CV NEWS FEED // Sen. J.D. Vance, R-OH, has become the latest senator to come out in support of Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s, R-AL, holds on military nominees.
Vance also claimed that the Biden administration is “destroy[ing] credibility in the military.”
“The military cannot be an arm of either admin’s social policy,” Vance said at an event hosted by the news website Axios on Wednesday.
“There’s a law that says abortions will not be publicly funded, and the Biden administration, I think, is circumventing that law,” added the senator. Vance is a Marine Corps veteran.
“There’s a reason why we have, frankly, a crisis in recruitment in the all-volunteer military—the first time we’ve had a recruitment crisis, really, since the end of the Vietnam War,” Vance said. “I think it’s because the perception among a lot of people who would otherwise enlist is that the military has become politicized.”
“That is the backdrop against what Sen. Tuberville is doing,” he explained:
There are 108 people who are currently being held by Sen. Tuberville. If [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer [D-NY] made us sit in our chairs for one day and do a vote-a-rama, we could clear every single one of them.
“So, you want to do that?” asked Axios Congressional Reporter Sophia Cai.
“Let’s vote on them,” Vance replied. “Tuberville can’t prevent them from getting on. All he’s doing is forcing a vote on each one. I think it’s reasonable to say we should evaluate these guys one by one.”
Vance also suggested the Senate should be working at a faster and more efficient pace when it comes to voting on nominees. “This is really not about Coach Tuberville’s hold; this is, I think, about whether the Senate functions appropriately, and right now it doesn’t.”
>> SCHUMER CAVES TO TUBERVILLE: WILL HOLD VOTE ON 3 MILITARY NOMINEES <<
On the same day Vance made those comments, Schumer announced that he would invoke cloture on three military nominees being held by Tuberville. These are the first military promotions the Senate majority leader will have brought to a vote, and it comes after Schumer spent months resisting Tuberville.
Tuberville began his holds in February
“These men should have already been confirmed. They should already be serving in their new positions,” Schumer said after filing cloture, a routine procedure used to end debate in the Senate.
“The Senate should not have to go through procedural hoops just to please one brazen and misguided senator,” Schumer added, referring to Tuberville.
However, the senator from Alabama quickly fired back, saying that the ball had been in Schumer’s court for months, but that he had refused to act.
“We could’ve been confirming one or two [nominees] a week for the last 200 days,” Tuberville said. “But we didn’t do it. We took another angle of just sitting back and watching. Chuck Schumer refused again, again, and again.”
“We don’t have a lack of leadership in the military,” Tuberville said. “We have a lack of leadership right here in the United States Senate.”
