Tuberville “has nothing to show for his 10 months of delay,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a scathing speech after the nominees were confirmed. Tuberville has retained his holds on roughly 11 other promotions.
The Senate confirmed more than 400 military nominees Tuesday afternoon after Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., announced he would drop the bulk of his holds, ending a monthslong campaign.
Tuberville told reporters earlier Tuesday that he had lifted his hold on all military promotions at three-star rank and below, amounting to over 425 promotions.
“I’m releasing everybody. I still got a hold on, I think, 11 four-star generals. Everybody else is completely released from me.” Tuberville told reporters. “But other than that, it’s over.”
Basically, every promotion of every officer in the military apparently needs to be confirmed by the Senate.
Normally these are confirmed via unanimous consent - the entire Senate agrees and they’re confirmed with no further procedure.
But any senator can insist that the full normal procedure be followed, which means committee hearings, discussion time, and an actual vote at the end of it. He would not be able to stop them from being confirmed on those votes. But the normal procedure requires a lot of time during which the Senate would be able to do nothing else because the procedural rules require all this discussion and voting time.
Really, the problem isn’t that he had a lot of power; it’s the absurd situation where every single officer in the military needs to be confirmed by the Senate. I’m not sure that made sense in George Washington’s day, much less today with the size of the military.
It makes perfect sense for Congress to have a say in what people are getting promoted to the highest ranks in our military. That is checks and balances, and it helps prevent the president from stacking the military with leaders that will help them do some really fucked up shit. I’m sure you can look at some recent events and use your imagination from there.
The problem is the Senate has no defined rules of procedure in the Constitution. The House has to follow proceedings as dictated by the Constitution, but the Senate makes its own rules. On the one hand that means that the Senate can choose to expedite approving these promotions however they choose, meaning they can make it very simple, and that hasn’t really been a problem up until recently. But the flip side is, Senate procedures are can be ground to a halt by individual Senators with little consequence.
The problem really isn’t the organization or the rules or any of that. The problem is the American people that has a severe case of brain rot and electing these motherfuckers to Congress who are actively derailing it.
Highest ranks, yes. It’s actually reasonable for the Senate to pay attention to who is getting promoted to the highest ranks. Every rank, no. It is my understanding that we are talking about every officer rank in the military needing confirmation by the Senate, which is meaningless because the Senate simply cannot pay attention to every one of these. That is precisely why Tuberville is able to hold this up, because it is logistically impossible for the Senate to check on every one of these people.
See the comment below about how trump wants to install loyalist douchebags into those positions, can’t do that easily if they’re already filled…. Or if the senate has oversight.
Keep in mind, the military is one of the core aspects of our ability to even have foreign policy. Even “soft” diplomacy depends on it… nobody would care what we said without being a superpower.
So putting asshats into command of the military… well, let’s just say that’s not a good idea.