Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2017

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chair, when I took my oath of office, the Speaker handed me this Constitution.

Here, in Article I, it reads that it is the Congress of the United States that declares war or not. Yet, as my friend from California said so eloquently, days and days and years have gone by that the Congress of the United States has abdicated its fundamental responsibility. Perhaps the most awesome and important of our responsibilities is to send our men and women onto the battlefield. Yet we have not done it.

The esteemed chairman of the Appropriations Committee said that this is too important an issue to be in an appropriations bill. I could not disagree more. The appropriations bill is about war, and there are billions and billions of dollars in this appropriations bill to conduct a war that is not authorized by Congress.

It seems to me to be absolutely essential that we take up our responsibility--that we define what it is we want to accomplish in Syria and Iraq and that we put aside the old authorizations that are now 15 years old and that are, clearly, not only out of date, but are inappropriate for what we are doing in the Middle East. It is our responsibility. The Constitution of the United States says it is. There are 535 of us who have sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States, and we have failed.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source