me? Pete Hegseth will be there helping to decide whether or not we launch nuclear weapons?
Let's be clear. President Trump, as Commander in Chief, has the sole authority to order the launch of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. This is crazy, on its face, that one person can determine whether or not we start a nuclear war, with no consultation with anyone else. That is just absolutely absurd on its face, because no one person, particularly not President Trump, should have that unilateral power to start nuclear war.
I have just reintroduced my legislation with Congressman Ted Lieu in the House of Representatives to make it the policy of the United States that no President can use nuclear weapons first without the express approval of Congress if we have not been attacked with nuclear weapons. You have got to come to Congress. But that is not the law right now. It is just the President.
Under the Constitution, Congress gets to declare war, not the President. But for now, President Trump has that power exclusively. At any time, for any reason, he can call over the military attache with the nuclear football and call the war room at the Pentagon and give the order to launch. Trump does not have to consult with anyone--not Congress, not the Joint Chiefs of Staff, not the Secretary of Defense.
But if President Trump did want to get a second opinion before starting a nuclear war which could end humanity, calling the Secretary of Defense would usually be a pretty good option in order to make that decision. Do we have any reason to believe that Pete Hegseth has any clue about nuclear weapons or nuclear policy or nuclear strategy? No, we do not.
In fact, Mr. Hegseth's only qualification for this job that I can see is whether he will do whatever the President asks him to do.
Pete Hegseth is a yes-man. If President Trump calls Pete Hegseth at 2 a.m. in the morning and says, Pete, I am about to start a nuclear war, even though we haven't been attacked with nuclear weapons, what will Pete Hegseth say? He will say, yes, sir.
So from this perspective, Mr. Hegseth is the worst possible choice to lead the Department of Defense.
We need someone who can challenge the President's thinking, slow him down, curb his worst impulses, and give him sober, reasoned advice. And with Hegseth, that is not going to happen.
There are other monumental decisions on nuclear policy that President Trump will need reasoned advice on that he is not likely to get from Pete Hegseth. During the campaign, Trump had just one clear proposal related to nuclear policy: to build an Iron Dome missile defense system to ensure that ``no enemy can strike our homeland.''
Now, this is a throwback to former President Ronald Reagan's 1983 proposal called the Strategic Defense Initiative--also called Star Wars--to build a system of space- and ground-based interceptors to make nuclear weapons ``impotent and obsolete.'' It made for great slogans. But after 40 years and some $400 billion, the technology is still not up to the challenge.
If you try to scale up Iron Dome and cover a country the size of the United States against hundreds of Russian or Chinese long-range missiles, it just won't work.
Trump could provoke a new arms race, even without his Iron Dome on steroids. Trump's allies have called for the United States to build more nuclear weapons than Moscow and Beijing combined.
This idea is popular among conservatives at the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025. But let's be clear. Expanding the U.S. nuclear arsenal is a terrible idea.
We need treaties that end the nuclear arms race. We don't need a nuclear arms race with AI making these weapons even more deadly, even more accurate. We need treaties. We need negotiations. We need to come together on the planet. That is what we should be talking about.
Building more than we need is a waste of money, but it also makes the world more dangerous, not less dangerous, because it provokes a response from the other side.
Second, guess what Moscow and Beijing will do if Washington suddenly builds more bombs. They will do the same.
Third, a U.S. buildup would doom any chances of saving the U.S.- Russian arms reduction process.
The last remaining treaty, New START, expires 1 year from now. And unless we replace that treaty, there will no longer be any legal limits on the United States or Russian warheads for the first time in 50 years.
Do you hear what I said? No limits. We are in a new world now. For 50 years, we have had limits on nuclear weapons. They will all be gone in a year.
Trump's allies are also calling for the United States to resume the testing of nuclear weapons for the first time since 1992. We ended nuclear testing three decades ago and then signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996 banning all nuclear tests. We have conducted more nuclear tests--over 1,000--than all other nations combined. We have no need to test. But if we do, other nations will too, like Russia and China. Beijing has only conducted 45 nuclear tests. We have conducted a thousand.
Imagine how much China could learn if Trump gives it an excuse to resume testing, which China is not doing.
The only state in the world today that is still conducting nuclear tests is North Korea. We should be pressuring Pyongyang to stop, not reopening this Pandora's box.
So, under Trump, we could see billions of dollars spent on long-range missile defenses that don't work, the end of arms control and the start of a new nuclear arms race with Russia and China, and new nuclear testing. All of this would make the world a more dangerous place and increase the risk of nuclear conflict.
If Trump asks Hegseth if he should do these dangerous things, the answer will be yes and yes and yes. That is where we are going to be.
Now, there is some possible good news, too. Trump, not surprisingly, gets along well with Russian President Putin. They might end the war in Ukraine. If they do, that could open up a path to negotiate a treaty, to follow a New START.
And as President Trump said just this week: We want to see if we can denuclearize. And I think it's very possible. And I can tell you that President Putin, if he wants to do it, we should take him up on it.
We should see. We should move in that direction.
As for Mr. Hegseth, the last thing President Trump needs is a yes-man for Secretary of Defense.
I will just add one final issue. As a national security threat, climate change, which the Pentagon and which the Joint Chiefs of Staff have said over and over and over again is a threat multiplier to our military and our ability to protect the world--it is a threat multiplier. Having a President who is a climate denier, coupled with the Secretary of Defense who is a climate denier, just ignores the reality of the world as it is unfolding in this climate era.
The whole defense budget is $900 billion. Hurricanes Milton and Helene in October and November, combined with the fires in Los Angeles right now, $500 billion of damage in three storms. That is half the entire defense budget for our country.
We can't have a Secretary of Defense who doesn't believe that climate change is a threat multiplier to our military and to the security of the planet. We need someone there who can speak truth to power to the President of the United States.
So I can't more strongly recommend a ``no'' vote on the floor of the Senate on this nomination. He is unqualified. His confirmation could be very dangerous to our Nation. We need military personnel who respects the Secretary of Defense. We will have none of that with Pete Hegseth.
So I very, very strongly recommend to this body that we vote no and tell the President to come back with someone who is worthy of this most important of all positions in his Cabinet.
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