Providing for Congressional Disapproval of a Rule Submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Arizona for working so closely. This does not have to be a partisan issue. In fact, it should not be a partisan issue. My sense is that in this Congress, in both Houses, 80-plus percent of the Members believe strongly that the United States should be engaged in military action under some circumstances against this horrible threat of ISIL. Yet, despite that overwhelming consensus and despite the clear constitutional command in article I that we should not be at war without a vote of Congress, there has been a strange conspiracy of silence about this in the legislative branch for the last 16 months.
The Senator from Arizona and I introduced a resolution in January to authorize military force, building upon previous efforts in the Foreign Relations Committee, the President's submitted authorization. We did it knowing that it is not perfect, knowing that not everyone would agree with every word, but we did it to show that we can be bipartisan and stand up against a threat such as ISIL.
As the Senator did, let's review what has happened since August 8, 2014. The President on that day started airstrikes against ISIL and said he was doing it for two reasons: first, to protect American personnel who were jeopardized at a consulate in Erbil, and second, to provide humanitarian support for members of a minority religious sect, the Yazidis, who were basically being hemmed in by ISIL in Sinjar in northern Iraq. Those were the two reasons.
At that point in August of 2014, ISIL and their activities were limited to Iraq and Syria. Sixteen months later, we have lost four American hostages who have been executed by ISIL. We have lost 10 American service men and women who were deployed to that theater. We have about 3,600 American troops who are deployed thousands of miles from home, risking their lives every day. We have spent $5 billion--$11 million a day--in the battle against ISIL. We have flown nearly 6,300 airstrikes with American aircraft against ISIL--ISIL, which was at first limited to Iraq and Syria and now has presence in Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia. They have undertaken attacks that they claim credit for in the Sinai in Egypt and in Lebanon.
This threat is mutating and growing. At the end of last week, on Friday the 13th, we saw the horror of ISIL with the grim assassination of innocents as they were enjoying dinner or going to music concerts or watching soccer games in Paris. ISIL put out a video a few days ago threatening similar attacks on Washington. ISIL is not going away. This is a threat.
The President started military action for a narrow and limited reason, but the threat has mutated. Like a cancer, it has grown, and it is now affecting nations all over the world. The question is, How long will Congress continue to be silent about this? I will say that I think this is a malady you can lay at the feet of both parties in both Houses. Congress has seemed to prefer a strategy of criticizing what the President is doing. And look, I am critical of some of the things the President is doing. In an earlier speech, the senior Senator from Arizona laid out some challenges with this strategy. But it is not enough for this body that has a constitutional authority in matters of war to just criticize the Commander in Chief. What we have done is sat on the sidelines and criticized, but we have not been willing either to vote to authorize what is going on, vote to stop what is going on, or vote to refine or revise what is going on. It is easy to be a critic. It is easy to sit in the stands and watch a play and say: Well, why didn't the coach call a different play? But we are not fans here, We are the owners of the team. We are the article I branch, and we are not supposed to be at war without a vote of Congress.
I will hand it back to my colleague from Arizona, and then perhaps I can say a few concluding words that would be more about the kind of emotional rather than the legal side of this as we are thinking about the challenges in Paris.
I think the events of last week--Egypt, Beirut, Paris--demonstrate that the voice of Congress is needed. The voice of Congress is needed to fulfill our article I responsibility. The voice of Congress is needed, as the Senator from Arizona mentioned, because we send a message by our voice to our allies, to the adversary, and to our troops. The voice of Congress is also needed because it has the effect of solving some of the problems Senator McCain mentioned earlier. To the extent that the administration's strategy is not what we would want it to be, they have to present a strategy to Congress. We ask tough questions of the witnesses, and we refine it and it gets better. We do that all in the view of the American public so they can be educated about what is at stake. When you don't have the debate, you don't put before the American public the reasons for the involvement, and that is desperately needed.
With that, I thank my colleague from Arizona. I would like to say a few words at the end about why this is a matter of emotional significance to me.
I now defer to my colleague.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Arizona for joining together in this important area.
I had a sad epiphany on Friday as I was thinking about this. I think Senator Flake and I have children who are about the same age. I was thinking about young people--looking at our pages here, thinking about young people. Like many, when the attacks happened Friday, my first thoughts were, whom do I know in Paris? A lot of folks have relatives or have family or coworkers or former coworkers who were in Paris.
Like a lot of people, I got on the phone and I got on text to try to track down my niece. I have a niece who is a student at law school, a third-year law student. She is in Paris for a semester studying at the Sciences PO. She was in the restaurant area where the shootings occurred so close that she could hear them. She was not immediately affected, but she and her friends had to barricade themselves in the restaurant for a while, wondering what was going on.
We were able to determine that Elizabeth was fine. She assured all the family and the people who wanted to send her a plane ticket to come home that, no, she was fine. But over the weekend I started to think about how fine she really is, how fine our young people really are. Elizabeth was a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon a few years ago. After she came home, the village she lived in was essentially wiped out by Boko Haram. The next door neighbor, who was her protector and the protector of all the Peace Corps volunteers who came before, was killed, along with a lot of her other friends. Boko Haram has now pledged allegiance to ISIL.
She had the experience of losing friends in a terrorist attack in Cameroon, and now she has had the experience of being near a terrorist attack in Paris. It started to work on my conscience a little bit that this for her is now a norm. For me, at age 57, these events are not the norm. They are the extreme. But for Elizabeth or for my children--I have three kids, one in the military, and they all came of age after 9/11--we are living in a world that for so many of our young people, the norm is not peace and safety and complacency; the norm is war or terrorist attacks all over the globe. If that can be said about America's young people, it is certainly the case for young people in France and young people in Syria and all over the region.
I hate that we are living in a world where young people are starting to think this is the norm rather than the exception. It seems to me as an adult, as somebody in a leadership position, that a part of what we need to do is rather than just allow us to drift without taking a position into the world where this is more and more normal, while acknowledging that we are humble people and we can't completely control our destiny, we have to take charge of a situation and not stand by and lob in criticism but try to shape it to the best of our ability. I think that was the genius of the drafters of the Constitution.
James Madison, a Virginian who drafted many of these provisions, was trying to do something incredibly radical. At the time, war was for the King or the Monarch or the Emperor, and Madison and the others who drafted the American Constitution, said: We are going to take that power to initiate war away from the Executive. Nobody else has really done this, and we are going to put the power in the hands of the people's elected representatives so that they will debate and soberly analyze when you should take that step of authorizing military action where, even under the best of circumstances, horrible things can happen and people can lose their lives.
Well, we have allowed this war to go on long enough without putting a congressional fingerprint on it. For our young people, for our troops, for our allies, and for our adversaries, it is my prayer that we in Congress will now take up that leadership mantle and try to shape this mutating and growing threat to the greatest degree we can.
With that, I yield the floor and again thank my colleague from Arizona.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source