Dan Sullivan

Mr. SULLIVAN

Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, we are almost certainly facing a volatile and maybe even dangerous period in the Taiwan Strait because of the Chinese Communist Party. The election is January 13. The inauguration won't take place until May. So what we need to do as a country is to provide steady, unwavering resolve and support of Taiwan's democracy, and, of course, we need to continue to critically enhance cross-strait deterrence. I will end with one final thing before my colleague from Virginia, I know, wants to say a few words on this important resolution. But this is also a vulnerability for the Chinese Communist Party and Xi Jinping himself. Think about it. This undermines--this election--all of these elections in Taiwan--undermine the central premise of the Chinese Communist Party's rule that one dictator knows what is best for 1.4 billion people, in perpetuity, for as long as he is alive. What I guarantee you the dictators in Beijing are worried about is that people in China are going to look across the Taiwan Strait and go: Wait a minute. How come we can't do that? Chinese democracy, how come we can't do that? What we are doing right now is showing commitment and resolve for Taiwanese democracy. I am proud to say, many, many years ago, on the eve of Taiwan's first election, the Chinese Communist Party moved its military up. They shot missiles over Taiwan. This is now referred to as the ``Third Taiwan Strait Crisis.'' It was a huge crisis in 1995, 1996. And President Clinton, to his credit, sent two carrier strike groups and a Marine amphibious ready group to show American commitment and resolve. I was a young infantry officer on one of those Navy ships during that time in the Taiwan Strait, showing American commitment and resolve, and that is what we are doing with this resolution on now their eighth Presidential election in Taiwan, and I am honored to be here with Senator Kaine to pass this unanimous Senate resolution in support of Taiwan democracy.

Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from Virginia. And right here, I have the resolution. As I mentioned, half the U.S. Senate--Democrats and Republicans--are cosponsors of this important resolution commending Taiwan for its history of democratic elections, expressing concern about the Chinese Communist Party's interference in this upcoming election, and expressing our support for Taiwan's democratic institutions. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 521, submitted earlier today.

Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. SULLIVAN

Mr. SULLIVAN. Madam President, I know this might be one of the last presiding duties of the year, so I appreciate the Presiding Officer taking the time on the floor before she gets to go home. I want to talk about two issues today here on the Senate floor. One is a really important one. It is a policy issue that we have to solve. What I am trying to do today is just make sure my colleagues--because a lot of them get kind of fed some misinformation on this issue and then the American people writ large--know what is going on so we can fix this issue. I am hoping the White House and the administration and the Treasury Department--that everybody is watching because this is an easy one. Imagine this, if someone came to you and said, ``All right. Let's see. Is there legislation that we could pass that would help end slave labor in China, with the Uighurs; help make sure we had a really strong environment for our oceans and our fisheries; help make sure we weren't funding the Russian war machine to go kill innocent civilians in Ukraine; help make sure we keep strong American coastal communities; and help promote the great American fishermen, who work so hard all over this great Nation?'' We have been doing it way before the founding of the Republic. If there is legislation that could do all of those things, wouldn't you want to support it--oh, by the way--and that could undermine our adversaries, the two big adversaries we have, Russia and China? Is there legislation pending in the U.S. Senate that could do all of these things? The answer is yes. Hell yes. I just want to make sure all of my colleagues know, because when I bring this to the floor when we come back in the new year, I just want to make sure everybody supports it because it is a no-brainer. It is a no-brainer. So what am I talking about? Well, it is my U.S.-Russian Federation Seafood Reciprocity Act. It has a bunch of cosponsors, Democrats and Republicans. Senator Cantwell is a big, big promoter of this, just for one example. But let me just give a little bit of background because people are saying, I am sure: Wait. You have a piece of legislation that can do all of that? Yes, I sure do. And why anyone would not support it--well, once they get educated, they will support it. So let's talk about it just very briefly. What is the background here? I am going to go way back, almost 10 years. So the Russians invade Crimea. You have an aggressive dictator, Vladimir Putin, trying to invade everybody, right? We have to make sure he doesn't win in Ukraine. The Obama administration smacks them with sanctions, OK? I wasn't here then, but that is what happened. This was in 2014. But I supported that. Then the Russians retaliated. Now, one of the things they did when they retaliated was that they said: We are going to ban the importation of all American seafood into Russia. Now, Russia has a big seafood market, OK? So Russia said that no American seafood can come into Russia. By the way, my State is the superpower of seafood. The great State of Alaska is responsible for the harvesting of over two-thirds of all fish and seafood in America--two-thirds, 66 percent. We are the superpower of seafood. Now, there are a lot of other great States that export seafood. I am not sure the great State of Nevada does, but that is a whole other topic. So this is really important to my constituents. Tens of thousands of my great constituents are involved with this. So imagine that. Russia is still allowed to import in the United States almost duty-free, and we can't export one fish, OK? That has been the situation since 2014. Right there, that is just unfair, OK? So I tried to work with the Obama administration, with the Trump administration, and with the Biden administration to fix this--unfair. By the way, the Russian seafood guys were eating into our fishermen's market in our own home, in our own U.S. market--not fair. By the way, American fishermen--Alaskan fishermen--have the highest standards by far in the world on the environment, on sustainable fisheries, on the management of fisheries and our oceans--this is something Senator Whitehouse and I have passed legislation on--and on workers' rights, OK? They are the highest in the world. It is not even close. So the highest standards on the planet are right in America, are right in Alaska. Russia and China--I am going to get to them--have the lowest in the world, OK? So keep that in mind as we talk about this issue. So then it literally takes a war to fix this. Russia brutally invades Ukraine. The Biden administration is putting together a sanctions package. I call the White House and say: Hey, look, how about including in your sanctions package a way to fix this unfair trade situation where Russia won't allow us to import one fish, and they can export into the United States all they want. No way. So, to his credit, President Biden said--or his team: Hey, I agree with Senator Sullivan. Let's smack them with sanctions on fish. So the Biden initial Executive order hitting Russia after they invaded Ukraine said Russia can't import in the United States. Great. I have been working on that for 10 years, and it is only fair. So what happens? Hmm--these sneaky authoritarians--by the way, the Russian seafood industry is controlled by oligarchs who are literally taking a lot of that money and funding it for the Putin war machine. So remember that, my colleagues who might want to object to this later. Money is going to fund the Putin war machine from fisheries, OK? That is a fact. So, anyway, the little, sneaky authoritarian regimes--Putin and Xi Jinping--are working together, and they are like: Hey, let's avoid those American sanctions. We will take the Russian seafood caught by Russian fishermen in Russian waters, and we will send it to China, and we will have slave labor in China transform it, and then we will send it to the United States. We will sneak around those sanctions--a big loophole--using slave labor. So that is what they are doing right now. They are doing it every day by the hundreds of millions of dollars, if not in the billions. They are avoiding these sanctions by saying: Let's take the Russians' seafood, with the worst environmental standards in the world, and we will send it to China. We will use slave labor by the Uighurs to transform it, and we will call it Chinese fish. Then we will send it into the American market. That is happening right now--right now. So my legislation is simple. It closes the loophole. By the way, it is a really good idea because word is getting out that the Chinese fishing industry is a disaster. They take these big fleets. They go all over the world. They ravage the high seas. They ravage fisheries wherever they go. They are like--what is a good analogy? I don't know--rats in the water, right? They destroy the high seas fisheries. They go off the coasts of smaller countries in South America and Africa that don't have coast guards and can't enforce anything. They are literally like the abuser of the ocean and the world--China, OK? Then they use slave labor. How do I know? Because there has been article after article just in the last several weeks. POLITICO did a great article that I would like to submit for the Record after my remarks. This one is called--it is in POLITICO Magazine--``How Uyghur Forced Labor Makes Seafood That Ends Up in [American] School Lunches.'' This article can be found online at https://www.politico.com/news/ magazine/2023/11/21/chinese-forced-labor-seafood-00126642. Madam President, the New Yorker has done great work on this. One was titled ``The Crimes Behind the Seafood You Eat,'' from the New Yorker: ``Americans know little about how their seafood is sourced. Much of it comes from a vast fleet of Chinese ships. On board, human-rights abuses are rampant.'' This article can be found online at https://www.newyorker.com/ magazine/2023/10/16/the-crimes-behind-the-seafood-you-eat. Madam President, then there is another one from the New Yorker: ``The Uyghurs Forced to Process the World's Fish,'' OK? Slave labor. You know the Chinese--they try to dominate everything. They are trying to dominate the fishing industry at the expense of my fishermen--unfair practices. ``The Uyghurs Forced to Process the World's Fish.'' This is from the New Yorker in October of this year. The subheading is ``China forces minorities from Xinjiang [Province] to work in industries around the country. As it turns out, this includes handling much of the seafood sent to America and Europe.'' This article can be found online at https://www.newyorker.com/news/ news-desk/the-uyghurs-forced-to-process-the-worlds-fish. Madam President, this is what is going on. Now, look, there are always a few companies out there, including in our great Nation--and I am not besmirching them or anything, but you know, they kind of whine. And, remember, this happened at the beginning of the Ukraine war. You might remember that a lot of us, Democrats and Republicans, were like: Hey, let's make sure we stop the Russian war machine because right now America is importing a lot of Russian oil, OK? And the Europeans and the Germans in particular were saying: And we are importing a lot of Russian gas. So some of us were like: Well, hey, we are going to cut that off. Let's cut that off. Let's nail them. You might remember, at the beginning of the war, people were saying-- even in this country--and the Biden administration folks: Well, we can't really cut off Russian oil. You know, that will hurt the American economy. What about those importers of Russian oil in America? Those refineries that use Russian oil? What about those guys? With the Germans, it was the same thing: Well, we can't really cut off the importation of Russian gas because, well, shoot, we use it. Now, not a lot of people were buying those arguments. I certainly wasn't. The way we got around those arguments was: Well, wait a minute. We know that it is going to be a little painful, but here is an idea. Let's not import Russian oil. Let's use American oil. Let's use more oil from Alaska. We have way higher environmental standards and way higher worker standards. And you Germans, don't import Russian gas. Don't fund the Putin war machine. We will send you LNG from America. So the Germans, the Biden administration, and everyone was like: That is a good idea. So what did we do? We cut off Russian oil. In Europe, they cut off Russian gas. That is hurting those guys. That is good. And what did we do? We said: Let's fill it up with American oil and gas. So why am I using that as an analogy? Because we have a couple of companies--look, I get it, but, as I said when I debated it with Senator Markey a couple of months ago, it is not a good business model, America and American fish importers. Trust me. It is not a good business model to be using slave-labor Uighur seafood from China. At a certain point, Captain D's--you are one of the companies--it is going to catch up with you. It is going to catch up with you. It is not a good business model to be helping fund the Putin war machine. I know there are a few companies out there saying: Oh, we don't like the Sullivan bill. Shoot. Really? So what is the answer? It is the same answer: We have great American fishermen who can make sure you guys--Captain D's or whoever else, I guess some in Virginia--you get fish. Don't worry. By the way, it is a much higher standard. I just learned today that a lot of the Russian fish sent to China gets injected with 40 percent phosphates and water to plump it up, to make it look more plump. That is disgusting. Then it gets sent to America, maybe to Captain D's. So my point here is, we are not out to hurt you. We can say: Use American producers. Use great American fishermen from all over, not just Alaska--Maine, you know, Virginia, California, Oregon, Washington State. Use them. Don't block this legislation. Don't be a Putin lackey. Don't help fund the war machine. Don't help Xi Jinping's forced slave labor with the Uighurs. Buy American, for goodness' sake. Stand with American fishermen. So, when we come back, I am going to work this hard, and for all of you--and there are not many but a few importers. I hope the NFI is not doing this either. I hear they are, which would be really bad because they are supposed to promote the exporters too. That is the National Fisheries Institute. But what you need to do is not block this. This is a freight train, right, and it is going to pass. You want to get out of the way, and you want to help. Stand with American fishermen. Let us in Alaska supply your company. Don't rely on slave-labor China fish. Don't rely on authoritarian aggression, Putin-backed seafood from Russia with low environmental standards. By the way, they are flooding the markets globally because they are worried, and they are hurting fishermen in America, for sure. My fishermen and my fishing communities in my State are really hurting right now. This can help them. So we have been working on this hard. A lot of my Republican and Democratic colleagues are 100 percent with me. Like I said, there are a few importers who are kind of working the halls here, and my answer is: Come on. Be patriotic. Stand with America. Stand with American fishermen. Let's do legislation that can--what did I say at the beginning of my remarks? Now do you understand?--help defeat slave labor, help the environment, help strong American fishermen, help workers' rights, and go after Russian and Chinese abuses in the seafood industry. It is all over the place. It is only going to grow more widespread in terms of the knowledge. The American people say: Wait a minute. Do I want to eat fish that is slave-labor fish, Putin-oligarch fish? No. I want to buy fish--by the way, the highest standard in the world, by far. We don't inject 40 percent phosphates into this fish and make it disgusting. I want to stand with American fishermen and buy seafood from Americans. So that is what we are going to do. We are going to close that loophole. It is a big issue. Thanks for listening. But I sure hope when we get back that my colleagues will fully support it. I think 99.9 percent of them already do. That is the right answer. It is the right thing for our country and the right thing for America's fishermen.

Mr. SULLIVAN

Mr. SULLIVAN. Madam President, I am going to end my remarks today on a high note and a very important one. It is Wednesday. I like to come down and do what we call the ``Alaskan of the Week.'' I can see the pages are already kind of excited, right, because, let's face it, this is the most exciting speech of the week and certainly the most interesting. So what I like to do is come down--by the way, I know the press generally likes it because it is normally a signal that it is the end of the week. Everybody is going home. This is usually the last speech of the week. I think this might be the last speech of the year this year. What we do with the Alaskan of the Week, we talk a little bit about what is going on in Alaska--I will get to that--and then I like to highlight someone who is doing something great for my State. It might be, you know, someone local. Our first Alaskan of the Week, I think, was a librarian who had been a librarian for 40 years--amazing woman-- and then we have superstar world athletes, gold medalists in swimming, and things like that. So we just cover the whole gamut. Now, usually there is a poster board. I made this a very special Alaskan of the Week poster board. This might be the first time ever it has got Santa on it, and you are going to see why--a Santa-oriented speech. So, of course, right now, I am getting ready to head home in a couple of hours. I was just home over the weekend. There are no worries in Alaska right now about a white Christmas. Anchorage, my hometown, I think we have had close to 100 inches of snow already. Look, for us, that is a lot. I am talking about November, right. So we have a white Christmas coming, for sure. It is magical, of course, in Alaska. We have got reindeer. We have got one that actually lives in downtown Anchorage. We have visitors coming. We have got a great town called North Pole, AK--North Pole, AK--and we have the Santa Claus House in North Pole, where Santa lives. By the way, this is true. This is what my Alaskan of the Week speech is all about. If you write a letter to Santa addressed to the North Pole, your letter will end up at the Santa Claus House in North Pole, AK. Why wouldn't it? By the way, this house is not to be confused with the abode of a North Pole city council member. North Pole, AK, is a city a little bit north of Fairbanks. This city council member, by the way, his name is Santa Claus. His legal name is Santa Claus. He is a member of the city council. I know him well. Look, I am not ripping him. He is a Bernie Sanders Socialist, true. Now, why wouldn't he be? You know, the guy gives out free gifts to everybody. That is true. He is a good guy. So, Santa, if you are watching, hello--Santa Claus, city council member, North Pole. But in all seriousness, Interior Alaska--this is in the interior part of our State--has the greatest, most kind people and generous. And in keeping with the spirit of Christmas, our Alaskan of the Week is the Miller family who is the owner of Santa Claus House in North Pole, AK, which has been a fixture in our State--and really for the country--for over 70 years--70 years. The Miller family founded Santa Claus House and has been running it for 70 years, making North Pole, AK, literally what it is today. They built the whole community. Let me help you get into the holiday spirit by describing just how magical the Santa Claus House in North Pole, AK, really is. If you drive down Saint Nicholas Drive--I am not kidding--by St. Nicholas Catholic Church, by the way, you will see a huge house lined with red trim and murals of a reindeer and Santa's sleigh. Just outside is a barn with a real reindeer, a massive, decked-out Christmas tree, and a 42-foot-tall Santa Claus statue welcoming you to Santa's workshop. The magic does not end there. Inside the house, you are greeted by a Christmas tree decorated with every ornament you can imagine, a live countdown to Christmas Day--of course. Why wouldn't there be one every day of the year--and a professional Santa Claus ready to hear every Christmas wish from the thousands of visitors--and I am not just talking Alaskans but Americans, people from all over the world who visit Santa Claus House in North Pole, AK, every year. And you are also likely to meet and see several members of the extended Miller family working to make the Santa Claus House the winter wonderland it is. They have been doing it for four generations, keeping the spirit of Christmas alive. Let me take you back four generations to the original founder of Santa Claus House. That is Con and Nellie Miller. Born in 1913, Con and his mother just didn't see eye to eye. They decided that it was best that he join the Navy. He joined when he was 15--a little young. This is just in the great Alaska spirit. You know, I have talked about it a lot over the years. We have more veterans per capita than any State in the country, so being in the military and a veteran is very normal in Alaska. It is a great part of our culture. This young guy Con left Colorado and spent 3 years in the Navy, starting at the age of 15. How he got in, I have no idea. He was on a gun boat in China. Then he got out. Then Pearl Harbor happened. And of course he is a patriot so he rejoined the Navy. He fought in the South Pacific during the Second World War--so a great American, ``greatest generation'' individual, Con Miller. After the war ended, Con and his wife Nellie ended up in Fairbanks with the goal of running a clothing store. To supplement their income, Con sold clothes in the surrounding rural villages, often donning a red Santa suit each Christmas. He quickly earned celebrity status as the local Santa Claus in Interior Alaska--the first that many children had ever seen--ever--in rural Alaska. In 1952, the Millers built a trading post 13 miles south--sorry, if I said north--south of Fairbanks in the newly named North Pole, AK. So just a little south of Fairbanks, the big city in the interior. One day, while working hard at his new store, a young Alaskan boy recognized Con and asked: Well, hello, Santa. Are you building a new house? The inspiration clicked, and Con thought, Hey, why not? Let's do this. And so the Santa Claus House was born. In addition to purchasing groceries, locals could mingle at the soda fountain and pick up their daily mail at the Santa Claus House under the direction of the post mistress, Nellie Miller--Con's, a.k.a. Santa's, wife. It was a mail contract station that served North Pole's first post office for almost 20 years. So there you have it, North Pole, AK, became a post office for America. The Miller family lived above the store and was essential to its operation. All three kids: Terry, Mike, and Merry--yes, Merry Christmas, spelled M-E-R-R-Y, not M-A-R-Y--worked alongside their parents. Despite their insight behind the scenes as employees, current owner and manager Mike said they believed in Santa as much as anyone else. Of course, they did. Everybody believes in Santa. As North Pole grew--it is growing; it is a great community, like I said, just a few miles outside of Fairbanks--the Santa Claus House grew with it. Inside the store's emphasis on Christmas delights slowly replaced the aisles of canned goods. Meanwhile, the Miller family established themselves as pillars of the North Pole community--not only North Pole but all of Interior Alaska. Con Miller served as the mayor of North Pole for 19 years--the city's longest serving mayor--while Nellie Miller acted as a marriage commissioner for the community. Back then, that was a real job, a marriage commissioner. Eventually, both of their sons, Terry and Mike, also found politics. The late Terry Miller was a State legislator. He was president of the State senate and was elected to be our Lieutenant Governor in 1978. Mike, who was helping around the Santa Claus House, also served in the legislature as senate president from 1983 to 2001. This is a dominating political family in Alaska, two State senate presidents. I knew the Millers. They are a great, great family. Both Miller brothers, very highly respected across the aisle. This is, and was, and has been a great family committed to public service. Begun over 70 years ago by Con and Nellie Miller, the Santa Claus House continues as following generations of Millers keep up that Christmas spirit and keep it thriving in North Pole, AK. It is still a family-run business. Mike Miller is looking forward to the next generation continuing to run the family business with his daughter Carissa and son-in-law Paul and staffed by several grandchildren. Isn't this just a wonderful story? It really warms your heart as we head into the holiday season. We all know Santa's job is a hard one, and it is also no small job running the Santa Claus House for the world. In addition to the family, there are between 40 and 60 employees year-round working there. Besides being a delightful tourist attraction worldwide, the Santa Claus House understands the true meaning of Christmas and uses its name recognition for good works in the community, organizing food drives for the Fairbanks Food Bank that is used throughout Interior Alaska and many other charities. Mike said: I think we have really worked hard to bring the spirit of Santa to our community, ``the spirit of giving and family and caring about one another. I hope we have done a small slice [in this service] of helping people to realize that Christmas is about caring about one another, giving, and [about] being good neighbors.'' That is Mike Miller. They have done that in a huge way. They have done more than give a small slice. For the past 70 years, they have given their all toward spreading the magic, the wonder, and the joy of Christmas to Alaskans, to Americans, to people all over the world. So thank you to the Miller family and to the incredible institution of the Santa Claus House in North Pole for making our State a more jolly place, a more generous place, a more caring place, and for keeping the spirit of Christmas alive--not just now during the holidays but year-round in the great State of Alaska. And, of course, to the Millers and Santa Claus House, congratulations on being our Alaskan of the Week. I yield the floor.

Mr. SULLIVAN

Mr. SULLIVAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess subject to the call of the Chair.

Mr. SULLIVAN

Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I want to begin by offering my sincere thanks to the chairman of the Finance Committee, my friend Senator Wyden of Oregon. I am honored to be on the floor with him today to talk about these housing issues and this really important bill, the Workforce Housing Tax Credit Act, which, as he already mentioned, is bipartisan and bicameral. As Senator Wyden already mentioned, our country is facing a lot of challenges right now: inflation, fentanyl coming through our borders, national security threats all over the place overseas. But it is very obvious, and anyone reading the paper knows, that we are also experiencing in rural and urban America a severe housing crisis. Everywhere I travel in the great State of Alaska, I hear from Alaskans reeling from the scarcity of housing, and it is everywhere--Anchorage, Fairbanks, Sitka, Ketchikan, Kodiak--every single small rural village in my State. It is everywhere. I know it is a big challenge in Oregon, but it is a big challenge all over the country, and it is a challenge that impacts low- and middle- income families. It stands as a stark obstacle to getting and keeping jobs, to having a family, to building communities. This is really foundational stuff in terms of what matters in communities--housing. So solving this challenge has been one of my top priorities, and I really want to thank Senator Wyden and his team for being so patient in working with us--a really good partner here. This is going to take all kinds of solutions. There is no silver bullet here. It is going to take everybody pulling on the same oar--the Feds, State, private sector, Tribes, nonprofits--but this is an important start. I actually hosted the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Marcia Fudge, in Alaska this past August. We held a roundtable and some meetings on urban housing issues and on rural housing issues. It was very well attended. I want to thank all of the Alaskans who took part. They weren't shy with Secretary Fudge--she got an earful--and there is a whole host of things we are going to follow up on with her: challenges dealing with overregulation from HUD, homelessness definitions, housing formulas for cities. But it was progress our getting her up to Alaska. So this is progress. This is progress. What Senator Wyden and I have introduced is an exciting and creative bill that will broaden a tried- and-true Federal tax incentive program--the low-income housing tax credit. This all started during the 1980s, during the Reagan administration. It is market-based. It is private sector-focused. It is a proven, successful formula that will help catalyze the private sector to build more housing in urban and rural areas for working families. That is why we actually named it the Workforce Housing Tax Credit Act. Teachers, law enforcement, first responders, nurses, healthcare officials, electricians--the backbone of so many communities--are, right now, priced out of the market to buy a home. Expanding the low-income housing credit will help address the core issues of not just homelessness and overcrowding in many places in Alaska, particularly in rural Alaska, but it will empower hard-working Alaskans to stay in our communities and build a more robust workforce. Now, sometimes, when you bring legislation down on the Senate floor, you are not sure who is going to support it. Well, I am very proud to say that, back home in Alaska, this bill has enormous support-- liberals; conservatives; mayors; our Governor; the mayor of Anchorage, our biggest city; the chair of the Anchorage Assembly. I know these guys really well. They don't really get along on much, but they support this bill. We have Tribal groups. We have private sector groups. We have home builder groups. It is a super big list. I think that is the signal for Senator Wyden and me that we are on to something here. We are on to something here. If there aren't homes in communities for hard-working families, then entire communities are shut off for growth. Housing is a catalyst for community and economic development and good jobs and pride in where you live. This bill offers one solution that will actually lead to the construction of these kinds of housing developments. How do I know that? How can I say that? Because, as the chairman of the Finance Committee already said, we know this works. The low-income tax credit already works. We know that, and we are building on that program in the best way to ensure that the private sector will actually use this program to break open other bottlenecks for economic development. Importantly, this bill provides flexibilities to States and developers to decide what is best for their communities. It is not a one-size-fits-all Washington mandate. We don't like those in Alaska. As I mentioned, it has broad support--bipartisan, bicameral. Once again, to my friend from Oregon, I really want to thank Senator Wyden. He was very patient with me and my team as we had a number of edits. We were trying to make sure that this would work for America and Alaska. Sometimes, my State has some really unique challenges, and he accommodated so much and was very patient with us. You can tell, again, from the reaction of this broad-based group of stakeholders back home in my State, that this has a lot of support. So I thank Senator Wyden again. I look forward to working with him and my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in getting this over the goal line and addressing one of the big challenges in America that, I think, impacts every State in the country. This is one of the many tools we will use to try to address it. I yield the floor.

Mr. SULLIVAN

Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I am going to pose a simple question here related to this guy. That is the dictator of China, Xi Jinping. Imagine if a Chinese financial institution, one of their banks, one of their private equity funds--they have a lot of them. Imagine if a Chinese financial institution started to invest in the United States in big technologies that would make the U.S. military much stronger. What do you think would happen to those executives in China? They are taking Chinese money, and they are pouring it into companies that work directly with the Pentagon, making the U.S. Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force stronger and more lethal. What would this dictator do to those Chinese executives? I will tell you what he would do. A, he would never let them do it. But if they did do it, he would arrest them, put them in jail, and shoot them at sunup. That is what he would do. There is not one person in this body, not one person in America-- heck, not one person in China--who would disagree with that. That is what he would do. So what happens when American investment companies--financial institutions, private equity firms, hedge funds, venture capital firms, investment banks--what happens when they invest in Chinese companies that make the Chinese military more lethal and stronger? What happens? The answer: pretty much nothing. Worse, we have a hard time knowing which American firms are even doing this. This is a huge knowledge gap in an asymmetrical advantage that our biggest adversary--right here, Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party--has over us. They can't invest. They won't invest. They will get the death penalty if they invest in an American company that will help our military become stronger. We have, who knows, a lot of financial institutions investing in Chinese companies to make their military stronger. We have financial companies that are investing in the Chinese Communist Party, companies that are producing things like advanced semiconductors, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, hypersonics--all technologies that are critical to dominating the 21st century battlefield. This is a giant American national security issue. I don't normally come down to the Senate floor and quote Lenin. I am not a big fan of Lenin. But he purportedly said that ``capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.'' There is a little bit of that going on right now here in the United States of America. We have executives in this country and certain financial institutions--by the way, these American financial institutions and executives owe everything to their success by being American, being in the greatest country in the world, with the rule of law and our capital markets and our dynamic economy. Their success is because of the great Nation we live in, and yet some, kind of addicted to making more money--listen to Lenin. They are like, you know, maybe I will do that advanced chip manufacturing investment in the Chinese economy; maybe I will help them a little bit with artificial intelligence or quantum computing. By the way, quantum computing, if you get really good at that, you can break any code that our military uses. You are toast if you can't communicate in a covered fashion--encrypted. This is really dangerous stuff. I was first, actually, made aware of this many years ago by, in my view, one of the best Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for our military that we have had in decades, Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford. He is just a fantastic Marine officer, just a fantastic Chairman. He is very measured, very smart, very strategic. He raised this issue with me many years ago: Senator, we, America, have financial institutions--American financial institutions using American investment money--you know, the Iowa teachers' retirement plan, the laborers' retirement plan. They are taking that money, and they are investing it in China in some really advanced technologies. There is a problem. The Chinese don't have that kind of investment capital and professionalism to grow these companies, but we do. So this was first brought up to me by a great Marine general. So I started digging into it over the years and years, and it is a giant problem. Senior administration officials in the Biden administration agree. A whole host of top national security officials in the Trump administration agree. This is a bipartisan issue in terms of the concern. It is a blinking red light for our national security. So some might ask: Well, wait a minute. What is wrong with an American financial company making an investment in the Chinese private economy? Well, look, it depends on what part of the Chinese private economy. If you want to go make more hamburgers over there and sell--I don't know--refrigerators, that is fine. But these are investments in some of the critical technological needs of the military that will enable whichever military dominates these sectors to dominate the 21st century battlefield. And, by the way, there is no such thing as a private company in China. If you are a private equity firm in America, you are saying: Well, I am just investing in this private company in China to help them with their quantum computing capability. We all know that this guy and the Chinese military--the PLA and the Chinese Communist Party--they own that. They own that. They will take it, use it, dominate it. So what can we do about this problem? Well, look, there are a lot of ideas on what we can do about this problem. I am working on legislation that would actually have the U.S. Government, believe it or not--and I am not a big government guy--look into the investments being made by American financial institutions into some of the most high-tech areas of China, what we would call outbound CFIUS. CFIUS is this process for inbound investment. Let's look at what is happening outbound. It is a little more controversial. I think we need it, unfortunately, because we have a lot of--not a ton but, certainly, a number of--American financial executives who are like: Look, man, whatever--patriotism, I will leave that at the door. I am not really worried about that. I am not worried about that guy. I just want to make a big buck. It is too bad, but we got them. So we need this. Here is an easier starting point. Let's have a transparency provision that enables us, the U.S. Government, to say: All right, big financial American firms or private equity firms or hedge funds, the American investment dollars that you are getting from the Illinois teachers' retirement fund, we want to know if you are putting that into quantum computing that can help this guy dominate Taiwan. We want to know that. We want transparency. It is pretty good idea. Now, Senator Cornyn offered a bill--I was a cosponsor of it--that we attached to the NDAA, saying we want outbound investment transparency. We want to know: What are American financial firms doing helping this guy become stronger? It is pretty easy. Guess what, Mr. President. It is super bipartisan. That bill is brought to the floor as part of the National Defense Authorization Act and passed 91 to 6--91 to 6. Very few things pass 91 to 6 here. That did because it made sense. It is very bipartisan and relatively simple. It is just transparency. Hey, Sequoia Capital--I am going to talk about them in minute--a big private equity firm, are they investing in quantum computing that can help this guy dominate the world? We should know, especially if it is American investment dollars, right? So that is a good start. There is a lot of agreement. Here is a letter from Dr. Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage Foundation. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a letter dated November 29, 2023, be printed in the Record.

Mr. SULLIVAN. He was talking about how we need to be able to track U.S. capital flowing into China, and it would be extremely concerning if that Cornyn amendment didn't make it into the final NDAA. So he is saying: Hey, Senators, House Members, make sure that stays in. Thank you, President Roberts of Heritage. He also wrote the leadership of the House and Senate: Senator McConnell, Senator Schumer, Speaker Johnson, and Congressman Jeffries. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a letter dated November 16, 2023, be printed in the Record.

Mr. SULLIVAN. The letter says this is really important--this Outbound Investment Transparency Act, 91 to 6. Let's get it in the final NDAA. It is pretty simple, pretty noncontroversial. But, Mr. President, as you know, nothing here is ever simple. Evidently, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Patrick McHenry--I don't know him. He seems like a nice guy, from what I hear. But, boy, is this guy misguided because it is all over the press that he fought like crazy to strip this provision out of the NDAA. Why would he do that? By the way, he is retiring. So I am not sure why we give him a lot of say anymore. But somehow, some way, one Congressman--Republican, by the way--over in the House convinced the House to strip this transparency provision that is meant to undermine this bad guy. They stripped it out of the NDAA. So it is not in the National Defense Authorization Act because one Congressman said: I don't want it in. Ninety-one Senators said: We need it in. And, by the way, the vast majority of the House wants it in. You have a really strong House Member, Congressman Gallagher, who is leading this bipartisan China commission. He says it is really important. The Biden administration wants it in. I have talked to Secretary of Commerce Raimondo and the Secretary of Defense. They all want it in. But one Congressman, who is not even going to be around anymore, gets to strip it out so we don't know what American investments are going to make this guy stronger? He gets the final say? This is an outrage. And this is enough of an outrage that Senator Cornyn and I, 2 weeks ago, in a lunch, when the Speaker of the House came to visit us, we said: Hey, Mr. Speaker, we are hearing some things about this really important, simple transparency investment provision, that you guys might strip it out. Why? Come on. Some of us have been focused on the China threat for years, and now, we have one Congressman, who is leaving, and he says we strip it out, when 91 Senators say we need it. So the Speaker said to me and Senator Cornyn--we were pretty forceful in the meeting. I am a big fan of the new Speaker, Speaker Johnson. But he said: Well, it might not make it in the NDAA, but we will bring to the floor of the House a vote on the McCaul bill. This is the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Chairman McCaul, who has an amendment that is very similar to the Cornyn amendment. Actually, it is a little bit tougher. So he doesn't like it. Xi Jinping doesn't like it. So we said: All right, Mr. Speaker. It sounds like a good compromise. Let's do it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Since that meeting, I think I have gotten a commitment, and I think Senator Cornyn thinks he has gotten a commitment from the Speaker of the House to a bunch of U.S. Senators, saying: Don't worry, we got this. Since that time, I have been reading press reports. Now, look, the press can get a lot of things wrong. The press is saying: No, actually, the Speaker is not going to bring up a vote on the McCaul bill--which, by the way, in the House, will get 340 votes easy, and if that came back here, it would get 91, maybe more. So it would be super bipartisan, and this guy, this dictator, would hate it. Let's do it. Let's do it. But just lately, the press is reporting that the Speaker is now saying: Maybe I won't do what I told the Senators. Maybe I am going to put some kind of Commission together, and we will study it. Well, as you know, when you start studying things here, that is a way to kick the can down the road. So my first priority here is to call out the Speaker of the House and say: Mr. Speaker, I am pretty sure you said you were going to bring the McCaul bill to the House floor soon--maybe before Christmas but certainly January. Let's get it voted on. We will pass it here in the Senate, I guarantee you. The majority leader will bring it up. Let's do that. So I hope you continue to make that commitment, Mr. Speaker. It would be really disappointing if somehow a Congressman who is leaving-- leaving--teams up with the people who don't want us to know how Americans are investing in this guy's military industrial complex. That wouldn't be good. So I call on the Speaker to keep that commitment that he made to a bunch of U.S. Senators recently and not put forward some kind of baloney Commission that is just kicking the can down the road. That wouldn't be good. But let me end with just a reason--like, why does transparency matter? Why does it matter? Well, I am going to give one small example, but it is a pretty good one. This is a venture capital firm called Sequoia. Very successful. Americans. They benefited from being an American company working in the American economy. Really, really smart guys and women. Highly successful. Their executives are very wealthy, and that is great. This is a capitalist country; I love that. But they were also known as one of these firms that were doing what I said: making big investments over many, many years in very high-tech components of the Chinese economy--advanced computer chip manufacturing, quantum computing, things like that. I think that is wrong, that Americans and American executives and American investment dollars are going to China to help develop weapon systems that will be used to kill U.S. marines and U.S. sailors if we ever get in a fight in the Taiwan Strait. So Sequoia Capital came to meet with me a couple years ago, and I essentially told them that. Hey, look, you are very successful. That is great. You live in the greatest country in the world. You have done a lot to help our economy. But why are you helping the Chinese economy? Why are you investing in things that are going to give them a military advantage over our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines? Why are you doing that? They didn't have a good answer. It wasn't a very cordial meeting, to be honest, because we didn't see it the same way. But at the very end of the meeting, actually, one of them got up and said: Well, you know, Senator, if we don't do these kinds of investments in China, the Saudis and Emirates will. I was like: Wait. What? That is your drop-the-mic argument at the end? You requested the meeting with me. That is a pathetic argument. What about patriotism? What about American interests? So I started kind of blowing the whistle a little bit on this company in hearings and stuff. We did a lot of research. They were doing a lot of big-time investments in some of the highest tech elements of the Chinese economy that will help their military kill American sailors and soldiers if we ever get in a fight. That is wrong. So we started--some of us--putting a little pressure on these guys. Transparency. Calling them out--Americans doing this kind of thing. Well, some of that worked. They announced a big separation agreement. They are not going to do it anymore. They are getting pressure from the Congress--by the way, legitimate pressure. Here is a headline from the Wall Street Journal: ``Sequoia Made a Fortune Investing in the U.S. and China''--China high technology that will help their military--``Then It Had to Pick One.'' It had to pick one because Members of Congress were saying: Enough. That is transparency. So we want to know how many more Sequoias are out there. It is a pretty legitimate ask. It is actually a very legitimate ask. It is so legitimate that 91 U.S. Senators voted for this. And we have one Congressman over there who is leaving--not sure where he is going; maybe he is going to Sequoia Capital--and he is blocking it. So we need to fix this. We need to make sure the vast majority of U.S. Senators and U.S. House Members who want transparency on this really important national security issue--that this gets fixed. So once again I am calling on the Speaker to keep his commitment, bring the McCaul bill to the floor soon--next week, 2 weeks, January. But don't let one Congressman who is walking out the door thwart the vast, vast majority of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House on a very important national security issue. You know, a lot of us talk a lot about China and the threats. I have been coming out here since I got elected in 2015 to talk about the challenges of this dictator. He is a menace, dangerous, and they are growing their power. But do you know what? A lot of it is talk. A lot of it is talk. This was something that was action. It wasn't a huge deal--transparency, action. Right now, we have Republican House Members--hopefully not the Speaker, but certainly the chairman of the Financial Committee, the Banking Committee--who are saying: No, I want to keep it in the dark, what Americans are doing to invest in making this guy stronger. That is wrong. Mr. President, 99.9 percent of Americans would think that is wrong. So we need to fix it. The House needs to take leadership on this issue. And my Republican colleagues keep talking tough on China. It is time to act. It is time to act. I yield the floor.

Mr. SULLIVAN

Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I am honored to be down here again with Senators Graham, Ernst, and Young. We were down on the floor 2 weeks ago, and at that time, we promised military members and their families that we had their back; that we would keep coming down to the Senate floor to try to move forward their nominations and confirmations that have been stalled. By the way, after that session, 5 hours, we tried to move forward nominees who have nothing to do with the policy dispute that is at issue here--I think we are all in agreement on the policy dispute--we received hundreds of text messages, e-mails from military families, saying: Thank you for having our back. Somebody has our back. Somebody is speaking out for us. So we have told them we are going to do that as we are moving into Thanksgiving. My colleagues and I, we are going to keep our word. We keep our word to our military. Now, during that time in the last 2 weeks, we have all worked hard together. Senator Tuberville is here. Senator Lee is on the floor. We are all working hard to try and resolve this. We have ideas. Senator Graham is going to talk a little bit more about litigation, about switching the holds from the innocent members of the military to the civilians who are making the policy, that is the appropriate--to fighting this abortion policy of the Biden administration, DOD, and the NDAA. So we are still working on that. I want to extend that to my colleagues, but the backlog grows. Right now, when Armed Services reports out the next batch of military officers, it will be 450, one-, two-, three-, and four-star generals--450. This is having a huge readiness challenge and a huge morale challenge while our troops are literally--literally--in combat, literally under fire. Some of these being held in the Middle East, in terms of their promotions, are in combat right now. The world is a very dangerous place. Very quickly, my Democrat colleagues, the Biden administration, they seem to take a certain delight in what is happening here. I don't take a delight in this at all. I don't relish this at all. I like working with my Republican colleagues. I wish we could resolve this. I am on the floor here more out of sadness and frustration than anger, and I really do wish, with my colleague Senator Tuberville, that we can find a way forward on this fast so we can turn to an even bigger readiness problem, and that is the Biden administration's lack of seriousness when it comes to the Department of Defense: cutting the budgets every year; the current budget shrinks the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps; the civilian woke focus of this administration. They are not serious on our national defense and military. We need to get through that. Senator Tuberville and I actually were the ones who made the majority leader bring forward the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. So on the other side of the aisle, there wasn't a lot of seriousness on moving people either. So I hope we can resolve this issue and focus on even the bigger readiness issue that plagues this administration right now. But there is no doubt these blanket holds are creating readiness challenges not just for flag officers; we are starting to hear of colonels and lieutenant colonels who are being stuck. So this is impacting the entire military. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the letters from the Military Officers Association of America, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the American Legion--this represents millions of Americans all requesting that these blanket holds be lifted--be printed in the Record.

Mr. SULLIVAN. Finally, tonight we are going to bring up some more members. I hope my colleagues don't object. When they are going to talk, I am sure they are going to talk about the Biden policy, which we all disagree with. Four Senators on the floor who were on the floor 2 weeks ago, we have a lot in common, but two big things are strongly pro-life and strongly pro-military because we are veterans. We have served. We know what sacrifice means, and we want to make sure we are protecting our military members and their families. That is a core principle, certainly, of Republicans, and we need to do that. What I am hopeful for--hearing from my colleagues on the floor--also questions that we didn't hear from last week. My colleague from Alabama said many times that if you bring up nominees one by one, he would be fine with it. On September 6, he said: I am not holding up nominees from being approved. They can bring them to the floor one at a time, and I won't block them. Well, that is what we are doing. By the way, this is regular order. We did some research. There has only been two times in the last half century where there was a recorded vote on a brigadier general--twice. We are doing more than regular order here by moving these individually. And, finally, this is the most important question I think we all think is imperative; it needs to be answered for our military members: Why punish patriotic military members over a policy dispute they have nothing to do with and can't fix? Why punish people who have seriously sacrificed for America--more than probably anyone else on the floor here, certainly--over a policy dispute they had nothing to do with? Why punish their families and the war heroes supporting these families you will hear about tonight who have served our country so faithfully, when they have nothing to do with the dispute on the floor? Why punish some of the most combat-experienced members of the military whom we need on the field now--one of the most dangerous times in the last 70 years-- when they have nothing to do with this dispute? So I was home Veterans Day in Alaska. My State has more veterans per capita than any other State in the country--very patriotic citizens. The events I went to, young Alaskans, old Alaskans really honor our veterans. Whenever I am at a ceremony and I am speaking, I always call out our Vietnam vets for special recognition because what happened to them should never happen again to any military members. What happened to them? There were huge policy disputes over the Vietnam war at the Pentagon level, but people took it out on the troops. People took it out on the troops. They punished the troops over a policy dispute these troops had nothing to do with. They were serving honorably. Americans always said, We will never do that again. Well, guess what? It is happening again. Troops are being punished. Families are being punished over something they have nothing to do with. So my hope tonight is we get my colleague to lift the blanket hold and not object to these individual noms. But it is also important to understand what a blanket hold is. It is about individuals. Who are these heroes? Who is being punished? How have they served their country? How have they sacrificed? We are going to hear a little bit about that, I hope. I think Americans who are watching will be proud when they hear about these great patriots--for those listening--but also might make you sad or frustrated or even angry that we are not keeping faith with these faithful patriots. I am now going to turn the floor to my colleague Senator Ernst.

Mr. SULLIVAN. Heroes.

Mr. SULLIVAN. Heroes.

Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I want to begin by thanking Senator Ernst, my good colleague--joint operations here--giving voice to these great Americans. Now, look, if you are watching--I know it is almost 2:30 in the morning--but you are watching your American system. You have got to be proud. I am so proud. These are great Americans. These are the best of what we have. They are heroes, and their families are heroic. And, look, a core principle as Republicans that distinguishes us, in my view, from the other side is our serious focus on national security, readiness, a strong military, and, yes, taking care of our military and their families. That is what we stand for. And it just makes me proud to listen to who we have up for confirmation to be a one-, two-, three- , or four-star General. We need them. Senator Graham said: Hey, we are coming on to the holidays. It is true. I had two Thanksgivings where I was deployed overseas, and it is not easy, right? You are missing your family. You are out there protecting your country. You don't think many people are even thinking of you when the rest of the country is celebrating and you are doing your duty. So what we said 2 weeks ago is we are not--we will have your back. If you are a military member who is being held up right now, we will have your back. And that is what we are doing. Like I said, I don't relish this. I didn't relish it 2 weeks ago. Kind of down here, as I mentioned, more in sadness and frustration than anger. But I also come from a State that is incredibly patriotic-- Alaska--more veterans per capita than any State in the country. And they expect this of their Senators. Stand up for our men and women in uniform and don't punish the military for something they have nothing to do with. Every one of those people Senator Ernst talked about who we were going to try to confirm tonight have nothing to do with the dispute that we are all in agreement--every Senator on the floor right now is in agreement. I have been working with Senator Tuberville for months together to try to reverse this policy of the Biden administration. I agree 100 percent it violates the Hyde amendment. It violates the rule of law. So I want to keep working with Senator Tuberville and others on ways to reverse that. But what we can't do, what we shouldn't do, but what is happening right now is we are punishing those who have nothing to do with it. And why punish patriotic military members over a dispute that they have no ability to fix and they didn't cause? Go after the civilians. Let's do it. I am taking them hostage in terms of holding them. They have the power. But why punish these war heroes who have served our country so faithfully? Why single out the Americans? You know, we have all kinds of Federal workers, but there are very few Federal workers who sign a blank check with their life. That is all the people Senator Ernst read. They sign a blank check with their life, saying: All right. You know, less than 1 percent of our great Nation's population does this--less than 1 percent. And nobody has told me--I mean, Senator Lee had a lot to say tonight. I agree with 99 percent of it, in terms of his talk about the Constitution and who has the ability to make laws. I couldn't agree more. But no one has come out and said: But here is why we are going to punish those people Senator Ernst just read about. I don't think we should be doing that. I think we should be giving them a voice, and that is what we have been trying to do. So, as I mentioned, one of my goals tonight that I mentioned in my remarks was to bring up these nominees one by one, try to get them cleared, as Senator Tuberville mentioned. But it was--he had mentioned he was fine with a while ago. By the way, this is regular order. We did some research. There have only been two Brigadier Generals confirmed by a recorded vote in the last half-century, OK? Twice that has happened in the last half-century. So the regular order is actually--you do it by voice vote and en bloc. What we are offering is, hey, we will do it by voice vote individually, every one. We will be down here for all 450. Senator Ernst and I would stay here all weekend to do that. But it is very clear from my colleagues that that is not going to happen. Look, to be honest, if I were blocking all these military heroes, I wouldn't want their bios being read on the floor, but we are going to do that, because here is the other thing about this: There are a lot of emails and texts, and a lot of people are tweeting about this, but guess who can't go out and have a press conference on this. The military members. It is not their job. Finally, one other issue--and then I am going to start talking about the people we are going to bring up--is that we really have to think about this issue as a strategic risk to the force. We have 450 officers, one-, two-, three-, and four-star Generals. Yes, I know a little bit about the military, having served for 30 years. The system is kind of stymied, so even the ranks below one, two, and three star are starting to kind of get blocked. So I am not saying that Senator Tuberville has a hold on those, but it is impacting those ranks as well. Where I am very nervous, because I talk to a lot of my peers in the military, is that, you know, you work 30 years, you do deployments, you sacrifice--a big sacrifice for your families. These great men and women have options, and at a certain point, they time out in terms of their ability to move up or they have to get out. So if we start to lose a generation of our best, most combat-capable military officers over this, especially during this very dangerous time, that is going to be a huge strategic national security mistake. So what I want to do, similar to Senator Ernst's focus, is bring to the floor and to the attention of the American people the people we were going to try to get confirmed tonight. I know they are going to be objected to, so, like Senator Ernst, I am going to talk about them because, again, I think the American people need to know this. The American people should take pride in these people because they are great patriots. And, remember, less than 1 percent join the military. I don't know what the percentage is that gets to flag officer rank, general officer or Admiral, but it is the best--not just the best in America but the best in the world, and we need them. We need them. This dispute that is happening right now--again, I fully agree the Biden administration launched this. We are fighting it. But we need these people confirmed. Let's go after the confirmations of the civilians who actually are in charge of the policy. We have that option, too. So one of the first nominees I was going to bring forward is on Calendar No. 95. That is Col. Robert Weiler. He is being promoted to Brigadier General of the U.S. Marine Corps. He is a Colonel right now-- 28 years--command of the 5th Marine Regiment. I used to be in that regiment. That is the most storied infantry regiment in the Marine Corps. He has deployed, I think, seven times to Iraq and Afghanistan. Imagine that family's sacrifice. He received a Silver Star for bravery, gallantry, and intrepidity in action against the enemy while serving as a commanding officer of Weapons Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, 5th Marine Regiment. I am going to read that citation. There are not many Silver Star recipients in America. Here is one right now who could be confirmed to Brigadier General. He has earned it. And he is no ``woke'' military member; he is a warrior. Here is his citation for the Silver Star. It is one of the highest awards for combat valor that we have. The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Silver Star to Captain Robert S. Weiler, United States Marine Corps, for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action against the enemy while serving as Commanding Officer, Weapons Company, Second Battalion, Fourth Marines, FIRST Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force . . . in support of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM II from 6 to 10 April 2004. On 6 April, Captain Weiler led elements of Weapons Company against an enemy force that was attempting to isolate and destroy a squad-sized element of Echo Company. Another unit, an adjacent Marine Corps unit. As the column moved east along Route Nova, they were ambushed by enemy forces. Despite the barrage of intense enemy fire, Captain Weiler calmly directed the tactical employment of the unit, leading to the relief of the embattled squad. OK. Saving American lives. Saving the lives of other marines. That is what this is. And then he led the destruction of the besieging enemy, so he killed the bad guys. On 7 April, he led the company on a mission to reinforce [another Marine Corps] unit in contact. As they moved northeast along Route Apple, the column encountered heavy rocket-propelled grenade and automatic weapons fire. During the ensuing three-hour firefight-- Think about that, America. We have been on the floor for 3 hours. These guys were in an intense firefight for 3 hours-- he repeatedly exposed himself to enemy fire to direct [his] unit's counterattack, personally leading squads as they assaulted enemy firing positions. His courage and leadership were further displayed during Operation BUG HUNT. Heavily engaged by enemy forces over a four-hour period-- Four hours; combat-- Captain Weiler continued to fearlessly lead Marines as they destroyed a tenacious enemy. By his bold leadership, wise judgment, and complete dedication to duty, Captain Weiler reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have this Silver Star citation printed in the Record.

Mr. SULLIVAN. It doesn't mention it here, but do you know what else he received during that firefight--two firefights? The Purple Heart. So he was wounded in action by the enemy. Then, later, several months later, he received a Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with combat distinguishing device for heroic achievement in combat. He took decisive action directing fires of his raid force, quickly gaining fire superiority and suppressing the enemy. Although dazed by a blast from a mortar round, he continued to lead and direct his team, which led to the capture of all five insurgents on the target raid list. That is another combat medal he won. So we were going to bring him up for promotion today to Brigadier General, a complete American war hero, but unfortunately Colonel Weiler's promotion to Brigadier General is being blocked. By the way, he had nothing to do with the policy and dispute that we all agree on, that we have to overturn that. Nothing to do with it. Nothing. When he gets promoted to Brigadier General, he won't have any ability to fix it. This is a war hero punished for an issue he has nothing to do with. OK. Calendar No. 93. This is for Brigadier General Ronald Ragin--yes, that is how you pronounce it; it is not spelled that same way--to be Major General. He is in the U.S. Army. Like Senator Ernst, who is an expert in Special Operations forces, this General is an expert in Special Operations forces. Most recently, he is serving as commanding general, 21st Theater Sustainment Command, U.S. Army Europe and Africa. His command assignments: troop commander, combat sports squadron, 11th Armored Calvary Regiment; company commander, 225th Forward Support Battalion, 25th Infantry Division; battalion commander, Group Support Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group-Airborne; squadron commander support, 1st Special Forces Operations Detachment, Delta Force. OK. You are not even supposed to say that, I don't think. Are you? OK. Delta Force, the most elite Special Operations force. It is not even supposed to be talked about. A Delta Force commander. This guy is unbelievable, his record. So he is an expert in Special Operations forces, a Delta Force commander, brigade commander for Sustainment Brigade, numerous deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, Airborne, 7th Special Forces Group, U.S. Special Operations Command, and we are trying to move him from a one-star to a two-star General. He is an American hero who, by the way, has nothing to do with the dispute. He is being punished--not being promoted, being punished over something he has nothing to do with. That is a great American hero right there. Let's look at another one here we are going to bring up, another U.S. Army Brigadier General to move to the grade of Major General. That is two-star. This is Brigadier General Lance G. Curtis. Again, another Airborne platoon; served at all levels of command--82nd Airborne, 101st Airborne; numerous deployments; executive officer; deputy commander for U.S. Forces Afghanistan in Kabul during Operation Enduring Freedom; battalion commander of the 87th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, GA, and at Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan, during OEF; commander for Special Forces Command, United States Special Operations Command; and the executive officer of the commander of Army Personnel; finally, deputy director of headquarters in the U.S. Army, G-4. Again, I mean, think about this. This is decades of service--decades. These are great patriots, and they are being punished over an issue they have nothing to do with and can't fix.

Mr. SULLIVAN. No. I am getting through--this is really important for me to make sure the American people hear about these warriors, so I am prioritizing--

Mr. SULLIVAN. No, I won't. Mr. President, the next hero that we are trying to confirm is BG Michelle Donahue to be Major General of the U.S. Army. With 26 years of service, currently, Michelle Donahue is a Brigadier General. She has served in the 1st Infantry Division in the U.S. Army Special Operations Command. Her combat tours include deployments to Jordan with the 528th Special Operations Support Battalion; a deployment to Iraq; a deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom; a deployment to Afghanistan in 2014 as the squadron commander for the Regimental Support Squadron. Brigadier General Donahue has served as special assistant to the 37th Chief of Staff of the Army and to the 18th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, operational command and command at the highest levels with the Chief of Staff of the Army in terms of being a special assistant there and trying to get promoted from Brigadier General to Major General-- that is a two-star General--and she is being blocked over something that she has nothing to do with. Again, we need these warriors on the field. Speaking of warriors, this is another nominee who has made the grade of Major General, that is a two-star General. He is Brig. Gen. Thomas Harrell. He most recently served as the director for the Defense Health Network and as the commander of the 59th Medical Wing. Now, this is also really important. You don't hear about this element of our military that much. The leaders who lead the medical units are so important. Brigadier General Harrell has commanded a squadron level, a DOD hospital, an Air Force medical center. He previously served as the commander of the Air Force Medical Readiness Agency, as the Defense Health Agency Headquarters' deputy director of medical operations of the Air Force, as the deputy director of medical services in the entire U.S. Air Force, and as the subunified Alaskan Command surgeon general at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska. It is a really important job in my State. He also received an Air Medal for valor. Let me read that: Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Harrell contributed to national security objectives by flying missions in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. These flights were accomplished in the face of enemy threats to include small-arms fire, anti- aircraft artillery, and surface-to-air missiles. Think about that. That is a medical officer taking incoming enemy fire to go save lives. That is a hero. His superior ability in the presence of perilous and dangerous conditions was manifested in the performance of medical observers in addition to addressing the in-flight health needs of the crew and combatants, culminating in the safe and timely delivery of cargo and combat troops. That is a war hero right there. Unfortunately, if we move to get that Brigadier General promoted to Major General tonight, it looks like it is probably not going to happen. We are also looking at Brig. Gen. Jeannine Ryder to be a Major General in the U.S. Air Force. She is Calendar No. 106. Jeannine Ryder, again, is part of the Air Force medical agency units and chief of the Air Force Nurse Corps. OK. Again, these are really, really important jobs that we need. Again, this is somebody in a very competitive world who has moved all the way up the ranks from a one- to two-star General. She has been involved in the execution of medical readiness programs, expeditionary medical capabilities, and the direct support and implementation of policy, plans, and programs for healthcare operations of the Air Force Medical Service to more than 44,000 U.S. Air Force personnel at 76 military treatment facilities. That is unbelievable. Brigadier General Ryder has commanded at the flight, squadron, and group levels in both deployed and in garrison environments. Prior to her most recent assignment, Brigadier General Ryder was the commander of the 59th Medical Wing, market director of the San Antonio Military Health System, Joint Base San Antonio, Lackland, TX. She is very deserving of a promotion and can't be promoted over something she has nothing to do with--nothing. And if she got promoted, she wouldn't be involved in fixing it either. You know, when we came down here 2 weeks ago, it kind of struck me because we have 450 officers right now, and we are standing with them. We are standing with them. We are pro-life Senators who are standing with them. I think we have emphasized that enough, but we will emphasize it again. One of the things that struck me 2 weeks ago was how many one- and two- and three-star Admirals with very significant deployment experience, particularly on submarines, are now being blocked. As anyone who knows about our challenges in the Indo-Pacific theater, Xi Jinping, who was visiting America--I haven't gotten a read out of the President's meeting, but I am worried that they are weak on them and that they are weak on the military. Again, what I want to do with my colleagues here on the floor is actually get through this issue and turn to the bigger readiness problem, which is the weakness of the Biden administration. But where we don't have weakness is in submarines. We need more submarines, but we have the best commanders in the world. Xi Jinping is scared to death of the American sub fleet--scared to death. They know if they try to invade Taiwan--and we have subs in the Taiwan Strait--we will take out their whole invasion force. But we need good commanders. And 2 weeks ago, there were six sub commanders who were objected to-- six. As I mentioned then, I guarantee you the Chinese Communist Party's military apparatus is going, like: I can't believe our luck with the thing we are so frightened of. And you can't produce a sub commander overnight. It takes 30, 40 years. So we have some Navy officers here. This is Calendar No. 234, VADM Jeffrey Hughes. He is a two-star Admiral to be Vice Admiral. His naval career is unbelievable. For 34 years, he served as a detachment officer in charge headed tours of a helicopter anti-submarine squadron where he deployed on the USS Carr, the USS Elrod, the USS John Hancock, supporting strike group deployments with the USS America, which is an aircraft carrier, and the USS John F. Kennedy, another aircraft carrier. He is a pilot who hunts subs. As an MH-60 helo pilot, he was named the Pilot of the Year and was the corecipient of the Commanding Officer's Helmsman Award for calendar year 1993--so the best of his class. He served as executive officer and the 14th commanding officer of the Fighting Vipers. He was the Helicopter Maritime Strike Wing commander, the U.S. Atlantic Fleet and a recipient of the Navy and Marine Corps Association--peer-selected--Leadership Award. This is a great Navy aviator leader. As a flag officer, Admiral Hughes has served as commander of Navy Recruiting Command, commander of Expeditionary Strike Group Two, and, most recently, deputy chief of Naval Personnel/commander, Navy Personnel Command. He is an incredible Navy leader. We need more Navy officers confirmed. He is being blocked over an issue he has nothing to do with. We would like to move him on regular order tonight. Regular order would be an individual vote, and we are ready to take it. Unfortunately, it is going to be blocked. So that is not good for our national security. As I mentioned, the Biden administration's budget right now shrinks the Navy. That is horrible. But we, at least, need to get our great Navy officers on the ships in the command. The next one we are looking at is a Brigadier General to be a Major General in the U.S. Air Force. He is a Brigadier General by the name of Curtis R. Bass. He was Calendar No. 110. Again, boy, look at this guy's resume. Unbelievable. He was the senior executive officer of the 22nd Air Force Chief of Staff, the commander of the E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System Combat Flying Squadron at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. By the way, our military members in the Middle East right now are taking fire. They are in combat. Some of the officers who are being blocked--I have talked to some of them in the Middle East, whose promotions are being blocked, are taking fire from the enemy. What? You don't think they are bitter right now? I know they are bitter. They are taking fire from the enemy. One-star Generals, Colonels--I know this; I have talked to them--are being blocked over something they have nothing to do with. They are risking their lives right now. Right now. That is a fact. So he is another one of the Air Force aviation intel systems--one of the best--who just recently served as deputy commander of the U.S. Air Force Warfare Center at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. He is a tremendous operator who is being blocked over something he has nothing to do with and has no ability to fix. These are apolitical members, right? By the way, of this blanket hold--we have done the research--we have never had a blanket hold for this long, of this duration, and with this many officers in the history of the United States of America. The next officer we are going to bring forward is Air Force Brig. Gen. Jason T. Hinds to, again, be promoted to Major General, U.S. Air Force officer. Boy, oh, boy. Look at this guy's background. He has flown all kinds of positions, including First Fighter Wing, commander; F-22 Fighter Squadron, commander; F-22 instructor pilot and flight examiner; F-15C instructor and weapons officer. I think he has over 4,000--4,000--hours of flying. I mean, this is probably one of the best pilots in the world. He previously served as the director of Plans, Programs, and Analyses at the U.S. Air Force in Europe and Air Forces in Africa and at Ramstein Air Base, Germany. He has been selected to be a two-star General from a one-star, which is really hard to do--really hard to do. Unfortunately, we can't get him confirmed despite the fact that he has nothing to do with the policy that we all want to fix. Everyone here wants to fix that policy, but he has nothing to do with it, and he is being punished for this. There are a lot of Air Force officers. Boy, are these men and women impressive. This is Brig. Gen. Charles D. Bolton to be Major General of the U.S. Air Force. Brigadier General Bolton most recently served as the U.S. Transportation Command Global Operations Center chief at Scott Air Force Base. For 29 years, he has commanded in the U.S. Air Force, including, most recently, the 386th Expeditionary Operations Support Squadron in southwest Asia and the 386th Air Expeditionary Wing. Prior to his current assignment, he was the deputy director of Operations, Strategic Deterrence and Nuclear Integration, Headquarters Air Mobility Command, Scott Air Force Base. He is a master navigator with almost 3,000 hours in a C-130E and a C- 130H. He is a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Air Force Weapons School, with multiple tours to Iraq, Afghanistan, Inherent Resolve, Iraqi Freedom--multiple tours. By the way, Senator Ernst and I are not even talking about it, but think about the families behind all of these officers and all of these deployments and their children and how much they have sacrificed. That is something else we need to think about. It is not just the men and women in the military wearing the uniform. It is their families, and this is really negatively impacting the families as well. As Senator Ernst has said, they don't have a voice. We are trying to give them a voice. We are trying to say: We are remembering. We are remembering. We have your back. We are down here again. We told you we would be down here again, and we are down here again. The next one is another Air Force one-star General to be Major General. This is John R. Edwards. He was on Calendar No. 110. He most recently served as the director for strategic capabilities policy on the National Security Council. He has a 28-year military career. Get this, he has commanded the 28th Bomb Wing at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, the 479th Flying Training Group at Pensacola Naval Air Station, and the 96th Bomb Squadron at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. He has served on the joint staff at the J-8. Prior to his current assignment, he was the director of nuclear enterprise, Defense Threat Reduction Agency--just amazing experience. He is a master combat systems officer with over 2,500 flight hours, including 237 combat hours in Operations Allied Force and Enduring Freedom. He also has a Valor Award. Let me read that. It is an Air Medal for combat action at the onset of Operation Anaconda. That was the military operation in Afghanistan. His aircraft extended its alert interdiction time over the battlefield to support coalition ground units, providing crucial firepower for American troops in contact. What does that mean? That means we had troops who were on the ground in combat, and he came in with air power to suppress the enemy, saving American lives. His crew then released 45 MK-82 gravity bombs, destroying the enemy troops that were threatening friendly American ground units. During another mission, his attack aircraft struck nine targets using a complex combination of joint direct attack emissions, and all targets were destroyed, saving countless American ground forces. That is an American hero right there. I just read his Air Medal combat citation--an American hero--and his career right now is being punished for something he had nothing to do with. We have another one, a Brigadier General in the Air Force, Sean Choquette to be Major General. He has 33 years in the U.S. military, 2,800 hours flying, 300 deployed combat hours flying in terms of Uphold Democracy, Southern Watch, Iraqi Freedom, Enduring Freedom, and Inherent Resolve. He has commanded at the company squadron and wing levels. That is literally every level of command in the Air Force. This is a great leader, a great leader. Again, he was awarded the Defense Superior Service Medal in terms of combat operations in Inherent Resolve, Deliberate Resolve, and Freedom's Sentinel. He enabled the United States and 17 coalition nations over the time he was in command to deliver 20,000 strike sorties, 39,000 flight hours, and employ and deliver over 8,000 weapons. This is a warrior whom we need right now, who is on the bench. He can't get confirmed through no fault of his own on anything. The next officer we were looking at trying to promote was Maj. Gen. Greg Masiello to be Lieutenant General--a three-star General. He was most recently the military deputy to the Under Secretary for Policy at the Pentagon. And, if confirmed, the Agency that he would lead focuses on operations all over the globe. Prior to his current position, he was the executive officer for the Air Anti-Submarine Warfare, Assault and Special Missions Programs at Naval Air Systems Command, where he previously served as NAVAIR's commander for logistics and industrial operations. He understands the systems in our Pentagon. He is to be promoted to three-star General. We are here talking about his service. The next officer that we were going to try and promote through regular order, by the way, and by individual voice vote--I still haven't heard why that is not acceptable--was Rear Admiral Jeffrey Jablon to be a Vice Admiral, a three-star Admiral. Again, when you look at Admiral Jablon's career, he is one of the ones that I was talking about recently with incredible experience as a submarine commander--incredible. He was a fleet naval submarine warfare strategist at U.S. Special Operations Command, commander of the Submarine Development Squadron 12, deputy commander for training, Naval Submarine School, and prospective commanding officer instructor. Remember, these are nuclear-powered subs, the most advanced warfighting machines in the world. The Chinese are scared to death of them. But you cannot just grab an Ensign or Lieutenant and say: Hey, go command a nuclear sub. It takes decades--decades--to train somebody on a nuclear sub. He has commanded at all levels in terms of the submarine force, and we are trying to get him promoted to three-star Admiral. Again, this is a huge strategic advantage we have over China, our submarine force. Yet so many of these Admirals are being blocked. They are being blocked. I have a few more--actually, we have a lot more. It is coming on 3 a.m. I really appreciate my colleagues being here. But we are trying to give voice--trying to give voice--to these heroes whom we need on the field of battle right now. The next one we were trying to get confirmed tonight was VADM William J. Houston to be an Admiral, to be a four-star Admiral. He was on Calendar No. 202. Again, this officer's submarine experience is unbelievable. He had many key positions, including division officer of the USS Phoenix, which is a sub; engineer officer aboard the USS Hampton, which is a submarine; the executive officer aboard the USS Tennessee, which is a strategic ballistic missile sub. He has commanded and was commodore of Submarine Squadron 20, out of Kings Bay, GA. He also served as the flag lieutenant for the commander, Submarine Force U.S. Atlantic Fleet; Nuclear Propulsion Examining Board, special assistant to the Director of Naval Reactors; and the deputy commander for Sub Squadron 20, among other roles. Again, this is a four-star Admiral. I think he has 35 years of experience with submarines--the weapons system that Xi Jinping has nightmares about--and we are keeping him on the bench over an issue he has nothing to do with--nothing. That is the whole thing. We want to solve this issue. We are pro-life Senators. We are pro- military Senators. And these men and women--every American, I hope you are listening. I know it is 3 in the morning. We are here to give them voice. But if you are an American and you read about Admiral Houston's background, think about what his family has gone through. Think about the options he has in his world. We don't want him to leave. We don't want any of these people to leave. We need them. This is the most combat-experienced group of general officers probably since World War II. Let me turn to another branch, the U.S. Army. This is MG Anthony Hale to be Lieutenant General Hale. Major General Hale is an expert in Army intelligence--Army intelligence. He has served at U.S. Special Operations Command. He currently is the deputy chief of staff of the G-2 for the entire U.S. Army. The G-2 is the group in the military in charge of intelligence. His deployments, I think--I am reading his bio here--six or seven deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan. He has gone all the way up the chain in the U.S. military--Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq--several times. He is the top intel officer for the U.S. Army--top intel officer for the U.S. Army--and his career is on hold right now, like 450 others. But, again, we could confirm them tonight. This is regular order, by the way--regular order. This is, actually, more than regular order. The Senate has only done this twice--rollcall votes--in 50 years, for one- or two-star officers. The next officer we were looking to promote is MG Thomas James. He is a two-star General to Lieutenant General. We were looking to move him forward. He is an expert in space. He was supposed to be the deputy commander of U.S. Space Command, and, boy, do we need that. That is a whole other warfare element that people don't talk about. He also has a tremendous background in Special Forces and several deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. His family sacrificed. He was the deputy commander for Joint Functional Component Command for Space, leader of the 20th Special Forces Group (Airborne)--Airborne--and a space expert. Again, we are trying to make sure he knows--Major General James, of the U.S. Army, to be deputy commander of U.S. Space Command. We are thanking you, General, and your family. We are thanking you for your service, General, and your family. We are trying to move your promotion, which was hard to get, well-deserved. We are trying to move that forward. We are trying to fix the policy that we all don't like here on the Hyde amendment issues. There are a lot of ways of trying to do that, but we think punishing General James and his family, in my view, doesn't make any sense. Senator Lee mentioned Senator Tuberville has the right to do it. I agree with that. He does. But I don't agree with the tactic. Mr. President, the next officer we are looking to promote was Major General Spain, U.S. Air Force, to be Lieutenant General, three-star General. He is to be the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations for the entire U.S. Air Force. That is a huge job. He has got over 30 years of military service. He is a pilot. He has served as a weapons officer for the 58th Fighter Squadron. He led the Nation's first Operation Noble Eagle deployment to the National Capital Region. He has numerous deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan. He served as the 53rd Wing commander, the 380th Air Expeditionary Wing commander. He has led the operations for the J3--that is military operations--for U.S. European Command during Afghanistan and the J3 at USEUCOM in response to Russian aggression in support of Ukraine, up to and through the invasion. He was a command pilot with more than 2,300 hours in multiple aircraft, primarily the F-15C and F-22. An incredible warrior there, incredible warrior. Combat sorties. Here is an Air Achievement Medal, Legion of Merit. Senator Ernst was talking a lot about Legion of Merit. Skilled fleet. Led a rotation force of over 10,000 coalition personnel, 50 combat aircraft. His combat team executed over 5,600 sorties in 52,000 flying hours, offloaded nearly 2 million pounds of fuel, collected intelligence on 172,000 targets, supported 3,800 strikes against the Islamic State and Syria in Iraq. You don't think we need him now? We are bombing terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria as we speak. That is exactly the kind of officer we need in the field fighting, not on the bench. Mr. President, the next one we are looking at was Col. Paul Sellars to be a Brigadier General. Colonel Sellars, like a lot of the people we have spoken about tonight, has a very significant background in Special Operations. He has deployed numerous times to Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, with Special Forces operations. He has also conducted exercises in the INDOPACOM region, Philippines, Malaysia. And he has served with the J3 for Special Operations Detachment in the Pacific. Again, Paul Sellars, Colonel, to be Brigadier General--incredible background--and, right now, he can't get promoted over something that he has no involvement with. So we are giving him voice. The next one, Mr. President, is BG Jacqueline Brown to be the grade of Major General. Jacqueline Brown is currently serving as the Director of Operations, Networks, and Space and Information Systems--so the G-6, the group that is bringing in all the communications. Over 30 years of service in the U.S. Army. She served as executive officer, Army chief information officer, and the plans and strategy division chief of the Army G-6. She, like everybody else, has deployed to Afghanistan, to Iraq. She has been a chief of operations and plans for the G-6 for the Army's 3rd Corps at Fort Hood and has served at different levels in her career, starting in the 6th Signal Battalion, Fort Richardson, AK, and later battalion signal officer in the 106th Military Intelligence Battalion. I was talking about how medical units are so important, but so are the information systems, comms systems, space systems. And BG Jacqueline Brown is one who has an amazing career. We are trying to get her promoted to two-star, and I hope we can do that soon. Just a couple more, Mr. President. This one should be known to everybody here: Col. Matthew Good, Col. Matthew Good. He is a great marine. Many of you know him because he served as the top marine liaison to the U.S. Senate recently, but he has an incredible bio. He knows many legislators. Going on 30 years as an infantry officer. He served as a faculty member at Marine Command and Staff; multiple deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and has moved up the chain in the Marine Corps like a good Marine infantry officer. He served as a platoon commander, a rifle company commander, a weapons company executive officer, a rifle company commander, a company operations officer, and deployed, like I said, numerous times to Iraq and Afghanistan. And everybody who knows him knows what a great leader he is--measured, great advice. I relied on Colonel Good's advice many, many times over the last several years when he was here as the lead Senate liaison. Just a fantastic guy, and so many of us know him; and, right now, he cannot get promoted to Brigadier General. He should be but can't be. Mr. President, the next officer we were trying to promote tonight was BG Richard Appelhans, who recently served as commander of the U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence at Fort Huachuca. So, again, this is a top army officer. He deployed several times: Korea, Kuwait, Germany, the Netherlands, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq. Geez, that is like seven deployments right there. Think about his family. He began his career as an armor officer, and then he transitioned to military intelligence. He has served in a variety of command and staff assignments and now is trying to get promoted to two-star General. We think he should be. He has nothing to do with the current dispute-- nothing--and no ability to fix it. I haven't heard one reason why putting a hold on 450 apolitical military officers who are being punished--I just--I don't understand it. Mr. President, another marine Colonel to be promoted to Brigadier General--infantry officer who has led and served at the highest levels of every infantry unit he has commanded: forward observer, guns platoon commander, fire direction officer, artillery. He is actually an artillery officer. 26th MEU, Marine Expeditionary Unit. Deployed all over the world, extensive experience in the INDOPACOM region, serving with 12th Marines during Operation Enduring Freedom. The 12th Marines is a Marine artillery unit. Completed several deployments to Iraq, awarded the Combat Action Ribbon. Again, a great marine, great hero, a Colonel to a Brigadier General. And his promotion is being stalled. Let's do another Brigadier General. Colonel to Brigadier General, U.S. Marine Corps. This is Adolfo Garcia. Same thing, Mr. President: Multiple deployments. Iraq, Afghanistan, 12th Marines. He is also an artillery officer. He served on the Joint Staff, so he has a lot of knowledge at the big level of the Pentagon and as a military secretary to the 38th Commandant of the Marine Corps. So really knows his combat issues and higher-level Marine Corps issues--exactly the kind of officer you want--going from Colonel to Brigadier General. He has earned it, 30 years in. Again, not involved in this dispute. So my final one--we have a number more, but it is almost 3:30, and I think our attempts at trying to get these officers promoted were not successful. Hopefully, we can get through this. I am hoping--I don't think anyone in the Senate thinks it is good to punish 450 officers over something that they have no control over.

Mr. SULLIVAN. I am going to finish this final one, and then I will. This is Col. Trevor Hall, 33 years in the Marine Corps. He served as both enlisted and--a military enlisted and officer. His command experience includes rifle and weapons platoon commander, 3rd Battalion 6th Marines; multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. He served with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit. He served in support of Operation Desert Thunder, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Unified Protector--that is Libya. Combat marine moving from Colonel to Brigadier General. That is one more that we would want to promote tonight. We have several others, Mr. President. It is 3:30. I am hoping that, my colleagues, we can continue to make progress. I am committed to continue to work with Senator Tuberville and others on moving forward, but at the same time, we have got to keep faith with these military members. We have got to keep faith with them. Many of them are deployed right now. A number of them are in combat. And we committed to come back down here and try to move these, and we are going to keep doing it. Hopefully, we can move forward with my colleagues here to, as I mentioned, focus on the big issues of national security and readiness, which I believe, with regard to the Biden administration, are legion. I have been fighting those in the Armed Services Committee. The Biden budget shrinks the Army, shrinks the Navy, shrinks the Marine Corps right now. That is music to Xi Jinping and Putin's ears. Next year's budget will be below 3 percent of GDP. We have only been below 3 percent of GDP maybe four or five times in the last 70 years. So that is not a good number. We need a much more robust military. I want to work with my partners, including those on the floor here, to focus on those issues. But we need to get through this, and it is important. We need to fix the policy, the abortion policy, that we all disagree with here. There are a number of ways we can do it. Again, I have worked with Senator Tuberville on ways to do that. And I do agree with my colleagues here that this was started and provoked by the Biden administration. But punishing these 450 members and their families is not the best way--is not the way to go about doing that. So, Mr. President--do you want to say anything else?

Mr. SULLIVAN. My colleague had a question. Mr. President, I yield the floor. By the way, Mr. President, I appreciate your staying late, 3:30. And it is important work.

Mr. SULLIVAN

Mr. SULLIVAN. Madam President, it is Thursday afternoon here on the Senate floor. It is one of my favorite times. We have some new pages, so they are going to, I think, at a certain point, consider some of this their favorite time on the Senate floor. It is when I get to come out on the floor and talk about the Alaskan of the Week--the Alaskan the Week. I have been doing this for several years now. I try to get down here most weeks. I don't make it every week. I have had a couple of weeks off. There is a lot going on here in the Senate, as many people know. But as we are heading into Veterans Day weekend, I am making sure that we reignite our ``Alaskan of the Week'' special for this weekend. There are so many special Alaskans working to make our State the best State in this country. Some Senators might disagree, but, hey, we are all proud of our States. I will tell you this, when it comes to veterans and patriotism, I am pretty sure my State tops the list of any State in the country. We have more veterans per capita than any State in America. Alaska Natives, a big part of our population, serve at higher rates in the military than any another ethnic group in the country. Patriotism, military service, it is in our DNA. I am getting on a plane here in about an hour with my wife Julie. We are heading home to celebrate Veterans Day. Just looking back over several years, a lot of my Alaskans of the Week were veterans--100 percent--so it is not surprising that this one is as well. As we head into Veterans Day weekend, I want to talk about a special veteran, a really special veteran--people are going to love this story--a Vietnam vet named Gene Horner. He is actually a bugler. He plays the trumpet and the bugle. If you have gone to a military funeral in Alaska, chances are the man behind the bugle breathing out the 24 notes of ``Taps''--the most poignant 24 notes of music ever played--is Gene Horner, our Alaskan of the Week. Wherever he is and whatever he is doing, if he gets the call to play at a veteran's funeral in Alaska, he grabs his instrument, jumps into his car, and Gene is there. So who is Gene Horner, and how did he become known as the best ``Taps'' player in Alaska, and, I would say, the best ``Taps'' player in America? A self-described, unruly teenager from Texas and California, Gene joined the Army when he was 17, in 1967. It was go in the Army or get into more trouble; one or the other. That is what Gene said. So he joined the Army. By the way, many great veterans, many great Americans have started their service to America this way: Hey, join the Marines, join the Army, or you are going to jail. So he did that. Gene was assigned a regular duty station in Alabama, and it was here that he was given the opportunity to play in his post band at his Army station in Alabama. While he considered himself a very ``mediocre trumpet player,'' Gene proved to be indispensable. During the height of the Vietnam war, before he, himself, was deployed to Vietnam, he sounded ``Taps'' for 187 funerals throughout Alabama and the South in just 3 months. Think about that. That is a big reminder of the service our Vietnam generation did--187 funerals in just 3 months, 1 guy. When Gene received his own orders to head to Vietnam in 1968, his route stopped through Anchorage, my hometown. It was August 1. The midnight Sun was out. It was sunny, 75 degrees. Anyone who has ever flown into Anchorage--which I highly recommend everybody watching do. Come on up. Visit our great State. You will love it. There is a point when you are coming in, you are flying over the mountains, the engines kind of silence themselves, you head to the ground, and you see the glaciers, the mountains. Gene said to himself, when he was landing in Anchorage: This is the last I'll see of America. Think about that. It is very poignant: Heading to Vietnam; he did not think he was coming home. A lot of people didn't come home. During his 6-hour layover on the ground in Anchorage to refuel before he went to Vietnam, he and his fellow soldiers sat at the airport bar. This is another great story. You can't make this up. After he sat down at the bar, the soon-to-be Alaska U.S. Senator Mike Gravel walked in and told the bartender: Buy a drink for all these soldiers. That is pretty cool, Senator for Alaska--about to become a Senator for Alaska, buys a round for the soldiers heading to Vietnam. Gene thought to himself, If I live through this deployment, I am going to come back to Alaska. It is a pretty cool place; U.S. Senators buying you beers. When he was in Vietnam and a battlefield memorial was required, Gene would fly out on a helicopter with a chaplain for the service. ``Over there,'' he said, ``I didn't know the names of half the people I played Taps for. I seldom knew their names [at all], but those 24 notes [in Taps] pulled on my heart all the same.'' When Gene's Vietnam service ended 15 months later, he went to California, he said, in search of a beautiful woman he knew named Priscilla, whom he had met on his way to Vietnam. And like a good soldier, he accomplished the mission because Priscilla would later become his wife. Together, Gene stuck to the promise he had made for himself with Priscilla. They moved to Alaska in 1972. And Alaska, of course, benefited tremendously. He joined the Carpenters Union and became a pilot driver, and his wife Priscilla was a CPA. They settled in the beautiful Mat-Su Valley. By the way, I will be heading there tomorrow and Saturday for Veterans Day services. They had a son. They had a nice life. During this whole time, for 20 years, Gene, like so many veterans, did not talk about his service in Vietnam at all. Nobody he knew--he didn't talk to anybody about it. He kept it to himself. He did not want to relive the past. It was not until 1999, during the funeral of a coworker and a close friend who served in World War II, that Gene took his trumpet back up and played ``Taps'' in 1999--the first time. When he arrived at the funeral and asked: Hey, where is the bugler for the service, Gene was directed to a boom box--a boom box, just a recording. But as faith would have it, Gene had just picked up his trumpet from repair that day. He asked: Hey, instead of the boom box, can I sound ``Taps'' for my friend, the World War II veteran? They said: Of course, do it. Gene said this: It just goes against everything when I am at a funeral for a servicemember to leave ``Taps'' to a recording. By the way, that is happening more and more as military bands get cut. It was this experience that ignited Gene's passion for sounding ``Taps'' at military funerals. Twenty years after his Vietnam service, 20 years since he had even talked about ``Taps'' and what he did in Vietnam, Gene began performing at veterans' funerals in Alaska and recruiting other trumpet players to join the ranks. ``It wasn't until I started playing Taps locally that I realized, you're never really out of the military,'' Gene said, ``You are just one breath away from it. And every veteran deserves a live breath coming from a bugle [at his or her funeral].'' Playing ``Taps'' is emotional work, he said. You are not just sending off an individual veteran; you are sounding the call that has sent millions of veterans off to be buried for hundreds of years. You are sounding the mystic chords of memory that Abraham Lincoln spoke of: [S]tretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this [great] land. That is Abraham Lincoln. Because of this, many buglers who have taken up this honor has said that ``Taps'' is the hardest 24 notes they will ever play, the hardest 24 notes you can play as a trumpeter. Gene has likely played them more times than anyone else in Alaska and--who knows--many more times than most people in America. He said this: Playing at Carnegie Hall would be nice. But for a trumpet player, I don't think there is a greater honor than sounding ``Taps'' for a soldier's final farewell. Gene plays at dozens, sometimes hundreds, of funerals a year. He has logged in over 10,000 volunteer hours with the VA in Alaska. Let me repeat that, as we go into Veterans Day weekend: over 10,000 volunteer hours for the VA in Alaska. That is patriotism. That is patriotism. He remembers all of them, but he has a distinct memory of sounding ``Taps'' at the funeral for a beloved young marine named Grant Fraser, one of the first Alaskans to be killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom. LCpl. Grant Fraser was an actor who loved the works of Homer and Shakespeare. He was a mountain biker, a skier, a pianist, a SCUBA diver, a rock climber, a tennis player. He was a light-hearted, mischievous U.S. marine. After the Marines, he was planning on coming back to Anchorage, his hometown, to work as a paramedic with the fire department. Shortly after 9/11, like so many patriotic young Americans across our Nation, Grant surprised his family and friends when he announced he was joining the Marines. He served with Echo Company, 4th Reconnaissance Battalion, in Anchorage, my old unit. The battalion was later deployed to Iraq in 2005, and it was there, on a mission in Anbar Province on August 3, 2005, that Grant Fraser was killed in action and made the ultimate sacrifice for our Nation. He was 22 years old, not much older than the pages right here. I went to LCpl Grant Fraser's burial here at Arlington National Cemetery, and, I will tell you, it was the most moving burial I have ever been to. Everybody from the Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps on down and many, many Alaskans came to that funeral. But there was also a funeral service for Grant in Anchorage, and this is the funeral that Gene Horner said was the most moving funeral he had ever been to, of the hundreds that he has played ``Taps'' for. He said that, first of all, the funeral was packed. It was like the entire town of Anchorage showed up. And, for him, it brought back memories of young men and women sacrificing their lives in foreign lands. It brought back all of those battlefield funerals he had done in Vietnam, that he had played for, and all the funerals he had played in Alabama and all the funerals he would play for in Anchorage. It brought back battlefields and violence and heroism and sacrifice. But on that August day in Anchorage, like he did in Vietnam, like he had done for so many others in Alaska and in Vietnam and in Alabama, Gene was there for one man: the young marine hero LCpl Grant Fraser. So he got that feeling in his stomach as he was sounding ``Taps,'' the one he always gets at funerals and burials when he is sounding ``Taps,'' the one that travels to his chest and makes it swell. He picked up his American Heritage Field Trumpet, took a breath, and sounded ``Taps'' for this young marine. So, Gene, as we are coming into Veterans Day in Alaska, I want to thank you for your great service; I want to thank you for being there for literally hundreds, if not thousands, of veterans in Alaska and across our Nation. I am going to actually see you tomorrow at an event in the valley. And, of course, congratulations on one of the biggest honors anyone can achieve: being our Alaskan of the Week. Semper fi, Gene. Happy Veterans Day. See you tomorrow. I yield the floor.

Mr. SULLIVAN

Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, we are going to continue with the U.S. Navy. Again--I just thought of this--the Chinese admirals and their military, they are probably watching this debate right now, going: I can't believe my luck. I can't believe our luck. Maybe we should attack Taiwan tomorrow. The whole Navy is being held up. Let's go to another Navy officer. This is Daniel W. Dwyer to be Vice Admiral and Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Warfighting Development, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. OK. We have had a lot of good bios here tonight, with a lot of experience. When I saw Vice Admiral Dwyer's experience, I was like: Wow. This should scare the heck out of every Chinese admiral, every Chinese military official when they read this guy's bio. So let me read it. I hope we can get him confirmed because he is sitting on the bench, and the Chinese are cheering. Over Vice Admiral Dwyer's 35-year naval career--there we go; 35 years, 40 years--he has commanded Strike Fighter Squadron, VFA-27; Provincial Reconstruction Team, Kunar Province, Afghanistan; Fleet Replacement Squadron, VFA-106; Carrier Air Wing 8; Carrier Air Wing 17. As a flag officer--that means as an Admiral--Admiral Dwyer commanded the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group, the big stick that every country in the world, including China, fears. He commanded the Teddy Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group. That is unbelievable experience. And he was the 36th Chief of Naval Air Training. Vice Admiral Dwyer is a career F/A-18 naval aviator, a graduate of the Navy Fighter Weapons School, a.k.a. TOPGUN, in which he completed eight carrier deployments to the Western Pacific, North Atlantic, Mediterranean, and North Arabian Sea, supporting Operation Southern Watch, Iraqi Freedom, Enduring Freedom, and New Dawn, flying over 75 combat missions. Vice Admiral Dwyer was most recently the Commander of the Second Fleet and Joint Forces Command. Xi Jinping reads about a guy like this, and he is scared to death, and we bench him over a dispute Vice Admiral Dwyer has nothing to do with. But maybe we can fix that right now. So, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session for the consideration of the following nomination: Executive Calendar No. 180, Daniel W. Dwyer, to be Vice Admiral and Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Warfighting Development, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations--so dammed qualified; that the Senate vote on the nomination without intervening action or debate; that if confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, here we go, crushing the Navy. Here is another Navy Admiral that we are going to have him sit on the bench. This is kind of remarkable. I mean, we are going to get to about 60 of these tonight. The experience here is unbelievable, but the U.S. Navy is really being hurt by this, and we need a strong Navy. Again, the Chinese are like--they are watching it, I guarantee you. Hello, guys. And they are like: Gosh. I can't believe how dumb these guys are. So let's keep talking about whom we are going to bench now. This is Douglas G. Perry to be Vice Admiral and Commander of Second Fleet, Commander of Joint Forces Command Norfolk. Let's look at Rear Admiral Perry's incredibly impressive career--over 30 years. He began his career serving as a sea division officer, Navy diver, aboard the USS Pittsburgh, SSN-720; executive officer, operations officer aboard Submarine NR-1; and executive officer of the USS Maine. These are all subs. This is another great Admiral with great submarine experience, just what keeps the Chinese up at night, and we are going to bench him. That is SSBN-741. His deployment experiences span the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, the Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic, and Pacific--essentially, the whole world. As commanding officer of the USS Pasadena, SSN-752, he led the ship on highly successful deployments to the Eastern and Western Pacific. Again, that is a sub. Perry has served as Commander of the Submarine Development Squadron 5, where he led Submarine Force Development of Unmanned Systems and Tactics and Employment and commanded the Navy squadron of Seawolf-class fast-attack subs. These guys are all submariners. The Chinese are scared to death of them, and we are benching them. What are we doing? Most recently, Perry served as Director of Undersea Warfare Division of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. He is another great submariner to keep Xi Jinping up at night, and we are not going to allow him to get confirmed. But maybe we will. So, Mr. President, as my colleague had asked, we are bringing individual votes. He still hasn't answered the question why he is not doing what he said he was going to do. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session for the consideration of the following nomination: Executive Calendar No. 205, Douglas G. Perry, to be Vice Admiral and Commander of Second Fleet and Commander of Joint Forces Command Norfolk; that the Senate vote on the nomination without intervening action or debate; that if confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Mr. SULLIVAN

Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleagues for coming down here tonight. It is a very important issue that we are getting ready to talk about. We are in a very dangerous world right now. Our country is being challenged on multiple fronts across the globe. We literally have American troops under attack in the Middle East. As a member of the Armed Services Committee, as a U.S. Marine Corps colonel, I know--we all know here in the Senate--that America needs to have our best players, our most combat-capable leaders on the field, and, right now, that is not happening. It needs to change. I just want to begin by saying something very clear. You are going to hear this a lot. I am as pro-life as they come. I strongly disagree with what Secretary Austin and President Biden have done with their politicization of the military on a whole host of fronts, including the abortion policy, which I think is illegal and violates the Hyde amendment. And I have been working with many colleagues, but especially Senator Tuberville from Alabama, side by side, for months, trying to get this reversed, trying to get compromises. At the same time, we have been telling the majority leader: Do your job. Do your job. Bring up nominees so we can vote on them. Now, we have had to force them to do it. Tomorrow, we are going to be voting on the CNO of the Navy, a member of the Joint Chiefs; the Chief of Staff of the Air Force; the Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps--not because the majority leader brought them up, but because we forced them to. He needs to do his job. But I also firmly believe that one of our most core basic principles--certainly, as Republicans--which I think in many ways distinguishes us from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, is our serious focus on national security, readiness, a strong military, and taking care of our troops and their families. We all know there are current holds on our military. I want the American people to know right now, 376 promotions to one-, two-, three- , and four-star generals and admirals are being held. It is estimated that, by the end of this year, 89 percent of all general officer positions in the U.S. military will be affected by the current holds from Senator Tuberville. Either the members have to be forced to retire, positions not filled, in acting capacity, or will be unable to retire--this is pretty much the entire officer corps. This is hugely disruptive to readiness. A couple of examples: 288 one- and two-star generals are being held. These are the men and women who run the military right now. We are going to talk about other places. The First Marine Expeditionary Force, the Third Marine Expeditionary Force--these are the war fighting organizations of the Marine Corps--the Seventh Fleet, which is our fighting naval force in the Taiwan Strait; the Fifth Fleet, the fighting naval force in the Middle East. It goes on and on. NATO Deputy Chairman, a three-star job, empty; Deputy U.S. CENTCOM Commander, empty. The head of the Navy nuclear program, the head of missile defense--all nonconfirmed. We have a big challenge right now. Let me be a bit more blunt on the issue of morale. The military has a huge readiness and retention problem. These holds are not helping. As I mentioned, I am a senior colonel in the Marines. Many of the one-star and two-star who are being held right now are in my peer group. I have known these men and women for 30 years. There is growing bitterness within the ranks of our military, driven by this fact, and I want people to understand this. The men and women in the military who served our country so well for decades--probably the most combat- experienced generation since World War II--have made huge sacrifices, multiple deployments, and now their careers are being punished over a policy dispute they had nothing to do with and no power to resolve. That is what is happening right now, and the idea that some of these officers are supposedly woke or desk jockeys is ridiculous. These are some of the most combat-experienced generals and admirals we have ever had in our country. Finally, these holds also pose strategic risks to our force. What does that mean? We are starting to see military officers saying: Admirals and generals, I am getting out. Or they have to get out if they are going to be timed out. We had a scandal in the U.S. Navy several years ago called the ``Fat Leonard'' scandal. It literally wiped out a generation of Navy officers who had Pacific experience. We do not want to be responsible for a Senate-inflicted hollowing out of our most experienced military officers, especially given how dangerous the world is right now. So I have mentioned this before. I have worked closely with Senator Tuberville for months, always defending his holds, always looking for compromise. The one we are working on now: Lift the hold on the military officers who have nothing to do with this dispute and can't resolve it anyway, and put a hold on the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, who is in charge of this issue. Let's do that. That is a good compromise. But we haven't made progress, and the world is a dangerous place. So tonight we are taking another approach. For months, Senator Tuberville has said, if individual nominees are brought up for a vote one at a time, he will be fine with that. On September 6, he said: I am not holding up nominations for being approved. They can bring them to the floor one at a time. Well, tonight, that is exactly what we are going to do--individual votes on individual nominees, just as Senator Tuberville has requested. We have dozens. I hope the Senator from Alabama meant what he said on this issue, and he backs our troops, who are true warriors and, yes, heroes, who along with their families have dedicated their lives to this country, risked their lives for this country, and have nothing to do with this current policy dispute--nothing at all. Last night on TV, Senator Tuberville said he was ``all for the military''--in particular, our military heroes. You are going to hear a lot about military heroes tonight, and, hopefully, we are going to get a bunch of them confirmed, one by one, as we bring them up. I yield the floor to my colleague from Iowa.

Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, we are going to start moving through some of these nominations. My colleague from Alabama has said publicly, hey, bring them up one at a time. And we are asking for a voice vote, so that is a vote. So we are doing what he said, not sure why he is objecting. Maybe he can explain that in a minute when I bring up another--a real hero by the way. And, look, what Senator Tuberville said about the policy and Austin and Biden on this abortion policy, I fully agree with him. We should be suing to stop it. I think it is illegal. And he is also right; everybody uses holds. I certainly use holds. But the key is you put a hold on someone who typically has some kind of control over the issue that you are trying to fix, some kind of responsibility. One of the things I have been talking to the Senator from Alabama on is, all right, let's put a hold on the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. He is the guy. He is a civilian, and he is in charge of this policy dispute. Let's put a hold on him--that is the right guy--and squeeze him. But why are we putting holds on war heroes? I am going to get to one here in a minute. Again, I just--I don't understand. And, look, we can go in and out of readiness, but my colleague from Alabama is 100 percent wrong, no kidding. The readiness is being impacted when you have--I will just give a couple of examples here. This is just from one theater: EUCOM, the Deputy Chairman of NATO, pretty important job. It is a three-star billet. It is empty. The Deputy Commanding General of U.S. Army Europe--really important job--empty. Like I said, I MEF--that is the big Marine Corps combined force that fights anywhere in the world; 25,000 marines, commanded by a three- star--it is a two-star. Now, for those who did serve in the military, we understand this is a problem. Same with III MEF. OK. This is just from EUCOM, European Command--72 officers are unable to assume their new positions. These 72 officers include 52 who cannot move because they have been nominated for a position that requires Senate confirmation, as well as 20 other officers who are projected to be assigned to a new position now held by one of the previous 52 officers. It is creating a giant blockage in the way in which the military operates. To say there are no readiness issues--I am the ranking member of the Readiness Subcommittee on the Armed Services Committee. There are readiness issues. And that is the whole point. We have a really dangerous world, a really dangerous world right now, and to say, ``Oh, don't worry; this isn't impacting readiness,'' with all due respect to my colleague, that is just wrong. It is not even a close call. It is wrong, and it matters to this country. Let me give you another example: the head of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, the nuclear navy--one of the best run organizations on planet Earth, if you know anything about the military or just its organizations. It was started by Admiral Rickover. To not have the leadership in charge of the nuclear navy? That is a problem. To not have the leadership in charge of missile defense for America? That is a problem. So, look, we can debate readiness, but my colleague on this, in my view, is respectfully quite misinformed. I am going to bring up my first nominee. Now, this goes to the issue of some comments that have come out during this: Well, these one-star and two-star generals are kind of desk jockeys, right? These comments have been made. They are not warriors, right? The real warriors are the captains and the sergeants. Look, I love the whole military, but the one- and two-star Generals-- I know a lot of them. That is my peer group in the Marine Corps. I am a little bit behind them. I am not going to be promoted. I am getting out here probably soon. But I know these guys, and the idea that somehow these are desk jockeys? Do you know who these people were, the one- and two-stars we are holding up right now, 289 of them? These were the Captains and Lieutenants who were going fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11. The current Commandant of the Marine Corps--by the way, every American should be praying for him; big health issues--he has a Purple Heart, distinguished combat. These were the people who were kicking in doors in Fallujah, shooting terrorists in the face, and we have people saying they are desk jockeys and they are not warriors? That is just ridiculous. It is ridiculous, and it is insulting. So I am going to talk about a warrior. I am getting ready to call up Col. Robert Weiler. He has been nominated to be a one-star Brigadier General, to be the 1st Marine Division Assistant Commander. That is the big division on the west coast of the U.S. Marine Corps infantry. I used to be part of the 1st Marine Division. I am proud of that. You need a Deputy Commander. They don't have one, OK? Let's talk about Colonel Weiler--28-year career; commanded the 5th Marine Regiment--I was in that regiment, the most decorated regiment in the Marine Corps; 2d Battalion 4th Marines; 2d Battalion 24th Marines; deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan I think six times. Think about what his family went through, OK? Think about what his family has sacrificed. And right now, people are being told: You are not going anywhere, Colonel, because we have a dispute on an issue you have nothing to do with that you can't resolve. Let's hear a little bit more about this Colonel in the Marine Corps. He received a Silver Star for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action against the enemy while serving as Commanding Officer, Weapons Company, 2d Battalion 4th Marines, 5th Marine Regiment, 6 through 10 April 2004, in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom; heavily engaged by enemy forces for an over 4-hour firefight while wounded by enemy fire, OK? Purple Heart. He continued to fearlessly lead marines as they destroyed this tenacious enemy. He is no woke guy. He is no desk jockey. Oh, what else did he do? He got a Purple Heart in that vicious combat. He received a Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with a combat distinguishing device for heroic action in another deployment--2d Battalion 4th Marines, 1st Marine Division, on 6 September in Ramadi, Iraq. He took decisive action by directing fires of his raid force, quickly gaining fire superiority and suppressing and killing the enemy. Although dazed by a major blast, he continued to lead and direct his team in combat, where they killed and captured all five insurgents on their target raid list. So we are going to block him tonight? The Senator from Alabama last night on TV said he respects all military, especially the heros. Well, you got one coming. You got one coming, Senator. So we are going to do what you asked, which is do a vote individually on this American hero. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session for consideration of the following nomination: Col. Robert S. Weiler to be Brigadier General in the U.S. Marine Corps under Executive Calendar No. 95; that the Senate vote on the nomination without intervening action or debate; that, if confirmed, the motion to reconsider be made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.