Carter Nomination

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise to express my support for the President's nominee, Dr. Ashton Carter, to serve as our Nation's 25th Secretary of Defense.

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE CHUCK HAGEL

Let me first say a few words of thanks to Chuck Hagel, our former colleague in the Senate, who has served as Secretary of Defense. He is a friend, he has had a long career in public service, and he is a veteran of Vietnam. The people of Nebraska rewarded him by asking him to represent them in the United States Senate.

As our Nation's first person of enlisted rank to serve as Secretary of Defense, he had a unique, ground-level view on matters of war and peace, and a strong commitment to our troops. I thank Chuck Hagel for his service and his family for their sacrifices over the last 2 years.

Dr. Carter has an impressive and distinguished record of service as well in government, as an adviser and as a scholar. He has what it takes to be a great Secretary of Defense.

His credentials as one of our Nation's top security policy experts are well established. He earned a bachelor's degree in physics and medieval history from Yale and his doctorate in theoretical physics from Oxford. He has served as faculty chair at Harvard and is the author of 11 books.

As singularly impressive as this is, Dr. Carter is also very much a doer. He has served no fewer than 11 Secretaries of Defense, including Leon Panetta and Chuck Hagel. He has four times been awarded the Department's Distinguished Service Medal, as well as the Defense Intelligence Medal.

As an assistant secretary during the Clinton administration, he was instrumental in removing nuclear stockpiles from the former Soviet states of Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus.

As Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, he was renowned for breaking through bureaucratic logjams to get our troops what they needed, when they needed it. We talked about this at some length when we met in my office a few weeks ago. How can we continue, I asked him, to reform DOD so that it will be able to rise to the occasion of today's challenges?

As part of the discussion, I was pleased to hear his appreciation for the organic industrial base of the Department of Defense, especially one near and dear to my heart, the Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois.

He recalled his experience in Afghanistan as he tried to bring our troops the body armor and armored humvees they needed. He also recalled working alongside the great dedicated employees at the Rock Island Arsenal as they delivered the necessary lifesaving equipment to our troops and rolled it off their assembly lines in record time.

I am confident Dr. Carter can steer the Department of Defense through difficult times and provide the President with the best policy advice to deal with our Nation's challenges. He has my full support.

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