Congress headed into the August recess with lots of theatrics but little headway on Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-AL) blockade on Pentagon nominees.
Democrats have grown increasingly exasperated nearly five months into the saga, which centers on the Defense Department’s new abortion policy. Tuberville placed a hold on the promotions in retaliation for Secretary Lloyd Austin’s decision to pay for the travel expenses of service women seeking an abortion, a move Republicans say violates a ban on using federal money for the procedure.
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That’s not how Democrats see it. They insist the policy is legal, and the holds destructive, citing defense leaders who say the blockade is harming military readiness.
Some 270 general and flag officers have been swept up in the hold, a number that could rise to 650 by year’s end.
Senate Democrats, led by Armed Services Chairman Jack Reed (D-RI), delivered more than five hours of speeches on Wednesday night, denouncing the holds from the Senate floor. The following night, President Joe Biden railed against Tuberville at a Washington, D.C., symposium.
Behind the scenes, the party has taken a less combative approach. Reed sat down with Tuberville for his first extended conversation earlier this month, and Austin placed two phone calls to the senator.
Yet Washington is no closer to resolving the standoff as lawmakers returned home on Thursday for a five-week break.
Tuberville has drawn a hard line on the abortion policy, refusing to drop his holds unless the Pentagon reverses course or Congress codifies it into law. With Republicans running the House and Democrats marginally in control of the Senate, such a bill has no chance of becoming law.
Leadership did see a legislative path to ending the conflict. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) offered a vote last week on the policy, if it meant Tuberville would relent. But that failed to satisfy the Alabama senator.
Schumer could bring the nominees to the floor one by one — the hold only keeps the Senate from considering the promotions in batches, as it often does for noncontroversial appointees. But Democrats have expressed reservations that doing so would set a precedent of so-called hostage-taking.
“I don’t think we can buy into a precedent that says we can use the men and women who are serving in our military as pawns for individuals’ political purposes,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), a member of the Armed Services Committee, told the Washington Examiner.
Democrats did eventually toy with the idea of staying through the August recess to vote on the nominees, but the tactic, advocated by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), another Armed Services Democrat, failed to pick up steam.
The party is frustrated Republican leadership has not done more to pressure Tuberville. The GOP remains broadly supportive of him, even as a number grumble privately about the impasse. Some Democrats viewed the tactic, forcing senators to cancel plans and sit in the chamber for vote after vote, as a way to signal the importance of the nominees and, in their hopes, break Republicans’ will.
Blumenthal’s colleagues were cool to the idea, however, noting that without unanimous consent, it could take a week of floor time per nominee.
“There is no world where you actually would have enough floor time to vote on each one,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), who leads the Armed Services Emerging Threats subcommittee. “If he wants to consent for one-minute votes and do all 300 or whatever nominations we have in minutes, we could do that. But I don’t think you could do it in regular order.”
Tuberville is receptive to limiting debate on nominees, something he predicted Democrats will eventually request, but is not open to one-minute votes.
“There’d have to be some debate, more than one minute,” he told the Washington Examiner.
Blumenthal is still willing to fly back to Washington should Schumer change his mind. But he suggested the need for bipartisan cooperation on bigger priorities, such as getting the annual defense bill done, is at play in Schumer’s decision-making.
“I will say no one is more outraged by what Sen. Tuberville is doing than Leader Schumer. But he has to view this issue in the context of everything else that we’re doing,” he said. “And I think he is very sensitive to all those concerns.”
“So, my view is just looking at a piece of it from the standpoint of the Armed Services Committee, and I don’t even have the breadth of perspective that Jack Reed does. He’s looking down the road to the conference committee, a lot of other stuff,” he added.
The stalemate has grown in importance as months have passed. The Marine Corps is without a permanent leader in more than 100 years due to the blockade, and several other positions in the Joint Chiefs, including the chairman, will become ensnared in the drama later this year.
Democrats lament that as the impasse drags into August, the hold is not only harming national security but affecting the ability of military families to enroll in new schools and find new jobs.
Tuberville denies the standoff is affecting military readiness, and his Republican colleagues believe the Pentagon has just as much responsibility to find a resolution.
“This is a two-way street. This is not just Sen. Tuberville. This is the Department of Defense being very insistent that they want to change their policy, and this is not something that Congress has ever authorized,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) said.
Rounds, an Armed Services Republican, speculated the White House would not let the Pentagon drop or amend its policy, even if it was willing to. “My suspicion is this is civilians making the decision, not the men and women in uniform,” he added.
The standoff allows Democrats to keep abortion, an issue that hurt Republicans in the midterm elections, front and center, and the president has even taken to painting Republicans as being anti-military over the episode.
“The Republican Party used to always support the military,” Biden said on Thursday. “But today, they are undermining the military.”
The political climate allows Tuberville to remain just as dug-in as Biden, however, according to Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND), the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Seapower subcommittee.
Abortion is widely unpopular in Alabama, giving Tuberville a deep well of support. With years left on his term, the senator is to some extent insulated from the pressures other colleagues might face.
“He represents a state that’s a lot like he is, not surprisingly. That’s how the system’s built. And he probably doesn’t, politically speaking, have to give much,” Cramer said.
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Cramer hopes to move past the conflict and at least confirm some of the most senior nominees, but he criticized Schumer as hypocritical for spending floor time on what he considers less important priorities.
“It’s a little bit of a game of chicken with a bit of hypocrisy sprinkled on top,” he added. “Hopefully, we can get to a more serious place.”
