WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is advancing the nominee for the Pentagon's No. 2 job, Patrick Shanahan, to a floor vote, likely next week.
Shanahan was one of two Pentagon nominees to move forward on Thursday. The Senate Armed Services Committee voted by voice to send U.S. Navy secretary nominee Richard Spencer to a Senate confirmation vote.
SASC Chair John McCain, R-Ariz., seems to have used a floor debate with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to pole vault Shanahan over the chamber's all-consuming fight on health care.
Moments after an exchange in which Schumer denied McCain's request for unanimous consent to advance Shanahan to a floor vote, Senate Republicans tweeted that McConnell, R-Ky., had called for a procedural vote to advance Shanahan to a vote — essentially resolving the issue.
Still, the exchange was telling in that Schumer admitted to McCain that Shanahan was a casualty of Democratic efforts to win concessions from the GOP on health care. It also laid bare McCain's frustrations with his own leadership in the Senate.
"Maybe once things change a little bit in health care we can — with the consent of my colleagues on this side of the aisle — move a lot of things quickly," Schumer said. "But at this point, despite my great respect for my dear friend, I must object."
Shanahan, a Boeing executive who is U.S. President Donald Trump's pick for deputy defense secretary, was advanced out of the SASC by a voice vote on June 28. He is one of five picks for the Pentagon, including Spencer, approved by the SASC and awaiting a floor vote.
McCain told Schumer the military needs it's chief operating officer and other senior leaders to navigate it out of a budget crisis, advance modernization plans and face America's national security threats. Shanahan would replace Bob Work, who has agreed to stay on until the next deputy defense secretary is sworn in, according to a DoD spokeswoman.
Work, one of the few holdovers from the Obama administration, has been managing almost a dozen major reviews that will need to be handed off to Shanahan, including major looks at current readiness, the question of creating a chief management officer, reforming the military health system, whether U.S. Cyber Command should be elevated to a full combatant command, the establishment of cross-functional teams to enhance mission effectiveness and efficiencies and how best to manage the split of the undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics.
McCain pleaded with Democrats to drop their delay tactics and permit a debate and vote at 5 p.m. on Monday. They should put aside partisanship, "for the sake of our national security, and come together as Republicans and Democrats to move this nomination," McCain said.
Democrats, in protest over Republican efforts to repeal U.S. President Barack Obama's signature health care law, have been using parliamentary tactics to disrupt the Senate, including blocking requests like McCain's for unanimous consent to vote on nominees.
Schumer told McCain that McConnell would have to advance all nominees through regular order, a lengthier process. Schumer also pointed to McConnell's placing nominees for other federal government posts ahead of the waiting DoD nominees.
Schumer said that if McConnell filed the nomination Thursday — which is what McConnell later did — there would be a procedural vote Monday, and "then maybe we could talk about, with the permission of my [GOP] colleagues … speeding it up after that."
McCain expressed annoyance with GOP leadership and suggested bipartisan compromise to avert an oncoming "train wreck" on a variety of pressing issues. McConnell recently delayed the chamber's August recess by two weeks to extend the Senate's work period.
"Why in the world we would be wasting time on the ambassador to Japan when we have the Department of Defense nominees in line is something I can neither account for nor can I condone," McCain said. "So I understand the senator from New York's frustration, and maybe sometime after our two weeks in August, perhaps some of us ought to sit down and talk and work out an agenda. We've got a train wreck coming. We've got the debt limit; we've got appropriations bills to pass. We've got all of these things are piling up, and we've got about 30 days to do it in, and so far, I have seen no plan."
Schumer said he wants bipartisan collaboration, too.
"I used the same words, 'train wreck,' earlier this morning," Schumer said. "If we don't come to a good agreement, for instance, on the appropriations and budget, the defense forces that [McCain] so dearly holds, so many of the issues on our side would be hurt dramatically, the country would, and so I promise him I will endeavor to work these with him in a most good-faith way."
Aaron Mehta, in Washington contributed to this report.
Joe Gould was the senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry. He had previously served as Congress reporter.
