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Floor Speech

We have spent almost 12, 13 hours--or I have--during the last few weeks with these UCs. Last night, we were here debating this for about 2 hours. That is fine. That is what we are supposed to do in the Senate. We are supposed to debate, and I am not against that, but we also could have spent time voting.

I understand the Senator from Nevada has someone she wants promoted. I am fine with that. If she brings it to the floor, Senator Schumer brings it to the floor, I will vote for them. I am not here blocking nominees; I am here blocking promotion of all of these nominees at one time.

I would love to vote for her nominee, but Leader Schumer is responsible for that. He is responsible for the floor. Bring nominations one at a time, and I will vote for them. I am all for the military. That is one of the reasons I am here. But we have got to use our time better. That is what Senator Schumer says. Our time is spent on nominations.

We have been here for about 5 months. We have been on vacation 30 days, and we could have done all of those nominations in that amount of time. It is amazing to me how we don't want to do our job one at a time instead of just doing them all at once.

Senator Schumer has said so in a ``Dear Colleague'' letter this month. He said the Senator from Alabama has got a hold and it doesn't look good for Republicans. I don't know what doesn't look good. I am standing up for the rule of law. What is not a good look is the Democrats coming to the floor and defending--defending--an executive branch that is not doing their job; they are trying to do ours.

I understand the Senator from Nevada is a strong supporter of abortion, and that is good. We all have differences of opinion about that. But even she didn't vote for this. She didn't vote for this memo that Secretary Austin pushed on the military. Nobody voted for it. I am surprised that Democrats in Congress are supportive of the executive branch doing our job, that a lot of people spent a lot of money campaigning and trying to win this position.

Let's do our job. That is all I am asking. Let's do our job. We ought to be voting on every one of these nominees that I have got these holds on. I am not against voting for them; I am against voting for all of them at one time. It would be a better use of our time if we would come here, vote, and go back to our office like we normally do.

If Democrats were actually concerned about these nominations--and I am going to say it for the hundredth time--if they were actually concerned about our national security and the things that are going on around the world, we would be taking these nominees one at a time--one at a time--and getting them knocked out instead of worrying about coming here and doing this debate, complaining at each other about what is going on, when the executive branch is doing our job and we are not doing ours.

Today, I saw some discussion from Senator Shaheen. I saw her talking about it on MSNBC today. Her bill that she is throwing out would simply change the law to make this memo legal. I do not support this legislation, but we ought to take a vote on it. That is what we do here. If she wants to put a bill on the floor, let's take a vote on it. If the House and the Senate pass it and Joe Biden signs it, then it is in the law, but if the bill fails, then Congress has spoken. So if Senator Shaheen's bill fails, Secretary Austin then should accept the consequences and the sense of Congress, follow the law, and suspend the policy.

So if Democrats want me to drop my holds, then the answer is very simple. I have laid out two conditions for me to end the holds: Either follow the law or change the law. I will drop my holds as soon as Secretary Austin suspends the memo. The burden is not on me to undo the policy, this illegal policy; the burden is on the Biden administration to follow the law.

Democrats have mentioned that we have some very important nominees coming up, and we do. That includes the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I agree--very much agree--that this is a very important, very important situation where we need a new Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman. But we need to vote on some of these nominees anyway. These roles are too important to just put everybody in one group and send them here and nobody knows who they are and just run them through.

I will have more to say on that later, but, to this point, I hope I have been clear. I have laid out the conditions for my holds and when I will drop my holds. These conditions have not been met, and I will not drop this hold until they are met.

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