Pentagon officials have been frustrated for months over an Alabama senator’s blockade of more than 300 senior military nominations. But after the Marine Corps chief was hospitalized over the weekend, that frustration is turning into rage.
Gen. Eric Smith had been filling both the No. 1 and No. 2 Marine Corps posts from July until he was finally confirmed as commandant in September. He, along with more than 300 other senior officers, was swept up in the promotions blockade put in place by GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville in protest of the Pentagon’s abortion travel policy.
In an interview Wednesday, Tuberville brushed off the comments from the DOD officials.
“They’re looking for someone to blame it on, other than themselves,” he said. “We could have all these people confirmed if they’d have just gone by the Constitution.
“I don’t listen to these people,” he added. “They’re just looking for any possible way to get themselves out of a jam.”
The Senate can bypass Tuberville’s hold by voting on officers individually, which it has done in only three instances, but to do so now for every frozen nomination would take months and impede action on numerous other issues.
Tough shit. Get to work. You shouldn’t have let a small problem turn into a big problem. If the solution is going to take a long time, then there’s no time to waste. Don’t let it happen again.
Yeah, they should do nothing more than approve these nominations as tubbyville wants instead of doing THEIR ACTUAL JOBS legislating.
Man, this take is dumb as a box of bricks.
What legislating? With the House in the other Party’s control the Senate isn’t going to be doing much other than voting against bullshit.
Everything about how the US government functions is based entirely on the idea that everyone acts in good faith. There is no real mechanism for dealing with those who abuse the system. Sadly, over 250 years, nobody has tried to fix this. Our system is broken but working just as designed.
Everything about how the US government functions is based entirely on the idea that everyone acts in good faith.
No. Duties and authority are divided up between the three branches of government to prevent an individual acting in bad fath from bringing everything down.
There is no real mechanism for dealing with those who abuse the system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_from_the_United_States_Congress
LOL you apparently haven’t paid attention to the last 30 years or so.
When Bill Clinton got elected?
There are actually plenty of ways the majority party of both houses of congress can deal with “bad faith” actors. For one, the majority party could just say that the minority party doesn’t get to vote on anything, or conduct any congressional business at all. Straight up denying the minority party any influence whatsoever. This would be 100% constitutional and since both houses of congress define their own rules for how they run themselves, any collection of people that have 50+1 votes is free to do this.
However you are correct that the system is working as designed. Capitalism doesn’t care if you vote red or blue, as long as they get to choose the candidates and that’s why things like this that have obvious legal answers somehow can’t ever get done. Yet billions for the defense industry, or the oil industry can be passed with hardly a debate.
The paths of power have many blocks. If I were from Tuberville’s state, I would be looking at how retaliation against Tuberville affects my state. Remember when Christie blocked a highway to a neighboring state, with a pretend maintenance? Oopsie, it was his underlings that did it.
/$
At what point do they admit it’s a national security issue and do something about it?
That’s fascism bro. The reasons for Tuberville’s blocking are shit, but the fact that he can do that is working as intended. If the dems wanted to do something about it, they could act like a real political party for once and remove Tuberville from the armed forces chair, or equivalent that is allowing him to block the nominations.
If you just want “the military” to do “something” about the problematic senator then you are a piece of shit.
- Republicans do a bad thing.
- Democrats don’t stop the Republicans.
- It is the Democrats fault the bad thing is happening.
Fucking top tier logic right there.
Do you not think the dems have the ability to stop the republicans? Because they absolutely do. But rather then use the power they have, they’d rather “play politics.”
You can’t just magically waive a wand and “stop the Republicans.” And Democrats are working to solve this problem but this doesn’t happen overnight. How exactly are the Dems “playing politics?”
But none of that really matters to the point of your bad faith argument, because this problem would immediately go away if Tuberville stopped being an asshat. Pointing at the Democrats for not fixing Republican caused problems is asinine political style victim blaming.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_hold
The original intent of these sections was to protect a senator’s right to be consulted on legislation that affected the senator’s state or in which a senator had a great interest. The ability to place a hold would allow that senator an opportunity to study the legislation and to reflect on its implications before moving forward with further debate and voting.
Holds, like filibusters, can be defeated through a successful cloture motion. However, the time required to bring around a cloture vote often allows fewer than 40 senators to block unimportant legislation when the majority is not willing to force the vote.
So yes, Senator Tuberville is filibustering, but the real story is that the majority of the senate doesn’t care enough about the military nominations to cloture it.
How is he filibustering? I honestly don’t know how he is able to do this and am trying to learn.
These aren’t even being brought up, right? So, there’s nothing to filibuster.
I just learned about it today. From the wiki, a Senate hold basically means you do not provide your consent to bring the matter before the Senate. Senate has bylaws, saying that all matters brought before the Senate must be unanimously agreed upon to be brought forward. To provide all senators time to be acquainted with the matter, do research, timeliness etc.
So this senator is withholding their consent for this matter to come before the Senate, effectively infinitely delaying it.
The Senate can, with a majority vote, bring the matter to the Senate anyway through the second method, but that requires more coordination and agreement…
So net net, it’s a kind of filibuster, and you can bust it but you need a majority
I believe you need 60, not just a majority.
You only need simple majority to change the rules so that a simple majority can push these nominations through. In fact the republican party did exactly that in 2013 and 2017 and got their judges pushed through.
I, for one, support Tommy Tubman in his efforts to destroy the US military. Why the fuck do y’all want any of these nominations to pass?
Tommy even put a marine in the hospital! Based.
I support it too, but I dont’ like cowardly democrats supporting it via inaction. They should be active and vocal in their opposition of the US Military.
