[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 119 (Wednesday, July 12, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2345-S2347]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Military Promotions

  Mr. KAINE. Madam President, I rise today to talk about a crisis in 
our military leadership driven by one of my Senate colleague's decision 
to place a blanket hold on now more than 250 apolitical nominations of 
senior military officers. The senior Senator from Alabama has done so. 
These 250 military nominations are soon to be joined by another 400 or 
so, which would mean that 650 individuals who volunteered to wear the 
uniform of this country and to defend the country, even at risk of 
their own lives, are being blocked in their professional advancement by 
a Senator punishing them for something they had nothing to do with--
nothing to do with.
  The Senator is concerned about a policy of the Pentagon's that would 
allow women servicemembers who cannot obtain reproductive healthcare 
where they are deployed or assigned to travel to other places to 
receive that care.
  That is currently the way we treat members of the military. If they 
are assigned at a base in the United States or elsewhere and they need 
medical care that they cannot obtain where they are assigned, they are 
able to travel to seek that care. But because the Pentagon, in the 
aftermath of the Dobbs decision, has said that longstanding policy 
allowing travel would also apply to women troops seeking reproductive 
healthcare, the Senator from Alabama has taken the drastic, radical, 
extreme, unusual step of saying he will block confirmation and approval 
of now hundreds of our military officers.
  I am a member of the Armed Services Committee. I have a child who is 
a U.S. marine. I want to take the floor today to talk about how 
destructive this policy is and ask the Republican minority in the 
Senate to drop this opposition, stop punishing people who are 
patriotically serving this country.
  To be clear, my colleague who has placed a hold on these individuals 
has stated no challenge with their qualifications. And to be clear, my 
colleague who has placed a hold on these nominations has never 
suggested that they had anything to do with the policy he disagrees 
with. He is just using them as targets because he is dissatisfied with 
the way the Pentagon is operating.
  There is a right way and a wrong way to do this. Before I get to the 
right way to raise the issue, let me talk about what this means when 
you are a member of the military and you have your career delayed 
because a Member of this body decides to hold you up so that you cannot 
be promoted.
  Many of the promotions and appointments in the military that we are 
obligated to vote on in the Senate occur during the summer. The 
transition times occur during the summer. Why? Because this is the 
time, when someone

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gets a promotion and they move, where they can move with their 
families--sometimes across the country, sometimes across the world--at 
a time when they can then maybe look for a new place to live or a new 
school for their children to attend.
  When you are held up in a promotion or advancement, you don't know 
what to do. You might have sold a house, but you don't yet have orders 
where you can take a new position. Your children might be in a school, 
but you are not yet sure what you can do to try to find the next school 
they should go to.
  Remember, these senior military officers--many of them have deployed 
not once or twice or moved three or four times in their careers; they 
have moved dozens of times--5, 10. We had a military leader before us 
recently whose family, during the course of his career--who is up for 
one of these positions, who is being blocked--has moved 20 times. It is 
not easy on a family to do that.
  Blocking them from planning and moving and accepting an appointment 
is not just keeping them from an advancement that they have merited, 
that they have earned, but it is also hurting their families. What have 
they done to deserve it? I mean, they volunteered to wear the uniform 
of this country. They volunteered to risk their lives for this country. 
Why do they deserve to be punished? Why do they deserve to be 
disrespected? Why do they deserve to have their careers blocked?
  Let me give you an example of a couple of the people--the positions 
that are being blocked by this. As of Monday, for the first time in 164 
years, the United States of America does not have a confirmed 
Commandant of the Marine Corps. The proud Marine Corps is lacking a 
confirmed Commandant for the first time since the 1850s. That 
interregnum was caused because of the death of a Commandant when there 
was no successor confirmed. So obviously there was a brief period where 
there was no confirmed Commandant.
  This one, we have seen coming for months. General Berger had an 
announced retirement date that was Monday. There should have been a 
Commandant in place. Yet there is not a confirmed Commandant because of 
this block.
  Eric Smith can't take over as Commandant of the Marines. It impacts 
the Marine Corps' ability to develop and implement long-term plans and 
policies. It is especially damaging because, as those of us know who 
have been on the Armed Services Committee and are working with our 
marines, they are in the midst of a force design transformation that is 
midstream right now. We don't need a gap in leadership in the Marine 
Corps.
  It goes deeper in the Marine Corps. Forgive me for being a little 
Marine Corps centric, with a marine in the family, but it goes deeper 
in the Marine Corps. The hold is also impacting the leadership of the I 
Marine Expeditionary Force, which is in California, and the III Marine 
Expeditionary Force, which is based in Okinawa, Japan. The I 
Expeditionary Force is the Marine Corps' combat power focused on the 
Indo-Pacific.
  We are spending all this time talking about the challenges of the 
Indo-Pacific, the challenges of China, but the leadership of this 
critical Marine Expeditionary Force is now not in place because of this 
hold.
  The III Marine Expeditionary Force is our standing force that would 
be called upon if there were any challenges in the first island chain 
in the Indo-Pacific.
  So these holds are affecting these critical units just in the Marine 
Corps Commandant and the leadership of key expeditionary forces that 
the Nation needs for defense and to protect allies.
  I have been working on a really exciting initiative of President 
Biden's, the AUKUS partnership, which would combine the military 
capacities of the United States, the UK, and Australia to do submarine 
construction and other work. These are nuclear subs managed by naval 
reactors.
  The appointment for the current Director of Naval Reactor expires 
next month. The hold that has been used by the Senator from Alabama 
would block our ability to put someone into this key position, 
challenging not only the AUKUS advance, but our nuclear submarines are 
one of the most important capacities that we have to promote security 
all around the world and protect this country.
  I said there is a right way and a wrong way to do this. I am on the 
Armed Services Committee. I will be honest, there are things in the 
Pentagon I am not happy with, and every year I have a chance to do 
something about it.
  Just 3 weeks ago, in the committee--and the Senator from Alabama sits 
on that committee with me--we had an opportunity to mark up the Defense 
authorizing bill, and any of us could advance any policy change we 
wanted. If we wanted something in Pentagon policy that wasn't there, we 
got to make our case. If we wanted to take something out of Pentagon 
policy that we didn't like, we got to make our case.
  I have done this year after year after year. I have a pretty good 
batting average when I offer an amendment, but I know when I offer one, 
if I can't convince a majority of my colleagues on the Armed 
Services Committee, I am not going to win. When I don't win, I am 
disappointed, but never would it even occur to me to offer an amendment 
to my committee colleagues, to fail to persuade them, and then take my 
disappointment and use it as a weapon to block the promotion of 
hundreds of military officers.

  Indeed, the Senator from Alabama had that opportunity, and he 
exercised that opportunity. In the debate--we had a very full debate--
every Member gets to offer any amendment they want, and there was an 
amendment specifically drawn and designed to change the Pentagon policy 
with which he disagrees. He lost the amendment vote. He lost the 
amendment vote. He couldn't convince a majority of the committee that 
this was a Pentagon policy that should be changed. That is the right 
way to go about this. If you don't like a Pentagon policy, convince 
your colleagues on the Armed Services Committee, convince your 
colleagues in the U.S. Senate to change the policy. But if you fail, if 
you fall short, if you are not persuasive enough to convince your 
colleagues to change the policy, that is on you.
  When I lose amendment votes in the committee, I don't take it out on 
people who have had nothing to do with the policy. I try to work with 
my colleagues, come up with a better argument, change it, shape it, do 
something so that, if it matters to me, I might find some success in 
the future. But it shocks me because it never would have occurred to 
me--every time I have lost an amendment vote in working on 10 or 11 
Defense authorizing bills, it never occurred to me: I know what I am 
going to do. I did not get my way on the committee, and so what I am 
going to do is I am going to punish hundreds of people who have 
volunteered to serve this country and risk their lives in doing so. 
That is what I am going to do.
  I will conclude and just say that we are facing recruiting challenges 
in the military right now and particularly in the Army.
  We had the hearing this morning for General George, who is the 
nominee to be the new Secretary of the Army. He is the Vice Chief right 
now--not Secretary; he would be the Service Chief for the Army. He is 
Vice Chief right now.
  We have been talking about some of the recruiting challenges that the 
Army is facing. In the last fiscal year, they had a goal of trying to 
get about 60,000 people in, and they fell 20,000 short--40,000. The 
good news is, they have upped their goal to 65, and they will probably 
come in at about 53 this year. They are still not getting what they 
need, but they are kind of closing that gap.
  But we talked about, well, what is it that makes recruiting into the 
military hard? And the Army, to their credit, has done a really good 
job of kind of surveying what it is that makes it hard to recruit 
people into the military, and I was surprised at this. I would have 
guessed that the No. 1 obstacle would have been people thinking: It is 
dangerous. I might risk my life. I might see something bad happen to 
somebody I care about.
  But, you know, that wasn't the top reason. People coming into the 
military are patriotic, and they are willing to be patriotic even to 
the point of risking their lives. The No. 1 reason that was cited by 
people for being reluctant to join our volunteer military,

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which just celebrated 50 years of being an All-Volunteer Force, is 
their belief that if they do so, they will have to put a lot of their 
lives on hold, that others who don't join the military will move ahead 
while they might find themselves limited or put on hold by conditions 
beyond their control.
  What message does it send to someone who is thinking about going into 
an ROTC Program and being an officer, going to a service academy; what 
message does it send to someone who might be a young officer who is 
thinking ``Do I make this a career or do I leave and go somewhere 
else?'' when a single Member of this body has decided to take it upon 
himself to punish hundreds of officers and block their professional 
advancement because of something they had nothing to do with?
  We should be sending a message to these officers that we are proud of 
them. We should be sending a message to them that we are thankful to 
them for the sacrifices they and their families have made. We should 
not be sending a loud message that we are going to hold their careers 
hostage, disrespect them, delay or postpone their appointments.
  I would urge my colleague from Alabama, but what I really want to 
urge is I want to urge the Republican minority in this because I don't 
want to see Members of this body enable this kind of behavior because 
where do we stop? All the hundred Members of this body could find 
things in the Pentagon they are not happy about. It might be the travel 
policy for Senator Tuberville. It might be cluster munitions for 
someone else. It might be whether the military is doing enough to 
battle sexual harassment for somebody else. We can all find things in 
the Pentagon that we are not wild about, and to the extent that we do, 
we should be trying to persuade our colleagues to make the policies 
better. But when we make that effort in good faith and fall short, the 
last thing we should do--the last thing we should do--is take our own 
disappointment out on and punish people who are serving this country 
who have had nothing to do with the policy we disagree with.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. HAWLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.