OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

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Floor Speech

Date: Sept. 11, 2023
Location: Washington, DC

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, as you know, we are at an unprecedented moment in the history of the Senate. There are hundreds of brave, courageous leaders in our military who are being denied--promotions being denied--the rank that they deserve because of the actions of Senator Tuberville and Senate Republicans.

And Senator Tuberville was out on the floor just moments ago defending his actions. I think most Americans believe that his hold on all of these promotions is indefensible. But what probably won't get covered is an additional idea that he presented to the Senate in his remarks.

Senator Tuberville said today that he thinks that our military leadership should be fired for failing to defeat the Taliban. That is pretty extraordinary. For those of us who have served in the Senate and in the House during the time that we have been in Afghanistan, we had the opportunity to see that mission on the ground. It was a difficult, hard mission. Some might say it was an impossible mission, badly underresourced, right from the beginning.

But the idea that our soldiers or our military leadership--captains, lieutenant colonels, generals--should be fired because they couldn't perform a mission that was likely impossible, that, frankly, will have an even bigger chilling effect than Senator Tuberville's hold on military promotions.

There is no doubt that there should be consequences for gross negligence on the job in any profession, including the military, but for any of us who saw the work being done in Afghanistan, our military from the top down, they were doing the best they could under difficult circumstances.

Refusing military promotions apparently isn't cruel enough. Now, Republicans want military leaders fired when they can't complete impossible, underresourced missions.

This is a growing attack, a growing set of attacks on our military, and all in the service of a bunch of old men telling young women what healthcare they can get and what healthcare they can't get.

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