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Floor Speech

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Mr. TUBERVILLE. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about the military's new illegal abortion policy.

Last November, I got word from the Pentagon that it was planning on replacing a 40-year law that was passed in this building, about abortion in our military, that has worked perfectly for 40 years--no complaints. But our President, in his wisdom, decided to change that abortion policy with a memo.

So, because of that, I warned the Pentagon: Don't do this. Send this new policy through the Senate, and let's vote on it. Let's represent our colleagues. Let's represent the people back home who sent us up here. They elect us to do that, to make decisions for them, to represent them.

I said in writing that, if they imposed this new policy, I would put a hold on senior nominations in the military. That is the only power that we have in the minority to get the attention of the majority here in the Senate.

I hated to do it. These people needed promotions, but somebody needs to wake up in the White House and the Pentagon that they cannot dictate policy here in the U.S. Senate.

Send it over. Let's vote on it.

So I put a hold, 11 months ago, on admirals and generals and civil nominees. A few months went by--a few months being 11--and we have had that hold ever since they put this policy in place.

But somebody had to stand up to what was going on. So I did it. I stood up, knowing that I am 100 percent military. My dad was in the military. I was a military brat. I believe in our military. It is the No. 1 institution in this country because, if we don't have peace and security for the American citizens, we are in trouble.

Secretary Austin knew that I would hold these nominations. He knew it, but he decided to go ahead and do it anyway. It was his choice. The current leadership in the Pentagon seems to think that taxpayer-funded abortion is more important than military nominations.

Now, let's get this straight. This was in a policy that we had for 40 years that was about rape, incest, and harm to the mom. It had worked for 40 years, but they decided to change that because they thought they could without the consent of the Senate.

Since then, there has been absolutely no negotiation from my Democratic colleagues or the Biden administration. I have had a brief phone call a couple of times with the Secretary of Defense, but no negotiations at all. You would think, if they were really concerned about our military in a trying time in which we have all of the world which they have created, that they would have called me: Let's talk about this. Let's work it out. We need promotions.

Zero. Zero communications. I have been willing to negotiate the entire time.

So, instead, the Democrats have spent 11 months attacking me for trying to get them to do the right thing and to stand up for our military. No, they didn't want any of that. They wanted it their way or the highway.

Unfortunately, last month, even some of my Republican colleagues attacked me--and attacked me personally--here on this floor. I could see how this thing was going. They call themselves, you know, military--people that support the military. There is nobody, again, who supports the military any more than me. But they are currently in the military, and they were standing up for their colleagues, which is fine. But I can stand and we all can stand for the life of the unborn and for our military. You can do both.

Unfortunately, the Democrats don't want to do that. They do not like the unborn, and they don't care anything about the military, or they would have done something about this. They were saying these guys and women need promotions. Well, these young unborn will never have a chance for a promotion because they want to kill them before they are born, which is absolutely amazing to me.

I have been asking the Pentagon to support evidence of changing this policy, again, for almost a year. They said it is because of recruiting: We need to be able to recruit more people, more women, because we need a better abortion policy.

Again, there was zero evidence that this was going to help in recruiting. And, folks, recruiting in the military has been an absolute, total disaster--the worst in the history of this country. We don't have anybody--hardly anybody--who wants to join a volunteer military. It has only gotten worse since this policy went into effect, which they started in February.

I have asked the Pentagon how many people have used this policy since it has gone into place. They refused to answer. They have given me no information at all.

I have also explained on this floor many times that this policy is illegal. Now, if it was sent over here and we voted on it and it passed, it is what it is. But that didn't happen. It wasn't going to happen because they didn't have the votes. They didn't have the votes to pass it. So we have an immoral, illegal policy that has no basis in facts.

The world is a much more dangerous place today because of some of the things that have happened, such as this abortion policy being put in by Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer himself. It has become much more dangerous, even since we put this policy in place last year.

Over the last 3 years, we have seen some of the worst humiliations in the history of our military. President Biden waved the white flag of surrender in Afghanistan: We are leaving; we want out. That is without even helping people who are Americans and who have helped Americans for 20 years. We abandoned them.

Just 2 months later, Vladimir Putin began massing forces on his border with Ukraine. I went to Ukraine right before the war started in Ukraine and talked to President Zelenskyy himself, who said: We need help. We need people at the border. If you will send materials, they won't come in.

This administration wouldn't listen. We got out of the way and let them come in. Since then, by the way, we spent 100 billion of the taxpayer dollars. Now we want to spend $100 billion more. Joe Biden failed to deter President Putin.

Joe Biden failed to deter Hamas because of his support of Iran--his appeasement of Iran for the last 3 years, giving them money. Iran is flush with cash now. Hamas is one of their proxies. Joe Biden has been softer on Iran than any President in American history. There is no question that America is less safe today than it was before Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer took control of Washington, DC. There is no question. The facts speak for themselves.

We have weakened our military, and Democrats in Congress have been more than happy to go along with all of these policies. There are no complaints from my Democratic colleagues.

I will just mention a few examples.

Joe Biden drove out 8,000--just think about this. We drove out 8,000 people in the military because they would not take a vaccine--8,000 people who love this country. Democrats in the Senate refused to reinstate them and give them backpay when we voted on it about a year ago. Now the Pentagon and my colleagues are begging them to please come back. We can't get anybody to take a job in the military. Please come back. It is no surprise that most of these heroes whom we ran out because of the vaccine will not come back.

Now, I heard that Senator Durbin now wants illegal immigrants to serve in the military because we can't find enough Americans.

Did I just not hear on the floor that Senator Durbin and Senator Schumer are against assault weapons?

I heard that. Everybody has got their opinion. But they want to turn around and give an assault weapon to a Chinese or a Russian or Iranian who is coming into this country illegally to protect the American citizens in the United States of America. Have we lost our minds? We have absolutely lost it when it comes to protecting the citizens of this country.

Is anybody in the White House asking why we can't recruit anymore? It is absolutely amazing to me.

Here is another example. Our Navy is not building enough ships that are required by law--that we passed. We are not building them. We are worried more about climate change and EV cars.

Folks, we had better start protecting our borders and our country or we are not going to have a country. I have never seen anything like it. The Pentagon has become more distracted from its core mission by things like diversity, equity, and inclusion. Hmm. The Pentagon just asked for $114 million.

Now, I have been told during these last 11 months when I have been attacked by the Democrats--and I have been attacked every day by the Democrats: Oh, this is not a ``woke'' military. Wait a minute. We are not teaching social justice programs in the military, but we want $114 million more to give for diversity, equity, and inclusion. We don't even know how much the abortion travel memo has cost.

More and more veterans are telling their kids: Don't join this woke military. I hear it every time I go out on the road and talk to groups of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. I mean, it is not about party. It is about an institution that has been sacred to all of us in this country for 247 years, but now it is under attack. It is under attack by the politicians. This list goes on and on about the problems in the military. It is an absolute disaster.

Then, last week, Senator Schumer stooped to a new low. The House and the Senate, every year, pass a budget independently. Then we bring it together, and we vote on the discrepancies to build one bill together with the House--voted on by people on each side. I was involved in that, but it was a sham. The conference is supposed to report it out as a single bill after we put it together, but we had no vote. We had no vote. The conference committee was just brought in for pictures. All of the confirmations were done by the leadership, and Senator Schumer got the No. 1 vote. The abortion policy was on the House side. It got kicked out. We were supposed to vote on it. I had the votes to get it done, but he knew that; so now we have an illegal abortion policy. This bill was written in the back rooms, which is like a lot of things that are done here, not by many but by a few.

I came here to represent the people of Alabama. If you are not given a vote, why even send people up here? I didn't come here to outsource my job to the Pentagon or the White House or, frankly, to the leadership of either side--it doesn't make any difference--Democrat or Republican.

This issue of taxpayer-funded abortion could have been resolved through the NDAA, and whatever the outcome, I am fine; but bring it to the floor, and let's vote on it. That is our job. But that doesn't happen. It is not happening because Senator Schumer knew that he couldn't get it passed. That is how DC works. Abortion is so important to Senator Schumer that he is not letting us vote on this. Therefore, there no longer appears to be any short-term path to ending the Pentagon's illegal abortion policy. Some other policy will take time for me to work through the process, but that doesn't happen overnight.

So, yesterday, I announced that I would change my tactics and let the promotions go through--promotions that they needed, that our military needed. But, again, Senator Schumer and his colleagues could care less. They held their feet to the fire--no negotiation. But I am going to continue to hold the four-star generals.

People say: Why would you insist on holding the four stars? We have got 11 of them.

Today, we have 44 four-stars in the military. In World War II, we had 7--44 to 7. We had 12 million with 7 four-stars. Today, we have 44 four-stars with 2 million. It doesn't make sense--too many chiefs. So we are going to hold those four stars. We can bring them up one at a time, but they need to be vetted. We need to know who is running our military. These jobs are too important to rubberstamp.

We need to keep fighting to make our military stronger and stronger. The fight for the integrity of our military leadership will continue as long as I am here. The fight to keep politics out of the most sacred institution will continue. The fight to protect Senate and executive branch overreach will continue. Senator Schumer can rig it all he wants, but this fight is not over. We will continue to take it to the American people because elections have consequences; and don't think next year's is not very, very important.

I am not going to stop fighting for these things, and I am not going to stop fighting for the American people. That is the reason we are here. A lot of people forget that.

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