By Kent Faulk
President Joe Biden’s administration this week plans to ramp up its fight with Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville over his blockade of senior military officer promotions and bring the battle closer to the senator’s home, NBC reported Sunday.
For months Tuberville has put a hold on the promotions because of a Department of Defense policy that pays for travel when a service member has to go out of state to get an abortion or reproductive care.
NBC News Washington Managing Editor Carol Lee, while on Meet the Press Sunday, said the White House will unveil new efforts to highlight the real impacts of Tuberville’s hold on promotions.
“You’ve already heard the President weigh in on this. But what I am told by administration officials, starting this week they are going to really point to very specific examples of how this hold is affecting everything from the chain of command to military facilities in different states, to military families, including in Alabama,” Lee said. “Huntsville has a large military population there, so they are going to lean in, in that sense.”
Lee said the administration will also attempt to draw a line to connect the issue to the presidential race. They will try to show Tuberville and U.S. House Republicans who passed the National Defense Appropriations Act on Friday – including elimination of abortion, transgender care, and equity-diversity programs and services – are a direct correlation with Trump, she said.
A Tuberville spokesman declined comment to AL.com on Sunday.
Tuberville has repeatedly said he will maintain his holds until the defense department either cancels the abortion policy or Congress votes its approval. Tuberville has also said that military nominations can go forward on a one-by-one basis for Senate confirmation – a time-consuming process that typically is bypassed by the Senate approving military promotions by voice vote.
Other Sunday morning talk shows also discussed Tuberville’s hold on promotions and its relation to the Republican-majority U.S. House of Representatives vote Friday to approve the NDAA.
Jake Sullivan, White House National Security Advisor, speaking on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, said Tuberville is holding up all of the military promotions that come before the Senate, resulting in the U.S. not having a commandant of the Marine Corps. for the first time in 150 years. “We are very soon not going to have a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or Chief of Naval Operations. This is making America less safe. And why? Because of the attempt to score domestic political points. It’s just got to stop.”
Republicans, however, have said that it’s Democrats who have put politics into the NDAA by allowing taxpayer money to be used for travel expenses for abortion and the other social programs.
U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., a member of Senate Armed Services Committee, during an interview on FOX News Sunday, anchored by Shannon Bream, defended the NDAA bill approved in the majority Republican House that would eliminate the abortion travel policy.
He called it “abortion tourism.” He said under that policy a soldier would get three weeks administrative leave but other soldiers with other issues, such as the death of a close family member, would not be given the same consideration for time off.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), member of the Senate Armed Services & Foreign Relations Committees, also talked on Meet the Press about Tuberville’s hold.
Asked if she was willing to put a vote on the issue in the Senate, Duckworth said “We’ve given him (Tuberville) many options for a vote, and he’s turned them all down. Joni Ernst (Republican U.S. senator from Iowa) has a bill that goes even further than where Senator Tuberville is, and he declined that vote.
“And Republican leadership had offered him multiple off-ramps to this,” Duckworth said. “And he’s backed himself into a corner, I mean. You know what he’s saying is that Democrats need to pass a national codification of Roe V Wade. We would love to do that. Obviously, that’s not going happen anytime soon with the Senate as closely split as it is,” she said.
“I’m going to just say what President Biden has said. It is bizarre for Senator Tuberville to say that he’s not jeopardizing national security when he injects politics into the defense process,” Duckworth said.
