MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Less than a year after Sen. Tommy Tuberville ended his months-long hold on military nominations to combat the Pentagon’s abortion access policy, Alabama’s senior senator is again blocking a military promotion.
He vowed Wednesday to maintain it indefinitely until the publication of a report from the Pentagon.
Tuberville’s latest hold is on Lt. Gen. Ronald Clarke, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s top aide, who was nominated by President Joe Biden in July to become commanding general of the U.S. Army in the pacific.
Tuberville said he blocked Clarke’s promotion due to Lloyd’s hospitalization in January to undergo treatment for prostate cancer, and Lloyd’s and Clarke’s subsequent failure to notify the White House for three days.
“His job was to contact the White House and the commander in chief, which would be Joe Biden; that did not happen,” Tuberville said Wednesday during a call with members of the press.
“So what we’re wanting to do – not just me as a Republican, but also Democrats – we want to see the (Pentagon’s Inspector General) report, and the only way to get a version of that IG report at the proper time and not drag it out for two or three years is to put a hold on something.”
Alabama Daily News asked Tuberville how long he was prepared to maintain the hold, to which he said “it’s going to be blocked until I get that report.”
“I would hope to think that there was a good reason why there was no communication there, but we need to find that out,” he told ADN. “We don’t need this to happen again.”
In a statement, Pentagon spokesperson James Adams criticized Tuberville’s hold, saying that it “undermines our military readiness.”
Tuberville went on to say that he had no issue with Clarke’s nomination, but that he wouldn’t be comfortable allowing it to move forward until he had more details on what led to the breakdown in communication.
“They want to promote General Clarke, I’m fine with that, but we’re not going to do that unless we get that IG report in so we can find out exactly what happened, why communication wasn’t done the proper way, and it’s only the right thing to do,” he said.
Military nominations can be blocked with the objection of a single senator. While there are methods to circumvent such holds, such as bringing a single military promotion to the Senate floor, such procedures take up valuable floor time, leaving senators unlikely to pursue that method.
“Sen. (Chuck) Schumer can come to the floor today, put his name on the floor and go around me,” Tuberville told ADN.
“Now, they couldn’t do 700 or 800 like we had back when I was holding all these generals because of the taxpayer funded abortion in the military, (but) this is one person, so if they really want to promote him, they can circumvent that and bring him to the floor and have a vote.”