Senators of all stripes, even Republicans, are getting fed up with Tommy Tuberville's hold on hundreds of military promotions. Tonight it all spilled out:
Republican senators angrily challenged Sen. Tommy Tuberville on his blockade of almost 400 military officers Wednesday evening, taking over the Senate floor for hours to call for individual confirmation votes after a monthslong stalemate. Tuberville, R-Ala., stood and objected over and over again, extending his holds on the military confirmations and promotions with no immediate resolution in sight.
....Showing obvious frustration and frequent flashes of anger, the Republican senators — Sullivan, Graham, Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, Indiana Sen. Todd Young and others — read lengthy biographies and praised individual nominees as they called for vote after vote. They said they agree with Tuberville on the policy, but questioned — as Democrats have for months — why he would hold up the highest ranks of the U.S. military.
I don't get this. The Senate majority leader—that would be Democrat Chuck Schumer—is not required to honor holds. He can call for a vote on all 400 promotions any time he feels like it. The only thing standing in his way is that a motion to proceed can be filibustered and would require 60 votes to break.
But if Republicans are truly tired of Tuberville's shenanigans it should be no problem to overcome a filibuster. Are they fed up enough to spend all night calling for votes but not fed up enough to break a filibuster? Why not?
Because they'd be on record 'siding with Democrats'?
Republican’s are scared shitless about having to side with Democrats in a recorded vote. Trump would immediately send out his squad of flying monkeys to run against them in the primary.
By current rules, without unanimous consent, they would need to vote one by one. Each nomination would need like 30 hours of debate.
The Senate is designed to run on unanimous consent, and no senator wants to give up their right to gum up the works.
Right cause again, the senate is engaged right now on other matters that require them to not waste time on these promotions? Please give examples of all the valuable work senators are doing at the moment in your response.
+1
It is not just about giving up something. It is also that they want to avoid seeming to be on the side of Democrats against a Republican, which is toxic in the current Republican party.
They don't have to actually HAVE 30 hours of debate, they just need to allow for that many. Meaning they only have to keep debating as long as somebody wants to speak (and actually does). So make Tuberville speak. As long as he wants. Then vote, and move on to the next nomination, and the next. Yes, each nomination gives him a fresh chance at speaking but how long do you think he could keep it up? And at the very least make him work for it.
This highlights the fact that there are far too many "advise and consent" positions for the Senate to actually deal with. The whole idea is that the Senate is supposed to be check on the president's ability to appoint obviously unsuitable people; how much consideration is the Senate giving to the actual qualifications of the people whose appointments it is advising on and consenting to when it is approving them by batches of dozens at a time.
For that matter, how many of those positions is the president personally nominating people for. There are thousands of advise and consent positions; if the president personally selected the people to fill all of them, he wouldn't have time to do anything else, and if the Senate actually gave each of them individual consideration, they wouldn't have time to do anything else.
Most of those military positions are, in fact, dealt with by the regular military bureaucracy in the regular way and the president and Senate just rubber stamp the bureaucracy's choices. It would make sense to make that official. Limit advise and consent to the service chiefs and chiefs of staff. On the civilian side, limit advise and consent to cabinet officers and judges, and let the regular civil service machinery deal with lower ranking positions.
I mean this is why regular voters should never vote Republican. Eventually hopefully enough of them learn this before federal elections are eliminated.
Each vote would take hours if not days of time, and shut everything else down in the meantime.
What else, exactly is keeping the Senate so busy?
Angry as they say they are at Tuberville, the Republicans are reluctant to take action to lift his holds because they want to preserve the privilege of senatorial holds. OK, but isn't there a way to prevent the -abuse- of senatorial holds? Because that's the problem here. If Tuberville put a hold on the one official who actually administers the military health program, that'd be annoying but not unprecedented; it's the shutting down of hundreds of appointments that ought not to be allowed.
Since we have several snarkers commenting that the Senate does nothing, allow me to provide a little context. Senate action and votes are a matter of public record and take seconds to locate online, just to establish how lazy some posters here are:
Today: Nominations for Chief of Naval Operations, Chief of Staff (Air Force) and Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps.
Yesterday: Appropriations bill for military construction, VA, and related DOD funding. Two Rand Paul amendments to the bill calling for an audit of the Central Bank and cutting appropriations (including to the IRS). Cloture for today's nominees.
Prior to that we have confirmation of a federal judge; earlier voting on the minibus appropriations bill including multiple Paul motions; confirmation of a handful of other executive nominees and judges; days of prior work on the minibus bill; a reauthorization of the FAA.
It's true a lot of Senate time gets eaten up approving judges and executive officials, but that's pretty much the same problem you're dismissing here with military promotions on the grounds that the Senate doesn't need that time for anything else.
BTW, that minibus appropriations bill? $14.4 billion, with a bunch of specific rules about how parts of it can be spent. The Senate appears to have held votes on 207 amendments to the bill; that's two hundred and seven proposed changes.
You can actually read the full text of the bill and of every single proposed amendment online, too, if you really want to understand how the senate spends its time.
Joni Ernst literally said last night she didn't want to work with Democrats and that was after she spent hours on the floor voting and ripping into Tubes.
The very obvious answer is totally missing here. The more Republican officers in charge of the military, the better. You know, when push comes to shove.
This shouldn't be that big of a surprise here. All Republicans agree on the trajectory, some just don't want to say it out loud.
Schumer won't do that because Schumer wants to preserve his power to use holds in the future.
The Senate is 100 Napoleons in power suits. The ONLY thing that matters is preserving their own power.