The Senate confirmed John Phelan to lead the Department of the Navy in a 62-30 vote on Monday.
Phelan will now lead the Navy and the Marine Corps during a time of transition. The Navy continues to deploy forces to the Middle East and, at the same time, prepares for a potential conflict in the Pacific. In the U.S., the Department of the Navy is managing delayed shipbuilding programs, a substantial backlog of repair work and ongoing quality-of-life issues inside the Navy and Marine Corps.
“The U.S. Navy is at a crossroads, extended deployments, inadequate maintenance, huge cost overruns, delayed shipbuilding, failed audits, subpar housing, and sadly, record high suicide rates are systemic failures that have gone unaddressed for far too long, and frankly, this is unacceptable,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month.
In his hearing before the SASC, Phelan told the panel the Trump administration’s top priority for the Department of the Navy was shipbuilding
“I don’t think I could say shipbuilding enough times,” he told the panel during his confirmation hearing when asked about President Donald Trump’s priorities.
He pledged to review the Navy’s existing contracts and focus on having a clean audit for the Department of the Navy.
“I intend to sit down day one, and we are going to go through every contract that we have and understand what exactly they say and what flexibility they do or do not give us, what contract needs to change or not change, and why,” he told the panel.
“I intend to do the same thing as it relates to an audit. I need to understand why the Navy cannot pass an audit.”
Phelan was one of the earliest announced nominees in the Trump administration. He founded Rugger Management LLC and previously served as the chairman and chief investment officer of the firm that oversaw the fortune of Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell. He’s a 1986 graduate of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and has an MBA from Harvard Business School. He is also an avid art collector.
