Republican Senators including Joni Ernst (LTC, ARNG Retired), Lindsay Graham (Colonel, USAFR Retired) and Daniel Sullivan (Colonel, USMCR) took turns last night to nominate 61 General and Flag Officers to new positions for more than four hours. They called for 'unanimous consent' for each nominee, a Senate procedure where a nominee is confirmed by a unanimous voice vote instead of each individual Senator voting and the normal way GO/FO promotions have been done by the Senate for decades, and Senator Tuberville objected to every nominee effectively blocking the promotions. As was mentioned earlier in this thread, if each GO/FO nominee has to go through an individual vote it would take up A LOT of time in the Senate, preventing it from doing a lot of its regular work.
To say the Republican Senators were 'fed up' is probably an understatement:
General and Flag one and two-star officer promotions are permanent and are not tied to a billet, three and four-star promotions are not permanent and are tied to specific billets. If a three or four-star Admiral or General moves out of their billet while on active duty and not into another three or four-star billet they can revert to two-star rank, though that doesn't happen too often.
Also, when a three or four-star General or Admiral retires they also have to be confirmed by the Senate to retire at that rank. Usually it happens with no issue but occasionally folks retire as a two-star because they didn't serve enough time, two or three years off the top of my head, or they retired under a cloud. RADM Sestak is a good example who fell under both categories, he got fired from his three-star billet within a day of Admiral Mullen became CNO.
