{"id":16964,"date":"2020-10-29T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-29T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2020\/10\/29\/sen-jack-reed-is-thought-of-as-a-quiet-professional-if-democrats-win-the-senate-hell-be-front-and-center\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T20:26:43","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T20:26:43","slug":"sen-jack-reed-is-thought-of-as-a-quiet-professional-if-democrats-win-the-senate-hell-be-front-and-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/congress\/2020\/10\/29\/sen-jack-reed-is-thought-of-as-a-quiet-professional-if-democrats-win-the-senate-hell-be-front-and-center\/","title":{"rendered":"Sen. Jack Reed is a quiet professional. If Democrats win the Senate, he\u2019ll be front and center."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON \u2015 Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Jack Reed is known to talk softly. But if Democrats retake the Senate, he could carry a megaphone as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A deferential, bipartisan and respected ranking member for the last six years opposite Republican chairmen John McCain and Jim Inhofe, Reed has never stepped into such an agenda-setting and high-profile role in his decades-long legislative career. Despite credentials as an Army Ranger, paratrooper, and graduate of West Point and Harvard Law School, he\u2019s shown little interest in raising his profile outside Washington and Rhode Island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The spry 70-year-old tends to zip past reporters in the Senate, and when he does stop, they sometimes strain to hear him. He appears on national television rarely. He twice stepped out of the running for defense secretary under President Barack Obama, opting to continue his quieter Senate career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, with Democrats fighting to retake the chamber (and the White House) in the Nov. 3 elections, Reed could move into one of Congress’ most visible positions and is favored to be a major defense figure for his party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though Reed\u2019s priorities as the potential chairman remain unclear, insiders credit him as a careful listener whose style emulates his mentor on the panel, Michigan Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, a longtime SASC chairman who was tough on issues such as Guantanamo detainees and military sexual assault.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reed\u2019s office declined to comment for this article.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reed \u2015 who\u2019s evinced conventional, consensus-oriented foreign policy views \u2015 would be a central player amid the split between former Vice President Joe Biden (if he wins) and progressives who are skeptical of military intervention and mammoth defense budgets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think there are issues where Jack Reed might be a little bit of a foil to some of the Progressive orthodoxy that\u2019s going on in the Democratic Party right now, because if he\u2019s not a centrist, he holds mainstream national security views that aren\u2019t necessarily aligned with folks who want to cut the defense budget by 10 percent across the board,\u201d said a Senate Armed Services Committee staffer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reed, the staffer said, fits with what Ben Rhodes, an adviser to President Barack Obama, called \u201cthe Blob,\u201d meaning the foreign-policy establishment Rhodes and Obama saw themselves challenging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This summer, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Democratic socialist who has led the left\u2019s argument to tap the Pentagon\u2019s bloated budget for domestic needs, sponsored an ultimately defeated an amendment<\/a> to reduce the $740.5 billion defense authorization bill by a 10 percent. That effort won the support Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Minority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reed argued against a sweeping and indiscriminate cut and voted \u201cno.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur strength is not just military forces, our strength is knowledgeable citizens, our strength is healthy citizens, our strength is an efficient and economic system,\u201d Reed said in floor speech. \u201cBut I think … this across-the-board approach, it\u2019s good for a headline, it\u2019s good to make a point, but we\u2019re here to make policy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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WASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 22: Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) (R) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) speak to the media after attending the Democratic weekly policy luncheon on Capitol Hill, October 22, 2019 in Washington, DC. Sen. Reed spoke about the situation in Syria. (Photo by Mark Wilson\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A Biden agenda<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After record budget increases under Trump, and in the midst of pandemic, progressives have agitated for reprioritized spending in favor of healthcare, education and jobs. Calling for pragmatism, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith, D-Wash., has predicted<\/a> an internal \u201cfight\u201d over defense spending will yield a flat budget \u2015 and Reed has more or less concurred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think President Biden will send a budget up that recognizes essentially the same reality that President Trump would have to recognize, which is that the increases of the last several years are not going to be carried forward, that we\u2019re in more of a steady-state, sort of flat-line budget, and within that budget we\u2019re going to have to make savings,\u201d Reed said at an online summit hosted by the Association of Defense Communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think a President Biden would ask for dramatic cuts. So the question is rallying support among all of our Democratic colleagues for President Biden\u2019s budget,\u201d Reed said. He added that Republican opposition on deficit spending toward COVID relief is a part of the bipartisan headwinds facing defense spending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SASC\u2019s jurisdiction covers an extraordinary range of military issues, but the chairman\u2019s primary responsibility is shepherding the annual National Defense Authorization Act, the last dependable legislative vehicle left in Congress. McCain used the gavel to pass reforms<\/a> that reshaped the Pentagon\u2019s acquisitions hierarchy, while Inhofe sought <\/a>and won defense topline increases<\/a> in the name of the Trump administration\u2019s National Defense Strategy<\/a> and remedying years of statutory budget caps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The top Republican and Democrat of each chamber\u2019s armed services committee, who are collectively known as the \u201cbig four,\u201d conduct the end-stage negotiations over the NDAA. The process is often difficult but historically driven by a bipartisan drive to finish the bill, and while Reed\u2019s expected to continue to stick that tradition, Democrats would hold more sway under a unified government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, Armed Services would be a key committee under Biden, whose foreign policy priorities<\/a> include rebuilding America\u2019s alliances abroad, in part to push back against Beijing. Biden has said<\/a> he doesn\u2019t foresee major reductions in the U.S. military\u2019s budget as it reorients from Iraq and Afghanistan to potential threats from \u201cnear-peer\u201d powers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Reed tends to go where his party and its leaders go. In bipartisan spending negotiations, he echoes the party\u2019s position that national security spending should include defense, but also the Department of Homeland Security, State Department and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While progressives and others believe the United States has spent too much time, money and blood on battlefields far from home, and Trump has said he would end \u201cendless wars,\u201d Reed in recent months has sided with bipartisan efforts to oppose Trump\u2019s \u201cprecipitous withdrawal\u201d from Afghanistan and the Middle East. Along similar lines, Biden has said some troops could stay in Afghanistan to focus on the counterterrorism mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though Reed\u2019s support<\/a> for modernizing the nuclear triad also contrasts with more progressive lawmakers, he backed<\/a> a failed Democratic effort to bar the Trump administration from developing a low-yield, submarine launched nuclear weapon, and he opposes a restart of nuclear testing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, Reed initially voted against<\/a> extracting the U.S. military from the Yemen civil war, which placed him in the minority in his own party, but voted in favor of later efforts<\/a>. He co-sponsored related legislation<\/a> with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and several top Democrats, to block Trump\u2019s $8.1 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia \u2015 and he complained when likeminded provisions were left out of the 2020 NDAA. (Biden wants to reevaluate US-Saudi ties.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI strongly support a prohibition on U.S. arms transfers, and other offensive support to the Saudi led coalition and will continue working to stop the bloodshed and suffering in Yemen,\u201d Reed said in a December 2019 floor speech, adding that the instability caused by the war was a gift to Iran and the Islamic State.<\/p>\n\n\n\t