[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 193 (Tuesday, December 13, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7120-S7121]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



             Unanimous Consent Request--Executive Calendar

  Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, our Navy and Marine Corps are the best in 
the world, but we face many challenges across the globe. We need to 
build new ships and maintain our current fleet. We need to recruit, 
train, and equip a force necessary to deter conflict, especially in the 
Indo-Pacific. We need to help keep sea lanes open for commerce and 
build deeper relationships with our allies and our partners.
  To make sure that the Navy is able to carry out all military and 
civilian objectives, we allocate a lot of money for its budget. A 
Comptroller is critical to ensuring the accountability of taxpayer 
dollars and to keeping the Navy's readiness at the highest level.
  Russell Rumbaugh, the nominee for this position, will bring firsthand 
knowledge to the job, having previously served as both special 
assistant to the Director and as an operations research analyst in the 
Secretary of Defense's Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation Office.
  In having served as an Army infantry officer, Mr. Rumbaugh has had a 
unique perspective that will help him to support and strengthen our 
Navy, but his nomination is stuck because the Senator from Missouri is 
blocking it over disagreements, not with Russell Rumbaugh and not even 
necessarily with the Department of the Navy but with the Biden 
administration and Afghanistan policy.
  I know because we have been here before, actually, Senator Hawley and 
I, I think, three times. This is the third time. I know what he is 
going to do today. I am going to make a unanimous consent request that 
we get the Navy a Comptroller, and he is going to say: No. I want a 
special committee on the Afghanistan withdrawal.
  I am not the Armed Services chairman, and I am not the majority 
leader. I can't authorize that kind of thing. In any case, the House 
Armed Services Committee is absolutely, under a presumed Speaker 
McCarthy, going to do tons of oversight in this space.
  My basic complaint about this tactic is that it is not what this 
power is for. It is not what this power is for. We are all given the 
ability to block a nominee. It is supposed to be used sparingly and not 
in the fashion that it is being used by the Senator from Missouri. The 
Senator from Missouri, essentially, has got a total blanket hold. 
Sometimes, he allows the body to vote on somebody, but the demand, 
which he knows will never be accepted, remains. Otherwise, he will 
block the logistics guy at the Army; he will block the fiscal guy at 
the Navy; he has blocked numerous Department of Defense nominees not 
because of their qualifications and not because of any particular 
dispute regarding the nominee but because he is mad about the 
Afghanistan withdrawal. Lots of people are mad about the Afghanistan 
withdrawal, but only Senator Hawley does this.
  I would just submit that the right way to influence foreign policy is 
on the floor as an amendment to the Defense authorization or to the 
State Department authorization or on the Senate Foreign Relations 
Committee or on the Senate Armed Services Committee, but not just by 
stomping your feet and disabling the Department of Defense from doing 
the work that it needs to do.
  I just got out of a meeting. I came right out of this meeting with 
the Chief of Naval Operations. We talked a little bit about this 
position, and he talked to me about how important it was. So Senator 
Hawley and I may have a different view about the Afghanistan 
withdrawal, but I don't understand what Russell Rumbaugh has to do with 
this. He is an eminently qualified person. I don't even think the 
Senator from Missouri is alleging that this guy couldn't do the job or 
shouldn't do the job. It is just that he is mad about something else.

  So we have got to break this logjam. The Senator from Missouri has 
been doing this for, well, more than a year now, and the Department of 
Defense itself is suffering. We have exchanged some pretty tough words, 
but I just hope that he sees fit to separate his foreign policy 
objections around Joe Biden being President and Secretary Austin and 
Secretary Blinken. Fair enough. It is a free country. He is a 
Republican; I am a Democrat. These are the kinds of fights that we 
have. But why block the Comptroller from the Navy? It just makes no 
sense to me.
  I ask unanimous consent that the Senate consider the following 
nomination: Calendar No. 972, R. Russell Rumbaugh, to be an Assistant 
Secretary of the Navy; that the Senate vote on the nomination without 
intervening action or debate; that if confirmed, the motion to 
reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table; and that the 
President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. HAWLEY. Mr. President, in reserving the right to object, I ask 
for permission to hold up this shirt.
  Mr. SCHATZ. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.

[[Page S7121]]

  

  Mr. SCHATZ. It is fine. Go ahead.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HAWLEY. Mr. President, this is Jared Schmitz, Lance Corporal 
Schmitz, from the State of Missouri, Wentzville, MO. His father made 
this T-shirt and gave it to me just a couple of weeks ago, when I last 
had the chance to visit with him.
  Lance Corporal Schmitz was killed in action at Abbey Gate on August 
22 of last year. On the back are the 12 other marines who were lost, 
along with Lance Corporal Schmitz, on that day.
  When I saw his father and he gave me the shirt, he told me about all 
they are doing to honor Jared's memory. He asked me to continue to 
fight to uphold that memory and to get answers, and I said: That is 
exactly what I will do.
  The truth is that this family and the families of the other lost 
marines and every American citizen have been waiting too long for 
answers about what happened at Abbey Gate, over a year ago, as the 
Senator from Hawaii rightly notes. We are waiting for answers as to why 
the commanders on the ground weren't heeded. We are waiting for answers 
as to why the White House wasn't ready to do a proper evacuation. We 
are waiting for answers about how the security situation so 
deteriorated that 13 servicemembers were killed and hundreds of 
American civilians were left behind to terrorists there in Afghanistan. 
We are still waiting for answers.
  No, I am not willing to pretend that everything is fine at the 
Pentagon. Everything is not fine at the Pentagon. I am not willing to 
say that business as usual should go on. No, I am not willing to waive 
the rules of regular order and expedite nominations without even having 
a vote on the floor of this Senate, but I understand my colleague's 
sense of urgency here. I understand that he wants to move these 
nominations.


                 Unanimous Consent Request--S. Res. 763

  Mr. President, in the spirit of trying to reach a compromise, as he 
proposes, I would just say this: Why don't we agree to take a vote--
just a vote--on having a select committee to look into what happened at 
Abbey Gate and get those answers and make them public--not a commission 
that will take years and years to report, Vietnam-style, when everybody 
who made the decisions are safely out of power and collecting their 
pensions, but a select committee that will report and make it public to 
the American people and get real accountability--because who has been 
fired over what happened at Abbey Gate? Nobody. Who has been held 
accountable? Nobody. Who has given answers? Nobody.
  Here is what I propose: I ask that the Senator modify his request so 
that following confirmation of the Rumbaugh nomination, the Senate 
proceed to legislative session; that the Committee on Rules and 
Administration be discharged from further consideration; that the 
Senate now proceed to S. Res. 763; further, that the resolution be 
agreed to and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid 
upon the table.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The Senator from Hawaii.
  Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, in reserving the right to object and just 
very quickly, look, we are at an impasse here. The problem is that the 
Senator from Missouri is asking for something that he knows I can't 
agree to, and he is blocking the Comptroller of the U.S. Navy because 
he is mad about something else. I mean, it is very clear what he is mad 
about, and he has come in with his set speech about what he is mad 
about.
  The fundamental point here is that this is not the way to be a Member 
of the U.S. Senate. I remember--I guess it was a couple of years ago--
he came down and said: I ask unanimous consent that we pass my bill on 
section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
  I said: If you want to get a hearing, go try to get a hearing. 
Introduce a bill. Get a Democratic cosponsor. Make the case. Work it 
through the committee process.
  He has failed on that, and he has failed on this issue. He doesn't 
have other people with him, so he is pitching a fit. And the bummer 
about this is that it is not me who suffers; it is not one party or the 
other who suffers; it is the taxpayer. In this instance, it is the 
Department of the Navy that will lack a Comptroller because Josh Hawley 
is not getting his way.

  I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. King). The objection is heard.
  Is there objection to the original request?
  Mr. HAWLEY. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
  The Senator from Rhode Island.