Coach US Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), whose election to the Senate in 2020 coincided with the elections of Representatives Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO), has given those two a good race to the bottom of the IQ charts since all three took office. But I have to give him the "dumbest person in Congress" honors just on the basis of his current program of holding up all general officer promotions in the Senate.
Tuberville, who has never served in the military, explained his reasoning in April: "Experts have known for more than a decade that the military is top heavy. We do not suffer from a lack of generals," Tuberville said. "When my dad served in World War II, we had one general for every 6,000 troops. Think about that: one for every 6,000. Now, we have one general for every 1,400 enlisted service members."
In just a few weeks, Tuberville's obstinance will leave us without officers in the following positions:
That's 3/5 of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, not including the Chair, who plans to retire soon. Also we will have several areas of the world where our allies or adversaries have 3- or 4-star officers that will have to interface with 2- or 3-star Americans, which is an astounding loss of face for us and an insult to them.
This also holds up promotions to lower-ranking service members, as O7 and higher officers must sign off on awards and assignments to the senior officer corps. This affects readiness as those officers can't plan to move their families to their new duty stations, and can't collect the pay they've earned for their promotions, until they formally "put on" their new ranks.
I'm also aware of service members overseas who can't visit their families because there isn't an admiral or general to sign off on them visiting certain countries (like the Philippines) or, in some cases, taking any leave at all. This is already having deleterious effects on morale and retention, in some of the most dangerous places in the world, like Korea.
Why is Tuberville doing this? Abortion, of course. And because he has no idea how the military actually works, or why we need proportionately more high-ranking officers than we did when we had 12 million men and women in the military. (Today we have about 1/4 that number.)
Just to get a handful of promotions through, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Democratic senators may have to hold roll-call votes on the Senate floor, which takes a lot of time. As of last week, Tuberville is blocking 221 promotions, and that number will continue to get larger as generals and admirals retire. So even with roll-calls on each nominee, there simply isn't enough time to get them all through.
When you elect clowns, you get a circus.