Tag Archives: Senate Armed Services Committee

U.S. Senate confirms Biden nominee Austin as defense secretary

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate on Friday confirmed President Joe Biden’s nominee, retired Army General Lloyd Austin, to serve as Secretary of Defense – the first Black American in the role.

The vote was an overwhelming 93-2 in the 100-member chamber, far more than the simple majority needed.

Lawmakers from both parties said they were pleased that Austin would be installed to lead the Pentagon just two days after Biden was sworn in as president on Wednesday.

Senator Jack Reed, the incoming Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, noted the wide range of challenges facing the country – including the coronavirus pandemic and competition with China and Russia.

“General Austin is an exceptionally qualified leader with a long and distinguished career in the U.S. military,” Reed said before the vote.

“We’re in the most threatened time that we’re in,” said Senator James Inhofe, the outgoing Republican chairman of the armed services panel, as he also urged support for the nominee.

Members of Congress on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a waiver that allowed Austin to lead the Pentagon even though he had not cleared the required seven-year waiting period since leaving the uniformed services – a law intended to enforce civilian control of the armed forces.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Chizu Nomiyama)

Trump: U.S. Senate Armed Services chairman will not change military bases’ names

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Friday said the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, fellow Republican James Inhofe, will not change the names of military bases after Congress passed legislation to rename posts that honor leaders of the Confederate armies who fought against U.S. forces.

“I spoke to highly respected (Chairman) Senator @JimInhofe, who has informed me that he WILL NOT be changing the names of our great Military Bases and Forts, places from which we won two World Wars (and more!),” Trump wrote on Twitter.

The Senate and House of Representatives this week each passed their version of the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, a massive annual bill setting policy for the Pentagon, including purchases from defense contractors.

One provision of the $740 billion legislation passed by both chambers was a requirement that the names of Confederate generals be removed from U.S. military facilities like the Army’s Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Fort Hood in Texas.

Tributes to those military leaders – and other slave owners – have been in focus during weeks of protests sparked by the police killings of Black Americans.

Trump, who has deployed federal forces against protesters he calls “anarchists,” promised to veto the NDAA – which has become law for 59 straight years – if the base-name provision remained in the final version.

Now that the Democratic-led House and Republican-controlled Senate have passed versions of the bill, it goes to conference, where lawmakers will come up with a compromise version.

It was not clear that Inhofe could change the provision, as any final bill must be supported by the Democratic and Republican lawmakers on the conference committee. However, congressional aides said there was no ban on such a change if negotiators agreed.

An Armed Services Committee spokeswoman pointed to Inhofe’s previous pledges to try to dilute the proposal to rename bases and other military assets named for Confederates.

A spokesman for Senator Jack Reed, the top Armed Services Committee Democrat, noted Reed’s view that the bipartisan provision has strong support and his commitment to keeping it in the final NDAA.

Inhofe is running for re-election in Oklahoma, which was not a state during the Civil War. Although some Native American tribes in what would become the state in 1907 sent soldiers to fight for the Confederacy, others rejected the alliance with the secessionists.

Before Trump rejected renaming the bases, senior Pentagon officials had said they were open to discussing the issue.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Additional reporting by Lisa Lambert and Idrees Ali, Editing by Franklin Paul and Chris Reese)

U.S. senators call for banning, prosecuting ‘slumlords’ of military housing

By M.B. Pell

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. senators on Tuesday demanded the Defense Department crack down on private landlords who provide substandard housing at military bases with criminal prosecutions or contract cancellations, citing Reuters reports of slum-like living conditions and falsified accounting.

The top civilian and military leaders of the Army, Navy and Air Force appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee, in the latest hearing addressing substandard military housing.

On Tuesday, senators were presented with a new report from the Government Accountability Office, a Congressional watchdog conducting a review of the housing program that was launched following the Reuters reports. Among the GAO’s core findings: Housing reports sent to Congress are often misleading, painting a falsely positive picture of housing conditions. The program also suffers from inaccurate landlord maintenance reports and lax military oversight, the GAO reported.

To read the GAO report, click: https://bit.ly/35UzZbC

Some senators asked whether the military’s two-decade-old program of having private landlords provide housing on U.S. military bases has failed.

“Are any of them not acting like slumlords at this point? Are any of them doing a good job?” asked Senator Martha McSally, an Arizona Republican and former U.S. Air Force combat pilot. “This pisses me off.”

For more than a year, Reuters has exposed lead, asbestos, mold and vermin contaminating homes where private landlords house thousands of military families on behalf of the Pentagon. More recently, the news agency disclosed how one major landlord doctored maintenance records at some of its bases to help it collect bonus incentive fees.

To read the coverage, click: https://reut.rs/2r1Bkim

Top Defense Department officials have long touted high occupancy rates and satisfaction scores on military family surveys as evidence the effort is generally successful, despite occasional hiccups. But Elizabeth A. Field, the GAO’s director of defense capabilities and management, told senators: “There’s clearly a problem here.”

Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy defended the privatization effort, saying it allowed the military to tap private borrowing that would otherwise be unavailable.

“That doesn’t mean it’s worked out great,” added Acting Navy Secretary Thomas B. Modly. Some privatized housing is “fantastic,” he said, but other housing is not.

The secretaries cited reform steps already taken, including far-reaching inspections of military housing and a planned tenant bill of rights to empower military families.

Senators pressed the secretaries to do more to hold accountable military leaders and landlords.

Oklahoma Republican Jim Inhofe, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, asked Air Force Secretary Barbara M. Barrett why she couldn’t “pull the plug” on Balfour Beatty Communities, one of the military’s largest landlords.

This year, Reuters quoted five former Balfour Beatty employees who said they filed false maintenance records at Air Force bases to help the company collect millions in bonus payments. Balfour Beatty, a unit of British infrastructure giant Balfour Beatty PLC <BALF.L>, has said that it is committed to improving its maintenance, and that it has tapped outside counsel and auditors to investigate.

Air Force Secretary Barrett said the Air Force has lost confidence in the company, but stopped short of committing to removing it from the program.

A company spokesman said Balfour Beatty plans this month to finish a “performance improvement plan” requested by the Air Force.

Democratic senators Richard Blumenthal, from Connecticut, and Mazie Hirono, from Hawaii, urged the military to refer instances of fraud for criminal prosecution.

“We probably need to make an example out of a couple of them,” said Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican.

(Reporting by M.B. Pell in New York. Additional reporting by Joshua Schneyer. Editing by Ronnie Greene)

U.S. commander says North Korea unlikely to give up all its nuclear weapons

FILE PHOTO: Admiral Philip S. Davidson (L), Commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, meets with Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Abe's office in Tokyo, Japan June 21, 2018. Kazuhiro Nogi/Pool via Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Weeks before a second summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the top U.S. military commander for Asia on Tuesday echoed an intelligence assessment that North Korea is unlikely to give up all its nuclear weapons.

Although he expressed optimism about the Feb. 27-28 summit in verbal testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Admiral Philip Davidson, head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, expressed doubts about North Korean intentions in his written submission to the panel.

“USINDOPACOM&rsquo;s assessment on North Korean denuclearization is consistent with the Intelligence Community position. That is, we think it is unlikely that North Korea will give up all of its nuclear weapons or production capabilities, but seeks to negotiate partial denuclearization in exchange for U.S. and international concessions,” it said.

Last month, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told Congress he believed it was unlikely North Korea would give up all its nuclear weapons and had continued activity inconsistent with pledges to denuclearize.

Trump has been eager to hold a second summit with Kim even though their first meeting in Singapore in June produced only vague commitments from the North Koreans and little concrete progress since.

Trump and Kim’s next summit is to be held in Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi.

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom; editing by Jonathan Oatis)