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Floor Speech

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Mr. KING. Mr. President, Chairman Reed has spoken eloquently in the last few minutes about the personal impact of this hold on general officer nominations, on what it means to families, what it means to careers, what it means to people who are coming up through the ranks because, make no doubt, this is not just affecting those people who have been nominated for general officer positions, but it ripples all the way down through the ranks. It is an unprecedented attack on the integrity of our military chain of command.

As I say, Senator Reed talked about the impact on individuals. And tonight we are going to be talking about a lot of those individuals. But I would like to talk for a moment about the impact on the readiness of our force.

The first thing to observe is that China and Russia have got to be loving this. They could not imagine that we would do something like this to ourselves to essentially decapitate the senior leadership of our military.

If you step back and say: Wait a minute, look at what is going on here, nobody would believe that they could achieve something like this, that our adversaries could achieve something like this. But we are doing it to ourselves--or actually one person is doing it to all of us and to our country.

This is a dangerous moment in the world. I serve on both the Armed Services and the Intelligence Committees, and the threats that we are facing right now are unprecedented in the history of this country. We have never before faced the kind of threats that we are facing from two heavily armed and aggressive potential adversaries.

We need to have literally all hands on deck. And we are telling our ``all hands'' to stand down; that they are not going to be able to the achieve their commands, to take the case for the leadership of our military throughout the military enterprise.

It really is amazing that we are doing something--I keep saying ``we''--that the Senator from Alabama is doing something that is so seriously compromising national security over a policy matter--over a policy matter.

And I have been in numerous hearings over the last months and talked to the officers, asked them on the record: Is this action compromising national security? The answer every single time has been: Absolutely, yes.

And these aren't necessarily officers who are being blocked; these are the general officers who are retiring. So they don't have a stake in this. They are not looking for a promotion. They are just telling us what has happened.

It is the first time that we do not have a Commandant of the Marine Corps in 150 years. That is outrageous. It is unacceptable. And so not only is this impacting people's lives--people who have dedicated their lives to this country--we are treating them like pawns in a political battle over an issue that the Senator from Alabama disagrees with. If he disagrees with the issue, there is a way to resolve it: bring an amendment. I am pretty sure that the majority leader has said he would bring an amendment to the floor to rescind the policy that the Senator objects to. That is how we resolve policy differences around here, not by taking hostage the entire leadership core of our military.

Now, let me talk a minute about the Senate. The Senate, as I have observed it over the past 10\1/2\, almost 11 years, is a rather peculiar institution. Because it has very lax rules, it allows one Senator to hold everything up, to stop things. It has very lax rules. But those rules, as I have studied the history of the Senate--by the way, I would recommend reading the first 100 pages of Robert Caro's book about Lyndon Johnson, ``Master of the Senate.'' It is a wonderful history and description of how this institution has developed. But those lax rules which allow extraordinary actions by individual Members have rested for over 200 years on a bedrock of comity and responsibility and restraint.

Yes, you have the power to do something like this, but you shouldn't do it. You don't take advantage of the rules. And I will tell you one of the results of this--and this is what I am hearing from constituents and from people around the country and indeed from people in this Hall--this could lead to changing the rules, to not allow something like this.

If you abuse a rule like this, which is being done in this case, it is outright abuse of a rule--then somebody is going to say: Wait a minute. We can't run our country this way. We can't allow this to happen to the readiness of our military in this time of peril. We just can't do that. So we are going to have to figure out another way. And all of a sudden one of the privileges--and I believe it is a privilege of an individual Senator--is going to have to start to be curtailed if you don't restrain yourself, if you don't act responsibly within the context of these rules.

My question is, Where does this lead? Is this going to be par for the course around here in the future? Somebody is going to say: Well, I don't like something the Department of the Interior is doing. I think it is really bad, so I am going to hold up every nominee for the military or I am going to hold up every nominee for the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of Interior or whatever the Department is.

Hostage-taking is not how we make policy. And I am afraid what we are seeing here before our eyes is a precedent being established, where one individual Senator, who is trying to get his way on a policy issue, is using and abusing the rules of the Senate in order to get something that ought to be done through the legislative process. Bring up the amendment. If you don't like the policy, bring up the amendment.

Eventually, I mean, the Senate is built on the premise of respect for minority rights, but ultimately majority rules. That is what we all learned in kindergarten. This isn't minority rights. This is one person. That is 1 person out of 100 who is taking this action that is so inimical to the interests of the interests of the country in a very difficult and dangerous time.

I respect the rights of Senators to use their prerogative as they see fit, but I would urge the Senator from Alabama, with whom I have a good personal relationship--I would urge him to reconsider, to try to bring the issue forward to the American people and to the U.S. Senate, and let's have a vote on it. Let's see what the Senate believes about the resolution of this issue.

And by the way, we are not talking about the government paying for abortions here. We are talking about leave and travel. And if a soldier has a medical condition and they are stationed in a State where they need some kind of specialized treatment and it is not available in their State--guess what--for as long as anybody can remember, they have gotten leave and traveled to go where they can have that procedure. So this isn't some kind of radical new program.

But again, if the Senator thinks it is a wrong policy, bad policy, it is inimical to his beliefs, let's bring it to the floor and have a vote. Let's see what the will of the Senate is. But don't compromise the lives of many, many people--we are up into the hundreds now-- families who have dedicated their lives to this country. They are innocent pawns in this political game. It is not right.

And then, finally, as I said, it is a compromise of national security. It is a straight-up compromise of national security, which our adversaries couldn't dream of achieving. And that is where I believe--I hope and believe--that the Senator from Alabama will relent, take his vote on the issue, and let these nominations move forward so the Senate can do its business and the military can get back to a place where it is predictable, where they understand what the process is, they understand where the steps are, and they can get about the business of defending this in country.

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