Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) is calling for the Senate to change its rules amid Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-Ala.) continued blockade of over 300 military promotions continues.

“I wish the Senate would change their rules so that one senator doesn’t have that kind of power, so that we actually would have a democracy where you have a fair vote,” Smith said of the upper chamber of Congress in an interview on CNN.

He added that it’s clear to him that Tuberville doesn’t believe in democracy.

“He doesn’t believe in the system of government that we’ve set up,” Smith argued. “You have a vote, you lose you move on.”

Smith, who served as a state senator in Washington in the 1990s, called the House Freedom Caucus and Tuberville’s approach to governance “incredibly destructive.”

“What he and the Freedom Caucus believe is ‘if you don’t get what you want, do as much damage as you possibly can’ to the government,” he said.

“In this case, it’s incredibly destructive to the defense of this country, to the national security of this country, to not be able to have top leaders appointed to their position nearly undermines our ability to protect this country bottom line, Smith added.

  • Hazdaz@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Yup, keep talking about it instead of actually doing it.

    Most Democrat thing ever. Let’s discuss this for the next 6 months. We can talk about how it hurts our feelings. Then by the time they finish talking about it, they’ll shelve the proposal because they’ll state its too close to the elections. Because as always, Dems want to make sure they are fair to their opponents. Then after the election they’ll have lost enough seats in the Senate from inaction that they won’t be able to do anything. And during none of this time, will Democrats even think about informing the general public about this or make speeches to the military to show how unsupportive to the military the GOP really is.

    If this was flipped, and a lone Democrat was holding up hundreds of military promotions, Republicans would be on the news every night talking about how much Democrats hate soldiers. They’d be pressuring the public to get in contact with that Dem. They’d probably be pulling some dirty tricks to make the promotions happen. They would find a way.