Motion to Discharge--S.J. Res. 59

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, in a 1793 letter to William Cabell, James Madison said this:

In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department.

A few years later, in another letter, this time to Thomas Jefferson as part of their famous correspondence, Madison expounded on that very simple superlative, naming the war powers clause in the Constitution as the most important. He said:

The constitution supposes what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the Legislature.

Our Founding Fathers didn't get everything right. They didn't see ahead of time that this Chamber would be divided in two: Republicans on one side, Democrats on the other side. But they knew, having watched the course of human history, that Executives--in their day, mostly all Monarchs and Kings--had all sorts of reasons to drag their Nation into war. Power often came from war, the funding that could be raised for war, the loyalty commanded by war, the glory that occasionally came to the leader, the ruler, through war and through conquest.

There was great risk in war, but there was also great reward in war. And there was far too much of it in the era in which our Constitution was being formed.

The purpose of the Founders was to give the American people a voice in government--a revolutionary idea at the time--but it was also to order our government in a way that war would become less likely, would become less frequent. They imagined a world--this new America--in which peace would be the rule, not war, as it was at the time for the citizens of Europe who lived under the rule of Kings prone to war, incentivized to war, as James Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson.

So this part of the Constitution, with more wisdom in it than any other part of the Constitution, according to James Madison, is this section of our Founding document that says it is not up to the ruler; it is not up to the executive branch; it is up to the branch of government most connected to the people to decide whether we go to war; to require that there be a debate, a conversation that involves everyone in this Nation; that requires, that necessitates, a collective decision as to whether to put the brave soldiers of this country and the collective security of the Nation at risk.

So we are here today because we still find wisdom in that clause of the Constitution. We still see great risk in moving into a world, which we are quickly moving to, in which that clause that James Madison named as the supreme clause of the Constitution, is a dead letter--is a dead letter.

That is the risk because there are very few wars that are planned so far in advance that there is time to come and have a monthlong debate. Wars happen quickly, and they necessitate quick action, according to the Constitution.

Yes, we have always accepted that there has to be an exception--but a limited exception--to that supreme clause in the Constitution. If there is an imminent attack against the United States, of course--of course-- the people of the United States want the ability of the President of the United States to respond to that imminent attack. But in the absence of an imminent attack, there is no exception. There is no ability to go around Congress.

In the case of the hostilities against Iran that the President began last weekend, there was no imminent threat against the United States. There was no Army marching in this Nation. There was no nuclear bomb that even existed that could be dropped on the United States or our soldiers in the region.

So it was required--it is required under the Constitution--that the President come to Congress. If the President doesn't need to come to Congress to attack another Nation preemptively, preventively, absent an imminent threat, then that provision of the Constitution is dead letter. Period. Stop. And the most important piece of this document, according to our most revered Founding Father, is no longer operational.

And if we lurch into a world in which any Executive can send us to war without the participation of the American people, then we are in a world that our Founding Fathers could never have imagined.

So I am very glad to be on the floor today, as a big fan of the wisdom of our Founders, to support Senator Kaine's resolution. I appreciate his consistency in bringing this question before us.

I don't want to live in a world in which the greatest question that this country could envision, whether or not we send our brave men and women to fight on our behalf, is not a question that doesn't involve the collective conversation of this body and of the people of this Nation.

I think it is an important resolution to debate here, and I hope my colleagues will support it.

It doesn't really have to do with whether you think there is wisdom in this action or not, whether you think the President was right or wrong; this is an opportunity for us to stand up for our responsibility under the Constitution to be a coequal branch in setting foreign policy.

I have my thoughts on the wisdom of this action. I have stated that I think it is very dangerous when the President of the United States deliberately misleads the country about the efficacy of our military operations overseas or the threats presented to this country. It is unforgiveable anytime a President doesn't tell the truth, but it is especially unforgiveable when the President doesn't tell the truth about national security intelligence.

I know my colleagues here come to different conclusions, but if the reporting is correct that Iran, even after these strikes, still has centrifuges and still has enriched uranium and still has scientists who know how to put those things together, then it just is not true that the program has been obliterated. That is a program that can be reconstituted in a relatively short amount of time because, of course, knowledge is not able to be destroyed by bombs.

The only way that you are going to make this country and this world safe from Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions--and they have them--is diplomacy. I hope that diplomacy got easier because of these strikes, but I don't think they did. I don't think diplomacy got closer because of these strikes and whatever follow-on strikes may come as President Trump is currently threatening. So if diplomacy is the only path, if you can't bomb out of existence knowledge, then I don't think this is a very good week for American national security.

But I come to a different conclusion than many of my Republican colleagues do, even some of my Democratic colleagues. But Senator Kaine's resolution is so important because that is the debate that we should be having. That is the argument that we should be having in public.

That debate over the wisdom of dropping bombs in a far-off land that could put our troops at risk, that could drag us into a war, that is not a debate that the Founding Fathers thought should take place behind closed doors at the Department of Defense, at the CIA, and the White House. That is actually the debate that they thought that this body should have--the U.S. Senate--that the House of Representatives should have, and that is the chance that we have today: to bring that debate out of the shadows, out of the secret, to the place where the Founding Fathers thought it should exist.

That is why I urge my colleagues to support Senator Kaine's resolution.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source