Stephen Feinberg, the nominee to be the next deputy defense secretary, sought to reassure lawmakers in a confirmation hearing Tuesday that the Pentagon would follow the nation’s laws and preserve its core workforce amid the Trump administration’s drastic military shakeup.
The hearing was a much more sober affair than that for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who spent hours denying widespread allegations of personal misconduct before Senators in January.
Hegseth was later confirmed on a 51-50 vote after Vice President JD Vance broke the tie, marking the narrowest margin ever for a defense secretary, who usually receives bipartisan support.
Feinberg, a billionaire investor, is a far more cautious public figure than Hegseth and hasn’t prompted nearly the same level of criticism.
In his opening statement, Feinberg offered a similar assessment of the military’s top priorities to the Biden administration, which argued that China was its greatest challenge.
“They are fully dedicated to becoming the strongest nation in the world and having dominance over the United States,” he said.
Still, Democratic senators repeatedly asked about the changes occurring at the Pentagon under the Trump administration, including a commitment to restructure the military’s budget, cleave its workforce and replace many of its top uniformed leaders.
On Friday, the administration fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. CQ Brown, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti and Vice Chairman of the Air Force Gen. Jim Slife, while pledging to also remove the top military lawyers for the Air Force, Army and Navy. These removals come amid the firing of 5,400 civilian employees, the start of a wider government purge now reaching the military.
Acting Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Salesses has also said the Pentagon will restructure its coming budget, shifting some $50 billion toward new priorities.
Feinberg, who said he didn’t have enough detail while awaiting confirmation, didn’t answer many questions about the reach of those cuts and how they could harm the military’s fitness to fight wars or remain politically independent.
If confirmed, he would take responsibility for implementing many of these efforts. The deputy secretary acts as a manager inside the Pentagon, the primary role overseeing its vast budget and workforce.
“There is a real opportunity to make the right cuts,” he said. “It has to be done thoughtfully.”
Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee were skeptical the Trump administration is taking that approach.
“You can’t just take a meat axe. You have to use a scalpel in determining who is necessary,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.
Feinberg often cited his experience managing the investment firm Cerberus Capital to argue he would handle any cuts carefully. From that perch, he also discussed one of his top priorities if he were to be confirmed: reforming the Pentagon’s business practices.
“It’s very rigid, gold-plated, [and with] endless rules,” Feinberg said of the current system, which he argued rewards large defense firms rather than those that are most innovative.
Part of the promised $50 billion restructuring could include moving money away from such legacy systems and toward higher tech weapons, such as hypersonics and autonomy — both of which should be among the military’s top goals, Feinberg said.
Still, not all of the senators on the committee were impressed by Feinberg’s credentials.
The harshest criticism of his record came from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who accused his firm of gutting hospitals in her home state and questioned his potential conflicts of interest since Cerberus holds a bevy of defense investments.
Feinberg disputed her characterizations.
The Trump administration has moved slowly to confirm many of the top positions in the Pentagon, a list that has since expanded with the recent top military firings. The nominee to run policy, former defense official Elbridge Colby, doesn’t yet have a hearing date and is facing questions about his less hawkish defense views than many Republicans in the Senate.
Noah Robertson is the Pentagon reporter at Defense News. He previously covered national security for the Christian Science Monitor. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and government from the College of William & Mary in his hometown of Williamsburg, Virginia.
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