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Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am pleased to follow my colleague from Rhode Island and join him in urging confirmation of these highly qualified and experienced men and women to positions of great trust and responsibility in our military, but they are just a fraction of the total whom we have an obligation to confirm.

Rather than looking at the transcript of my remarks today, I urge my colleagues to view or read the record of last night. There were 3 to 4 hours of eloquence and intransigence--eloquence on the part of a number of our colleagues, including Senator Graham, Senator Young, Senator Ernst, and Senator Sullivan, seeking to persuade one Member of the U.S. Senate whose intransigence is preventing the Nation from having the benefit of military leadership that it needs and deserves.

Again and again and again, Senator Tuberville objected to confirmation of individual nominees for the highest and most responsible position in our U.S. military. Make no mistake, he said repeatedly that he would permit those nominees to go forward as long as they were considered individually, and our colleagues gave him the opportunity to allow them to go forward. But he has continued to change the goalposts, to alter the conditions of approving their confirmation, simply because of a personal preference on policy that those nominees had nothing to do with. Our colleagues made that point repeatedly, as well as the damage to our national security that is resulting from his intransigence. Our military readiness is undermined. Morale is reduced. Recruitment is severely damaged. The health and well-being of military families, including, most prominently, the Commandant of the Marine Corps--our prayers are with him. Our hearts are with his family. We hope for General Smith's speedy recovery.

But, right now, our military is lacking the leadership that it needs in key positions around the world, and it is impacting not only their professional abilities but also their personal lives: kids going to school, selling homes. We are making life more difficult for men and women who serve and sacrifice to keep us safe.

As one of our colleagues said last night--and I am quoting--I think I am done with this. I hope this body will be done with the intransigence of the Senator from Alabama and move forward with a resolution. I am proud to say I participated in drafting it. It is narrowly tailored to fit this situation, applying only to this session, for key positions in our military that are essential to confirm, seeking to surmount the obstructionism that has gridlocked and paralyzed this body in moving forward.

It is time to reform the rule. That time is, in fact, overdue. The regrettable illness of our Commandant, the threats around the world, in Israel and Ukraine, make it no longer a matter of choice. We must move forward with this draft resolution, and I hope my colleagues will recognize the importance of doing so.

As one of our colleagues on the other side said last night, this intransigence, this resistance to allowing the body to move forward and confirm these nominees is going to ``wreck'' the military. That is not some hypothetical fear; it is a real prospect that we need to avoid. The precedent of an individual Senator using a policy preference to stop confirmation is one that will potentially wreck this body's credibility and ability to move forward with key nominees for a variety of positions in the military and outside it.

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