Laken Riley Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Mr. President, in these serious times, we need a serious candidate to lead our military. We need someone with merit to lead our meritocracy, someone with moral strength to be in charge of protecting our national strength.

For all these reasons and quite a few more, I will not be voting to confirm the extremely unqualified Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense. Our troops deserve better than a guy who was seemingly only nominated because he used to host Trump's favorite TV show on FOX News.

I have plenty to say about Mr. Hegseth and the many, many ways in which he would degrade our military readiness. It is no secret I disagreed with Trump on nearly everything during his first term. Yet I still voted to confirm both James Mattis and Mark Esper when he nominated them for this very role. The thing is, Hegseth has never led thousands of people like Mattis had. He never ran an entire Army like Esper did. No, the only thing Hegseth has ever run, he has run it into the ground. The only major organizations he has ever led, he has led into debt.

Pete Hegseth is unqualified, he is unprepared, he is unethical, and, most of all, he is unfit. Mr. Hegseth may talk about how having had dust on his boots makes him worthy of becoming Secretary of Defense. Well, as someone who left her boots in a dusty field in Iraq, let me tell you exactly why he is unfit to lead our heroes.

Mr. Hegseth likes to say that our military is a great meritocracy, and I agree with that. So let's go over his supposed merits for this role.

The Secretary of Defense oversees the Federal Government's largest Agency. They manage a $900 billion budget, along with the 3 million servicemembers and civilians who fall under its umbrella.

During his time in uniform, Pete Hegseth never commanded a unit with more than 200 people. Meanwhile, on the civilian side, both organizations that he led went into debt. In fact, he so badly mismanaged one of them that they had to bring in a forensic accountant to clean up the mess that he had made.

That is it. Those are his only supposed qualifications to head up one of the most complex, important organizations in the world.

Listen, there are plenty of Republicans whose policies I may disagree with but whom I would vote to confirm because I know that they, too, have spent their lives working to keep our country strong and could demonstrate why they are qualified for this role. Mr. Hegseth is not one of those people.

Who knows why Donald Trump picked this guy. Maybe Hegseth's business failures make Trump feel better about his own six bankruptcies. Maybe it is because Hegseth spent years fawning over Trump on FOX News, and Trump's dream Cabinet is a bunch of yes-men who know how to kiss up to him on TV--or maybe it is just that all of ``Cadet Bone Spurs''' draft dodging has left him with no clue as to what kind of leader our military needs.

Look, at his confirmation hearing on Tuesday, I gave Mr. Hegseth every opportunity to show me that I was wrong, to prove that he could do this job, that he does know the first thing--or anything--about what it takes to take on this massive responsibility of being the Secretary of Defense. I asked him basic questions that even the most junior folks working in the Pentagon would know, like naming one of the main international agreements he would be responsible for leading. He couldn't name one. I asked him to tell me just a single country in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Again, he couldn't give me one--and one of those is our longest treaty ally for 190 years--not a single one of the 10.

This was shocking--yet not surprising--from a man whose main form of policy education has come from reading the FOX News teleprompter. This was pitiful--yet predictable--from a guy who has said that we women do not belong in combat, who has dared to claim that the military is lowering its standard so that we, the poor, fragile, fairer sex--and, God forbid, us moms--can serve. Well, the only standards being lowered today are the ones for Secretary of Defense. Our female servicemembers have earned the jobs that they are in, unlike Mr. Hegseth who won't even say whether he would refuse an unlawful order.

I have next to me a framed copy of the Soldier's Creed--a poster that usually hangs over my desk here in the Senate and has done so for the last 8 years. It is the same copy that hung above my bed at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center when I spent over a year in the hospital recovering from my shoot-down. It is the same poster whose lines I read before I was wheeled into each and every one of my surgeries. It is the same one whose words were repeated over and over to myself on the days when I was in so much pain that I couldn't breathe yet was determined to fight my way back to health so I could serve again next to the buddies who saved my life. These words helped me find the strength I needed when I needed it the most because they reminded me of who I was and that I was a proud member of the greatest fighting force on the face of the Earth, whose duty it was to live up to the sacrifices of my fellow soldiers.

I would like to quote a couple of lines from the creed right now.

I will always place the mission first . . . I am disciplined, physically and mentally tough, trained and proficient in my warrior tasks.

Our troops follow these words every day as we ask them to do the hardest thing imaginable. We ask them to leave their families, to potentially never hold their spouses' hands again, to maybe never get to see their babies take their first steps. We ask them to do all of that and then walk into enemy fire and be good enough, competent enough, qualified enough that, regardless of the threat they face, they will still be able to do their jobs. We ask them to be so ready for the mission at hand that they can still fly that helicopter, still man that ship, still fight that fire until their very last breaths.

Tell me: How can we ask these warriors to train and perform to the absolute highest standard if we are going to confirm a guy who doesn't seem to care enough to prepare to lead them in any way?

Listen, these are dangerous times on the geopolitical stage. Our adversaries are watching, waiting to see if we really will put in power someone so obviously unqualified.

Mr. Hegseth made a point of saying at Tuesday's hearing that every single warfighter should be hired based on performance, readiness, and merit. And I agree with him. However, he fails to meet every single one of those metrics. He is asking to be handed a job he is not prepared for because of his relationship with Donald Trump, but this role is too important, our troops' lives too precious to let personal ambitions get in the way of the mission at hand.

So let me close with this: Part of being a leader is knowing when you are not competent enough to do the job.

Well, Mr. Hegseth, you are not technically proficient; you are not tactically proficient; and your nomination is an insult to those brave enough to be serving our Nation. So you, sir, are a no go at this station.

I am voting no on Pete Hegseth's nomination to be Secretary of Defense. If my colleagues care more about keeping our Nation strong than genuflecting to Donald Trump, then they should have the courage to vote no as well.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source