The Senate Armed Services Committee today voted to move Chuck Hagel’s nomination to become Secretary of Defense to the full Senate on Tuesday afternoon with a vote of 14 to 11, with Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) yet to vote, split down party lines.

“Senator Hagel has received broad support from an array of senior statesmen and foreign policy dignitaries,” Chairman Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) said before the vote. Levin continued to list the impressive array of endorsements that Hagel has received, noting the long-list of positions Hagel holds that stand firmly in the mainstream.

A vote on the floor of the Senate could come as soon as tomorrow, according to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). Reid today announced that he would not honor holds — informal filibuster threats placed by individual Senators — from the GOP, forcing them to actually filibuster the nomination to prevent it from coming to a vote.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) has already pledged to lead the charge in a filibuster, the first against a Defense Secretary nominee, once the nomination hits the Senate floor. Inhofe, during the discussion before the vote, cited how pleased he was that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) displayed his misleading evidence during Hagel’s testimony. Cruz and Inhofe also implied during the hearing that Hagel has taken money from Saudi and possibly other foreign governments, an argument without proof that found itself harshly challenged.

Inhofe’s plan is unlikely to succeed, though. Several GOP members have already pledged to either vote for Hagel — such as Sen. Thad Chochran (R-MS) — or oppose a filibuster — like Hagel opponent Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) — making the odds of Republicans mustering the 41 votes necessary to prevent cloture on the debate unlikely. While a movement is growing to have a sixty vote threshold for Hagel that is somehow not a filibuster, Hagel has more than enough votes on his side to easily clear the majority required for final confirmation.

Neocons and their allies have been attacking Hagel since weeks before its official announcement. In their desperation in recent weeks, Republicans are throwing everything they can at the nominee, in hopes of derailing him. Instead, their efforts are proving ineffective at best, damaging to their own party at worst.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI)

Twenty-five Senate Republicans sent Hagel a letter on Tuesday saying they opposed a vote on his confirmation unless Hagel disclosed numerous pieces of financial information, many of which the former Republican senator has previously said he is not legally obliged to give.

Levin said on Thursday the demands were unprecedented and went “way beyond what the rules of the committee are.” Levin backed up his comments in the letter to Inhofe today:

This letter appears to insist upon financial disclosure requirements that far exceed the standard practices of the Armed Services Committee and go far beyond the financial disclosure required of previous Secretaries of Defense. [...]

There are two unprecedented elements to the financial disclosure demanded by the February 6, letter: (1) the disclosure of “all compensation over $5,000 that [Senator Hagel has] received over the past five years”; and (2) the disclosure of any foreign funding of eight private entities from which Senator Hagel has received compensation since leaving the Senate (including the date, source, and specific amount of each foreign contribution). Each of these demands goes well beyond what the committee has required of any previous nominee. [...]

The committee cannot have two different sets of financial disclosure standards for nominees, one for Senator Hagel and one for other nominees.

Experts agree with Levin. “I think it’s a pretty ridiculous and outrageous thing to ask,” Norman Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute told the Daily Beast this week. “You could say that there’s been requests for detailed information [in the past], but this goes even beyond the intrusive questionnaires candidates fill out during the vetting process.”

Levin postponed the committee’s vote on Hagel’s nomination this week due to the GOP obstruction but a statement accompanying the letter to Inhofe said “Levin intends to hold a committee vote on the Hagel nomination as soon as possible.”

Senate Armed Services Committee chair Carl Levin (D-MI) will reportedly delay the committee’s vote on Chuck Hagel’s nomination to be the next Secretary of Defense. Republicans are demanding that Hagel produce the texts of private speeches he made and disclose the financial dealings of private companies he is associated with. A spokesperson for Levin told ThinkProgress that the committee is “working on their concerns.”

The vote was expected to take place as early as Thursday, but Republicans — led by Sens. James Inhofe (R-OK) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) — asked that the vote be delayed after Hagel — citing legal and logistics issues — said he could not give the them everything they’re asking for.

“It’s up in the air,” the committee staffer told Politico. “Levin isn’t interested in pushing it through against their will. We’re trying to resolve their concerns, and hopefully we can get it addressed by tomorrow,” a committee staffer told Politico on Wednesday.

But now it seems like those concerns won’t be met and it’s unclear just how they can or should be addressed at all, seeing that Hagel has said he doesn’t have the texts of all his private speeches and the business dealings of private companies and organizations Hagel is affiliated with is, as the Atlantic’s Steve Clemons points out, “going to be a really fun slippery slope”:

The entangled relationships of all US senators and spouses would be screened to see what they might be able to cough up about firms they have some connection to but don’t run.

I don’t think we should go down that road — but if Senator Cruz compels it, it should be interesting.

“The committee’s vote on Senator Hagel’s nomination has not been scheduled,” Levin said today in a statement. “I had hoped to hold a vote on the nomination this week, but the committee’s review of the nomination is not yet complete. I intend to schedule a vote on the nomination as soon as possible.”

“If we’re really going to go down this route,” TPM’s Josh Marshall writes, “is it time to air the fact that AEI is partly funded by secret grants by the Taiwanese government (at least as of mid-last decade)?”