Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday rejected Democratic efforts to discipline or otherwise hold Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth accountable for recent turmoil in the Pentagon, including his use of a commercial messaging app to discuss sensitive military operations.
While debating a $150 billion Pentagon spending bill Tuesday, Democrats offered several amendments to address the drama surrounding Hegseth, including ones that would have prevented any of the funding from being used until Hegseth is gone or limited the amount of funding available until he reviews classification policies.
With Republicans holding a majority in the committee, the amendments were doomed from the start, making them mostly a political messaging exercise. Still, Democrats took the opportunity to pin down House Republicans on the record about Hegseth’s job performance.
Hegseth has been engulfed in controversy for weeks after it was revealed that he disclosed operational details of then-upcoming U.S. military strikes in Yemen in a chat with other Trump administration officials on Signal, an encrypted but unclassified messaging app.
Just as the Signal controversy appeared to be dying down, reports of chaos within the Pentagon began emerging after Hegseth fired several close aides whom he accused of leaking information to the press. The fired aides have denied leaking, and some have since gone on the record to describe the Pentagon under Hegseth’s leadership as shambolic.
Amid the fallout from the firings, several news reports revealed Hegseth also disclosed the Yemen strike details in a second Signal chat that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer.
The mounting controversies have led to sharp rebukes and calls for Hegseth to be fired or resign from Democrats. Some Republicans who are closely aligned with President Donald Trump have rallied to Hegseth’s defense, while some others who are influential voices on military issues have stayed silent. Just one Republican, Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, has said he thinks Hegseth should be fired.
Trump, for his part, has stuck by Hegseth, telling The Atlantic magazine recently that he thinks Hegseth will “get it together.”
Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress have been working to advance Trump’s agenda with a sweeping package of legislation. The $150 billion Pentagon spending bill debated by the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday is part of that legislative effort.
Democrats previously indicated they would oppose the Pentagon funding, because they oppose other elements of the legislation, such as tax cuts, even though they support some of the proposed military spending, such as on quality-of-life issues.
On Tuesday, Democrats added a new argument against the bill — that the Pentagon cannot be trusted with an extra $150 billion while Hegseth and Trump are in charge.
“They have not even begun to prove that there is a chance in hell that they will spend this money intelligently, efficiently and effectively,” Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the ranking member of the committee, said in his opening remarks Tuesday. “Secretary Hegseth has proven himself to be completely incapable of doing the job of secretary of defense.”
Smith offered an amendment that would have fenced off 75% of the funding in the bill until Hegseth reviewed classified policies and certified to Congress that there is a “viable mechanism” to enforce prohibitions on sharing classified information on unclassified systems.
A similar amendment offered by Rep. Jill Tokuda, D-Hawaii, would have fenced off 75% of funding until the Pentagon implemented a new training program for senior officials on handling classified information.
Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., offered a separate amendment that would have prevented the entire bill from taking effect until “Peter Hegseth is not serving in the position of Secretary of Defense,” according to the amendment text.
Rep. Pat Ryan, D-N.Y., also took a page out of the GOP playbook and offered an amendment that would have cut Hegseth’s salary to $1. Republicans previously tried to do the same thing to several Biden administration officials, including then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
All four amendments failed on largely party-line votes, though a few Democrats opposed a couple of them. Democratic Reps. Eugene Vindman of Virginia, Don Davis of North Carolina and George Whitesides of California opposed cutting Hegseth’s salary, while Davis and Rep. Jared Golden of Maine opposed Houlahan’s amendment to block the entire bill until Hegseth is gone.
The bill overall was approved by the committee in a 35-21 vote, with Vindman, Whitesides, Golden, Davis and Democratic Rep. Gabe Vasquez of New Mexico joining Republicans in support of the measure.
The only Republican to speak at all for the entire debate was committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala. During debate on Smith’s amendment, Rogers knocked the idea of holding back on funding for an “impossible certification,” even as he said he understands Smith’s concern about operational security.
“It would have been nice if my colleagues had felt so strongly about holding the secretary of defense accountable in the last administration,” Rogers added during debate on Houlahan’s amendment, noting the 13 U.S. troops killed during the Afghanistan withdrawal. “This amendment is little more than partisan posturing.”
Tuesday’s committee debate was one of the few opportunities Democrats had to force House Republicans into an on-the-record position on Hegseth.
House Democrats have also sought to use another tool called a resolution of inquiry to force votes related to the Hegseth drama, but House Republican leadership restricted their ability to do so.
Normally, resolutions of inquiry are considered privileged, meaning Democrats could have forced votes on them on the House floor. But Republicans on Tuesday used a procedural maneuver to essentially prevent the resolutions from being taken up this year.
“We’re using the rules of the House to prevent political hijinks and political stunts,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters Tuesday in defending the procedural maneuver. “We’re preventing this nonsensical waste of our time.”
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