Military families saw parts of their lives upended during the 10-month blockade on senior officer promotions in 2023 caused by Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., a government watchdog confirmed in a report released Thursday.
Still, the report from the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, also found that Tuberville's procedural hold that blocked quick Senate votes on the promotions did not hurt military units' ability to be ready for their missions.
"The effects of the hold on military families varied based on individual circumstances," wrote the GAO, the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress. "Some families experienced limited impact. In other cases, military families were unable to move to planned duty stations, enroll children at their next schools on time, and start new spousal employment opportunities during the hold."
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For the bulk of 2023, Tuberville placed the hold on all nominations for general and flag officers, which must be approved by the Senate.
The hold was a protest against the Biden administration's policy of covering travel costs and leave for service members seeking reproductive health care, including abortions. The Trump administration has since reversed the abortion aspect of the travel policy.
While a hold cannot prevent a nominee from being confirmed, it forces the Senate to take time-consuming roll call votes on individual nominees rather than approving them in bulk in a voice vote as it traditionally does for military nominees.
By the time Tuberville relented in December 2023 without any concessions from the Biden administration, more than 400 generals and admirals who had been nominated for promotions were caught in the hold.
As Tuberville's hold dragged on for months, Pentagon officials, Democrats and even some fellow Republicans issued increasingly dire warnings about his actions' effects on national security and military families.
A couple months after Tuberville's hold ended, a pair of Democratic congressmen requested the GAO investigate its effects.
In its report, the GAO said data maintained by the Pentagon that tracks unit-level readiness showed no effects from the hold. A defense official also told investigators that there was no effect on readiness, the report said.
"As I repeatedly said, my holds over the Biden administration's illegal and immoral taxpayer-funded abortion policy had zero effect on readiness," Tuberville said Thursday in an emailed statement to Military.com. "If the Biden administration was actually concerned about readiness, they would have reversed the policy, and I would have immediately dropped the holds. But they didn't because they care more about taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand than they care about our troops."
But the GAO did confirm that other concerns about the hold were founded. Defense Department officials detailed several instances where the hold disrupted military families' lives, the report said.
For example, one Marine Corps officer had his move canceled after all his household goods had already been shipped and the deadline had passed to re-enroll his child in school. The officer was unable to report to a new duty station because he needed to fill a position that was vacant because of the hold, the report said.
In another case, a Navy officer and his spouse were moved between states for a couple months while they waited for the officer's overseas promotion to be confirmed, preventing the spouse from getting a job.
"Some Air Force general officers sold their homes, lived in temporary housing, and paid for storage out of their own pocket," the report added. "Further, officers with elderly parents, family members with medical conditions, school-age children and spouses with employment opportunities faced hardships due to the instability as a result of the hold."
In some cases, the department was able to mitigate the effects on families by creating "special assistant" jobs that allowed the officers to move while they waited for their promotions to be confirmed, according to the report. Even then, there were effects like having to live in temporary quarters for several months, the GAO added.
The hold also caused vacancies in several top military positions and gaps in lines of succession, the report said. In many cases, civilian employees filled vacancies. In others, military officers were given interim assignments, but they did not have the same authority as Senate-confirmed officers and needed to juggle the interim responsibilities with their existing jobs.
The hold also affected future promotions, the GAO said.
For example, Army officials told investigators that because two dozen O-7 grade officers did not have one year in their new positions by the time of October 2024 promotion boards, they were ineligible for consideration for promotion. That caused a shortage of Army officers eligible for promotion to O-8 in October 2024 but a surplus of officers eligible for promotion in October 2025.
The hold also meant officers missed out on several months of pay raises ranging from $350 to $2,106 per month, according to the report. Further, officers couldn't accrue time-in-grade requirements necessary for retirement during the hold, while others had their retirements delayed for months while they waited for their successors to be confirmed.
The GAO report comes as the military prepares to follow Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's order to cut the number of four-star generals and admirals by at least 20% -- and by at least 10% across all generals and admirals in the military.
Last year, amid reports that the then-incoming Trump administration could purge generals, Biden administration Pentagon officials pointed to the Tuberville blockade as a possible case study for what could happen if officers are culled from the military.
