'This is not a game': Bennet shreds Tuberville for again blocking Pentagon appointments

19 July 2023

Editor's note: "Center" was corrected to "senator" in the second paragraph.

United States Senator Michael Bennet (D-Colorado) delivered a fiery rebuke of Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) on Wednesday after the retired college football coach once again invoked his opposition to abortion to obstruct national security appointments.

"For 230 years, nobody in this chamber has done what the senator from Alabama is doing — put a hold on the military promotions of people in uniform, the flag officers of our Department of Defense — that ordinarily come through here in a customary way to get approved by the Senate for obvious reasons, because we need them there for our national security," Bennet began.

"They have sacrificed their entire adult lives," Bennet said of Armed Forces servicemembers. "They have sacrificed time with their family. They have sacrificed everything for this country, and now they've been promoted and the senator —or they've been put on a list to be promoted — and the Senator for Alabama has put a hold on them, which has never happened before in the history of the United States."

"For somebody who has put this, the Senate to a grinding halt month after month after month, he has picked an odd argument to defend his position," Bennet said of Tuberville. "Madam President, he has said time and time again that what he's doing actually doesn't matter. And what he wants the American people to believe is that he's stopping the government from paying for abortions, and that's simply not what he's doing. Because that's not what's happening. That's not what is at issue here."

Tuberville's actions have garnered widespread condemnation from across the political continuum, including by President Joe Biden, who while in Helsinki last Thursday urged Republicans to keep Tuberville in check.

So far, however, those within the GOP who could rein in Tuberville — such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) — have not done so.

Bennet noted that Tuberville "says that the Dobbs decision doesn't have anything to do with what he's doing or with this case, and that's totally wrong. And so what I would ask all everybody in this chamber, whether you are pro-life or whether you are pro-choice, or something else where everybody across America who is suffering now because we're not able to promote the flag officers in the US military, What I would ask you to consider please is what Senator Tuberville will win if he wins. What will Senator Tuberville win if he wins?"

Tuberville, Bennet continued, "will assure that women are gonna be treated worse than men in the Department of Defense. He will assure that women will be treated differently, unequally, and unfairly, because unlike anyone else who needs a medical procedure, they will have to pay for their own travel."

Bennet added that "I think it's really important for the American people to understand what's at stake here. This is not a game. This is not a game when you're holding up every promotion of every single flag officer at DOD. This is not a game when all you're talking about is whether we're gonna have a country that discriminates against people or whether people are gonna be treated equally."

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