A divided Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) voted 14-11 last night to advance Chuck Hagel’s nomination to be defense secretary to the Senate for a vote this week, when Republicans plan to put up a fight.
GOP senators including SASC Ranking Member James Inhofe (Okla.) have said they will not allow Hagel to be confirmed by a 51-vote majority of the Senate, and will require that he receives 60 votes to the be confirmed to head the Department of Defense. There are 55 Democrats in the Senate, and at least two Republicans have said they will vote for Hagel.
The Senate, regardless, is expected to confirm Hagel in the coming days. Hagel, a former GOP senator from Nebraska, has irked his former colleagues with statements on Israel, Iran, the Iraq War, nuclear weapons, and the Pentagon budget (Defense Daily, Feb. 1).
SASC Republicans tried unsuccessfully yesterday to compel Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) to delay the committee’s vote on Hagel, which was held after senators spent more than two hours explaining their support or opposition.
McCain said he and Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) want to hear more from President Barack Obama’s administration about the attack on the U.S. ambassador in Benghazi, Libya last September. Graham has said he will put a hold on Hagel’s nomination, which stops it from advancing in the Senate, until he receives the information.
Levin became visibly frustrated when Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) said before the committee voted he wanted to examine six speeches Hagel made that he had not reviewed.
“This could go on forever,” Levin said. “We need a secretary of defense. We’ve had a use of a nuclear weapon from North Korea.” Hagel satisfied all of the SASC’s financial-disclosure requirements and there was no reason to suspect he said or done anything to warrant further investigation, the SASC chairman added.
The committee voted along party lines to favorably report the nomination, with 14 Democrats voting in his favor and 11 Republicans casting “no” votes. Vitter did not vote.
Ayotte expressed concerns before the SASC’s vote last night about Hagel’s approach to defense spending. She cited a Financial Times interview with Hagel from August 2011 in which a reporter asked him about “sequestration” budget cuts and he said the Pentagon “in many ways has been bloated” and “needs to be pared down.”
“In terms of shepherding the Pentagon, I certainly don’t think that we want to be in position of thinking…that the Pentagon is bloated or needs to be pared down,” Ayotte said yesterday.
Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) said she was satisfied with what Hagel said during his Jan. 31 confirmation hearing about sequestration, which is the politically unpopular cut of $500 billion to decade-long defense spending slated to start next month.
“Sen. Hagel certainly shared my concern about the serious negative consequences that sequestration would have on North Carolina,” Hagan said.