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Floor Speech
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Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I am on the floor for a couple of reasons but No. 1 and most important is to congratulate General Smith, Gen. Eric Smith, to be the new Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps.
Now, the Presiding Officer may have seen the vote--a pretty impressive vote, 96 to 0. That does not happen a lot in the U.S. Senate. But every Senator on the floor just an hour ago gave Gen. Eric Smith a huge vote of confidence--and with good reason.
This is a Marine officer who has a stellar career--stellar career. He has commanded at every level in the Marine Corps: as an infantry officer, Weapons Company, 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment. As a general officer, he commanded the U.S. Marine Corps Forces Southern Command, 1st Marine Corps Division, III MEF--Marine Expeditionary Force--and Marine Corps Combat Development Command. That is about as stellar a career as it gets.
Additionally, he is a serious combat veteran. As I have noted to my colleagues before, a lot of the flag officers in the military right now were the lieutenants and captains right after 9/11. This is a group of senior military leaders who have seen more combat than certainly almost any other generation since World War II. And General Smith was one of those: wounded in action in Iraq, did not want to go home; frontline commander in combat; served in Afghanistan.
Unfortunately, like a lot of commanders during these challenging wars, he had a number of marines and friends killed in action whom he was in command of. So he knows war. He knows the Marine Corps.
I look forward to working closely with General Smith on a whole host of issues related to the Marine Corps and now, as a member of the Joint Chiefs, related to the national defense of our country, including Marine Corps force design, including the Navy's requirement that is in law--in law, if you are watching, Secretary of the Navy Del Toro; it is in law--31 amphibs for the Marine Corps.
So these and many other issues I look forward to working with General Smith on. But again, 96 to 0.
Great job, General. Semper Fi.
Mr. President, I also think it is important to just talk a little bit about how we got here, and to be honest, we should have gotten here a lot earlier--weeks, if not months, earlier.
I am a pro-life and pro-military Senator, so I have been very involved in these negotiations between leadership and some of our Members on issues of moving forward nominees but also on not agreeing with Secretary Austin's memo as it relates to travel issues.
There have been a number of us who have been trying to get to a resolution on some of the holds that are happening here on the Senate floor.
By the way, holds happen all the time. The way they are resolved 98 percent of the time is through compromise. So that is why I am trying to help my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and the administration and the Department of Defense. But in the meantime, there was nothing preventing the majority leader from bringing qualified military members to the floor for a vote--nothing. As a matter of fact, in the Senate, we vote on members of the Joint Chiefs all the time. That is a tradition here--when the Democrats have been in charge, when the Republicans have been in charge--but that has not been the priority here.
In the last several months, we have had 76 rollcall votes, everything from the Assistant Administrator of the EPA to district court judges, NLRB judges, Board members for the National Archives, Assistant Secretaries of Education, HHS. You name it, we have been confirming them, with the exception of one group: military officers.
A lot of the press is saying: Well, that was the Senator from Alabama.
That is not true. That is not true at all. We could be voting on individual members of the Joint Chiefs. That wasn't the priority. That wasn't the priority.
Senator Tuberville was going to make a resolution, signed by 17 Senators, to file cloture on General Smith, and all of a sudden, the majority leader thought it was important to start moving forward on Joint Chiefs of Staff nominees. I think that is good. That shows some compromise. And I think even that little bit of compromise is going to help us on the broader issues that we are all trying to address.
But I do want to just correct the record. In our Ukraine briefing yesterday, Secretary Austin, Secretary of Defense, said he really appreciated Senator Schumer's leadership on filing cloture on these Joint Chiefs we just voted on. Well, with all due respect to Senator Schumer and Secretary Austin, it wasn't his leadership; it was our side of the aisle that forced his hand to do it. That is a fact. That is a fact.
So, Mr. Secretary, I know the Senate procedures can be a little confusing, but you might want to thank this side of the aisle for actually moving forward to make sure that Joint Chiefs are getting confirmed.
So I hope we continue to do that and continue to work like a number of us have been on a broader compromise here to move forward on these other military nominees.
By the way, I do welcome many of my Democratic colleagues' newfound interest in national security. A number of them have been howling about national security and we are not ready and readiness issues. A lot of them, I have never heard them talk about national security, but they are all talking about it now. That is great. Welcome.
By the way, join me in criticizing President Biden for sending to us 3 years in a row three budgets each year that dramatically cut our Department of Defense.
President Biden's budget this year shrinks the Army, shrinks the Navy, shrinks the Marine Corps. It is exactly the wrong message to be sending Xi Jingping and Putin during one of the most dangerous times our has Nation faced since the end of World War II.
So if you are worried about national security, join me on some of these. It is great. I hear a lot of howling from silent voices on national security from the other side of the aisle, so I welcome you to be caring about these issues.
I want to end where I started, and I want to thank and congratulate again General Smith. I also want to congratulate the new soon-to-be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General C.Q. Brown, who is also exceptionally qualified, and the new Chief of Staff of the Army, General George. All three were recently confirmed by the U.S. Senate in overwhelming numbers--overwhelming. That is progress. On both sides of the aisle, that is progress. That is what we needed. I am hopeful that progress will lead to more compromise on these other issues that we all know are important.
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