National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018 - Motion to Proceed - Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. President, I stand to support my friend Senator Rand Paul and to encourage my colleagues in the U.S. Senate to support his proposed amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act.

In the Declaration of Independence, the Founding Fathers lodged the following grievance against King George III: ``He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.''

A decade later, the Founders included a safeguard in the Constitution so ``civil power''--in other words, the people and their duly elected representatives--would play an important role in matters of war and peace. The safeguard takes up all of seven words in the Constitution: ``The Congress shall have Power . . . to declare War.''

Today this safeguard--this crucial check on government--has been eroded in several ways and in ways many Americans would find downright alarming.

Congressional authorization for the use of military force is being used in a contorted way to justify wars with an ever-growing list of adversaries without any input from Congress or the American people about whether we should be fighting those wars in the first place.

Senator Paul has submitted an amendment to sunset two such authorizations: the 2001 authorization of military force against the perpetrators of 9/11, and the 2002 authorization of military force against the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

I support my colleague's amendment because the world has changed and our adversaries have changed since those authorizations were passed into law by Congress. Osama bin Laden is dead. Saddam Hussein is dead. In fact, his statue in Firdos Square came down almost a decade and a half ago. Yet thousands of American troops are still serving in the Middle East based on the same authorizations Congress granted more than a decade and a half ago. Instead of changing these authorizations to reflect a changing world, politicians have used the old authorizations to start new wars in countries other than Iraq and Afghanistan against adversaries that had nothing to do with 9/11.

The 2001 AUMF has been used to justify a drone war across the Middle East without a debate or a vote in Congress. It has been used to justify air wars in Libya and Yemen without a debate or a vote in Congress. It has been used to justify military action against the Islamic State terrorist group without a debate or a vote in Congress. Some of these military actions may be justified, but the best way to determine whether they are is to submit them to scrutiny, to debate and vote on the matter in Congress as the Constitution prescribes.

As many of you know, we are in the midst of sort of a populist challenge to Washington, DC. Senator Paul and I have listened to countless Americans voice many of their grievances against Washington.
The gist of their complaint in this area is this: They don't feel as though their interests are being taken into account in our Nation's Capital. Bit by bit, they have watched their representatives cede decisionmaking power to unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in the executive branch. They have watched as a Washington consensus has emerged, a kind of faux consensus shared nowhere else other than in Washington, DC.

If you understand these concerns that Washington, DC, is deeply unrepresentative of how much of the country feels, then you understand a lot about the populist moment. It applies to foreign policy as well as domestic policy, to how our government conducts itself abroad as well as at home.

A decade and a half after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the American people want a place at the table in decisions about war and peace, about life and death. They want to be represented in decisions that concern them and their sons and their daughters so intimately. If we do not give the American people these things, if we don't listen to their concerns, advocate for them in the legislative branch and vote on them openly under the light of day in this Chamber, then we are failing them as representatives, and we are ignoring the Constitution. That is why I am supporting Senator Paul's amendment. I hope my colleagues will join me so that this issue can get the vote it deserves.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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