National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018

Floor Speech

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Mr. President, first let me lend my support to efforts to bring amendments before the floor later today or later this week with respect to strengthening our Nation's ``Buy American'' laws. This has been a cause that I have been working on for almost my entire career in the U.S. Congress, and it is about time we start making sure that when we are spending billions of dollars for the U.S. military, we prioritize American companies so that we don't allow for those dollars to flow overseas when we have companies in Connecticut, North Carolina, and Illinois that can do the work. This is important, and I hope we take some votes on these measures that I think will draw bipartisan support either this week or next.

I do rise, though, to lend my voice, as well, to the amendment being offered by Senator Paul. Let me stipulate that this is an extraordinary amendment to sunset an authorization of military force that currently provides the legal authorization for our continuing military efforts to take out al-Qaida as they try to plan attacks against the United States and our allies. It is time for extraordinary measures because we have simply not done our constitutional duty in declaring and authorizing war.

I would argue, as many of my colleagues do, that no matter how necessary it is for the United States to take the fight to ISIS, as we have in Iraq and Syria and other places around the world, that is not currently authorized by the U.S. Congress, and it is a fairly extraordinary leap of statutory interpretation to think that an authorization to attack al-Qaida, the perpetrators of the attacks on 9/ 11, allows you then to conduct a global war with almost no limits against this new enemy.

To me, if we don't reauthorize military action against ISIS, perhaps against other foes that we confront, then I am not sure the Congress will ever again authorize war. Why? It is a lot harder to authorize military action today than it was a century ago or 50 years ago. We aren't marching conventional armies across a field against one another.

We aren't signing neat peace treaties that provide a clear end to hostilities. The enemy is shadowy and diffuse and perpetual, and victory now is harder to define than ever before. It is very easy for the U.S. Congress to just step back and say that authorizing military force is too hard. It is too difficult, so we outsource it to the executive branch to decide who we fight, where we fight, when we fight, and how we fight. That is not what the Founding Fathers imagined, and, in fact, there is very good reason to vest in the Congress the sole authority to declare war. If I thought that we were going to do this without the sunsetting of the existing AUMFs, then I wouldn't support this extraordinary measure. I have been here long enough to know that it is far too easy and convenient for this Congress to allow for an Executive, whether it be a Republican or Democratic Executive, to define the parameters of war and to name new enemies who have not been before this body for debate.

So I think it is time for us to sunset these authorizations, and I do think that with that pressure, we will be able to come up with a new authorization that gives our military and our Executive what they need in order to continue the fight against groups like ISIS, while protecting the interests of our constituents, who, frankly, by and large, no matter what State they are from, do not want the President of the United States--this or any other--to have an unchecked ability to bring the fight to anyone, anywhere around the globe.

I will just state, take a look at the way in which the President suggested he was authorized to take action against the Assad regime as evidence of how unending the current interpretation can be. The justification for that action was because it was next to action being taken against ISIS, which was authorized because ISIS has some familial relationship to al-Qaida. That is three or four steps removed from any debate this body has ever had. That is not what the Founding Fathers intended.

I am going to support Senator Paul's amendment. I will then vigorously work with my colleagues to try to craft an authorization that gets the job done. It is about time.

I yield the floor.

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