- cross-posted to:
- politics
- cross-posted to:
- politics
President Joe Biden’s nominee to be the Navy’s top officer, Adm. Lisa Franchetti, said it could take the service years to recover from the impacts of Sen. Tommy Tuberville‘s blockade of hundreds of senior military promotions.
Franchetti told the Senate Armed Services Committee during her confirmation hearing Thursday that the impasse has created “a lot of uncertainty” for Navy families.
“Just at the three-star level, it would take about three to four months just to move all the people around,” Franchetti said. “But it will take years to recover … from the promotion delays that we would see.”
Does he have the power all by himself? I couldn’t find much information on exactly how he’s blocking them. Is it a filibuster or something like it, where they could simply override him if 9 Republicans were willing to vote with the Democrats to end his block? Or is it something else where he truly, even if all the other senators disagreed, has this ability?
If it is something like a filibuster, then this isn’t just him blocking promotions - it’s the entire Republican side of the senate blocking promotions, with him as a figurehead.
From what I had read somewhere, the holdup is in batching a ton of the promotions into a single voting item. Batching them together requires a unanimous vote, so by voting against it, Tuberville gets to hold the entire process hostage. Promotions can still occur, but each promotion would likely take weeks or months of work and deliberations.
To add to that, Republican senate leadership could replace him on the Senate Committee on Armed Services with someone who would support these promotions. By not doing so, their leadership is showing support for him and his position.