My Resignation

From the National Commission on the Future of the Navy

Yesterday, I transmitted the above letter to House Committee on Armed Services (HASC) Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL) resigning from the National Commission on the Future of the Navy. Chairman Rogers nominated me to this Commission in March of 2023 in response to the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) signed by President Biden in December 2022.

When I decided to resign, I wrote a more extensive letter detailing the factors that contributed to my decision but shortened it to the above for two reasons. The first is that Chairman Rogers is a busy man, and I do not think he has the time to spend on my rationale, and the second is that I thought a more extensive explanation was more appropriate here.

This is that explanation. I have written previously about the National Commission on the Future of the Navy here, here, here, and here, and for those with the time and inclination to do so, these essays are worth a scan.

Background

During the 2022 drafting of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), two young, knowledgeable, and dynamic House Armed Services Committee Members—Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Elaine Luria (D-VA)— teamed up to insert language creating a National Commission on the Future of the Navy, patterned after an earlier panel devoted to the Army. In the fall of 2022, Gallagher’s office reached out to assess my willingness to serve as a Commissioner, and I agreed. Gallagher passed my name on to the Chairman of the HASC for consideration, and he selected me as one of 8 Commissioners (in each chamber, both Party Leaders, as well as Chairmen and Ranking Members of the respective Armed Services Committees were given nominations by the Act).

The enabling legislation directed nominations be made and Commission work begin within 90 days of enactment, which would have been March 22, 2023, and the Commission was to deliver its report to the Congress on July 1, 2024. I was nominated on 20 March 2023, and at that time only one other Commissioner had been nominated (by the then Senate Majority Leader Senator Schumer (D-NY)). Seven months later when I wrote this essay, all four Republican Party Commissioners had been nominated, but only the one Democratic nominee had been.

The July 1, 2024, mandate came and went without a Commission being formed, effectively killing it. Efforts continued (without Luria who had been defeated and Gallagher who had resigned his seat) in the 118th Congress to extend the mandate of the Commission, and the 2025 NDAA signed in late December 2024 contained an extension through January 15th, 2026.

The Commission has not formed, and it has not met. The current delay—now that all of the Commissioners have been appointed—is that there is no Congressional Appropriation to fund its work. There is no appropriation because we are operating this nation under a Continuing Resolution (not a budget), which locks in the previous year’s spending and largely prohibits “new starts,” which the Commission would be.

Details

As I said in my letter of resignation, this nation is not interested in a serious discussion of its Navy, and I am not interested in being unserious. That is the one sentence explanation for why I have resigned. There are three primary factors that come into play.

• The 2016 election of Donald Trump as President, his presidency, his leadership of an insurrection, and his subsequent re-election have sadly spurred me to a diminished sense of duty and sacrifice. I spent my entire adult life working for the national security of the United States because I felt a strong obligation to my fellow citizens and the fortunes of this nation. I carried out these obligations to the detriment of other parts of my life. Taking stock now as I approach sixty, I feel a far greater duty to those other parts—my family, our home, our town, and our friends—than I do to a country that has so clearly cut loose from its moorings. As I said in this piece, I am going to “roll my scan in”.

However, this factor alone would not have been enough to keep me from the Commission’s work. There was more.

• When President Biden signed the 2025 NDAA, he was a lame-duck President. Given the previous bullet, I knew what was coming and STILL was determined to spend 2025 working like a one-armed paper-hanger to provide Congress with a quality input. But here we are, two months after the NDAA’s enactment, and there is no Commission, because there is no money to fund it. And there is no money to fund it, because (as I said earlier), we are operating under a CR. This is not how a serious nation, a nation threatened by a peer competitor who believes it is constrained by the world we created, carries out its business. Two full months of work—two months where the Commission could have been meeting with Flag and General Officers, shipyard executives and munitions providers, technologists, and strategists—have been wasted. Every additional day that goes by further compresses the timeline for the Commission’s work, laying the predicate for a grueling timeline for completion, a shoddy product, or both.

I am unafraid of grueling timelines and had the previous two bullets alone been in play, I would have continued on. But there is more.

• I was well-aware twenty-four months ago when I was nominated to the Commission of the spotty reputation of “Blue-Ribbon Panels” and the degree to which many believe them to be colossal wastes of time and money. I assure you, people I respect felt this way, and some of them told me so. But the fact that the Congress had created the Commission was proof enough to me of receptivity to its findings, and so I endeavored to make the sacrifices necessary to contribute. But the past two years of Congressional malpractice have convinced me that while I cannot say that all Blue-Ribbon Panels are a waste of time and money, THIS Blue-Ribbon Panel is. Not because of its subject matter, not because of its importance, but because, even if the panel were able to discern absolute perfection, it would be wasted on a legislature that simply could not process it. So when I think about what the next ten or nine or seven months (depending on when and if an appropriation is made) would bring, at least for me it would result in delaying what I consider to be the essential (to my psyche) process of shifting from the national to the personal, to produce a report that will have no impact.

When I add up these costs, they are simply too high. I will continue to think and write and speak about the importance of a strong and active Navy to our national security for the remainder of the year. As for the Commission, I cannot say if there will be an appropriation to enable it to complete its work. I only know that it will do so without me.