President-elect Joe Biden’s candidate for defense secretary, retired general Lloyd Austin, will hold his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, but will have to overcome yet another hurdle to get the job – a resignation this allows recently retired members of the military to lead the Department of Defense.
Current law requires a civilian to act as secretary of defense – meaning that a nominee who served must have retired at least seven years before taking office, unless Congress agrees to waive that requirement. Several Democrats have indicated they will agree to such a resignation, although they are opposed to doing so by President Trump’s first defense secretary, General James Mattis.
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“The threat to domestic security that the United States now faces is serious. We need a defense secretary at work immediately,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Tweeted on Monday. “I will vote to confirm Lloyd Austin and grant him a resignation, and I urge other senators to do the same.
Murphy acknowledged that he opposed a resignation by Mattis and defended the change in posture, claiming that confirming Austin quickly was necessary due to threats of “internal security”.
Murphy also said that the resignation of Mattis was problematic for him because President Trump and his then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had no experience and he did not trust national security adviser Michael Flynn.
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“A DoD general was especially worrying under Trump,” said Murphy. “Trump had zero experience in foreign policy, an inclination to glorify violence, a totally neophyte secretary of state and an unstable ex-general and war promoter like the NSA.”
Murphy went on to say that the situation is now “different” under Biden, due to his extensive government experience and the diplomatic experience of several of his cabinet members.
The Connecticut senator was not the only one who opposed Mattis’s resignation, but now he publicly supports a resignation to Austin. The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Deputy Adam Smith, D-Wash., Also has a different opinion on the current situation.
“Today I sent a letter to all my Democratic colleagues in the House, urging them to vote in favor of granting the designated Defense Secretary @LloydAustin the necessary resignation to complete his historic confirmation,” posted Smith.
Smith’s opposition to Mattis’s resignation, however, was largely due to his broad nature – he did not specifically mention Mattis’s name – and the fact that Mattis did not attend a hearing on the matter.
“If we don’t defend ourselves now, we’ll be knocked down countless,” Smith said at the time, according to Politico.
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“We all want to support General Mattis. We want this bipartisan vote,” he continued. “The way to get this vote is to do what we said we would do and present it to the Armed Forces Committee.”
Austin is due to appear on the Smith committee on Thursday.