Resolution, to Remove United States Armed Forces From Hostilities with Presidentially Designated Terrorist Organizations in the Western Hemisphere

Floor Speech

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Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member for the time.

Mr. Speaker, I came down here to debate something that this Chamber has been debating for generations, which is the push and pull between the Congress and the Chief Executive on the use of our military.

I was profoundly disturbed to hear the chairman denigrate the ranking member. To suggest that he doesn't care about the losses in his district, to suggest that we want the President to do nothing about narcotics, he knows that is not true. I will tell the chairman that I have opposed every Presidential attempt to use the American Armed Forces without congressional approval since I have been here.

This is about one thing, and it is not about the comity of this institution or the dignity that the majority should show in such a debate. This is about one thing and one thing only. It is not about the horrors of drug abuse.

We know that over here. There is not a Democrat who doesn't believe that 100,000 overdoses is an appalling outcome. There is not a Democrat here who doesn't experience the crushing, disgusting horror of those losses. We couldn't agree with the majority more that this is a huge problem.

What this is about is whether the Representatives of the people should be involved in a discussion about how we solve this problem--the Constitution says so--and the questions raised here.

For the first time in 250 years, the United States military is deliberately targeting civilians. They may be awful civilians, I will grant you that, but they are deliberately targeting civilians. We have the largest military force ever assembled in the Caribbean, with no discussion, no debate in this Chamber amongst the Representatives of the people.

The administration has created a war that is not a war, a non- international armed conflict. It is a war inasmuch as we have an aircraft carrier and massive amounts of military hardware in the region, and we have killed upward of 100 people in 23, 24 strikes. Yet, it is not a war that needs to be even informed to the Congress.

The only question that matters--and you can show all the pictures of decapitations, horror, and overdoses. We will stand with you 100 percent about how horrible that is, but do you know what else is horrible? That the majority is comfortable with the removal of the Representatives of the people on this most consequential of issues.

Let's agree that there will be a Democratic President someday who does something that the majority doesn't agree with, but every word they say here today will unbind the hands of that Democratic President to do whatever he or she wants.

This is about our privileges as the Representatives of the people. This is about our fidelity to the Constitution of the United States that demands us to have this debate.

Let's stop trying to scare the American people, and for the first time in a very long time, let's stand up with the dignity and decency that this topic deserves and debate how we are going to address this huge problem while preserving our privileges and prerogatives as Representatives of all the American people.

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