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.”
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.
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.
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.
