Removal of the Use of United States Forces for Hostilities Within or Against Venezuela
Floor Speech
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Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to the order of the House of December 16, 2025, I call up the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 64) to direct the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against Venezuela that have not been authorized by Congress, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.
The Clerk read the title of the concurrent resolution.
Mr. Speaker, this resolution is weak. It is unnecessary. It is dangerous. It is also not about oversight. It is not about the Constitution. Just like the last resolution, it is about tying the President's hands, specifically in Venezuela. It is about telling President Trump that he does not have the authority to defend the United States of America.
This resolution is preemptive surrender. As written, it limits the President's ability to respond to future threats posed by Venezuela.
If Russia delivers nukes there, the President cannot respond. If Iran delivers a dirty bomb there, the President can't respond. If China delivers anthrax or some other biological weapon, like they did with COVID-19, but far more deadly, the President can't respond. No matter what the threat, the President cannot respond.
Additionally, this resolution to me doesn't make much sense because we are not in hostilities inside Venezuela. The Authorization for Use of Military Force process exists in Congress, but Democrats are not writing a scope of action for the President to defend the United States of America. This resolution is a blanket statement to say to the President that he cannot defend the United States of America.
Mr. Speaker, no matter the threat emanating from Venezuela, you cannot defend. You cannot defend me. You cannot defend our country against it.
This resolution is not stopping war. It is not stopping invasion. It is not stopping drug running. It is not stopping terrorism. It is not stopping the President. It is just stopping the President from acting decisively before Americans die. That is what it stops.
Let's be clear about who we are dealing with. Venezuela is the largest and best-funded cartel in the world. We just saw the ranking member with Nicolas Maduro. Maduro had his hand around him. He is not a legitimate head of state. He is a legitimate narcoterrorist who is poisoning Americans.
All the stuff we talked about in the last debate is Maduro. He is the head of a cartel who will abduct somebody, behead somebody, or torture somebody to support his political ends.
Both Republican and Democrat administrations agree that Maduro is an illegitimate dictator who rules through repression, fraud, and violence. He uses the Venezuelan military to move cocaine into the United States. That is not theory. This is a state-run criminal enterprise. Venezuela is not a gang. It is a cartel state. It rakes in billions, moving more than 250 metric tons of Columbian cocaine through their country every year.
The United States already has bipartisan sanctions on Venezuelan oil. President Trump supported them. President Biden kept them. Maduro is violating those sanctions. We just caught him doing it again. A ghost ship was intercepted, smuggling Venezuelan oil. Maduro admitted the oil was his.
Here is the simple question: How do we enforce sanctions if we are not allowed to stop the shipments? The answer is that we cannot. Interdicting those Venezuelan oil shipments is not war. It is sanction enforcement. It is law and order.
Given that it is the Venezuelan Government that is the cartel, the trafficker, the one moving these ships, that is why it requires the military to do so.
This resolution reads as if Maduro wrote it himself. It gives a narcoterrorist dictator a free pass to keep trafficking drugs, funding criminal networks, and killing Americans because it appears Democrats hate President Trump more than they can love America.
President Trump has the authority and the obligation to take limited and targeted action to protect the United States of America wherever those threats emanate from.
Mr. Speaker, this is serious. It is not a joke. It is not just about pictures, but pictures tell a thousand words.
You came here to prevent the President from defending the United States of America, plain and simple. There have been deaths in Florida. There have been deaths in Representative McGovern's district: 262 overdoses in the last year, people beaten by MS-13, strangled by MS-13, stabbed 32 times by MS-13. The list goes on.
That is what the President is trying to defend from happening in the United States of America. That is as serious as it gets, and it absolutely matters that Nicolas Maduro has his arm around the authors of this legislation that would prevent the President from defending against that country, their cartels, their terrorists, and the drugs coming through that country. What the President is doing in the Gulf is protecting the homeland of the United States of America, protecting the homeland.
I would give this last comment to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern): I never saw the things that I did as big or small. Risking my life for my country, I simply saw as my duty.
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Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, I will give a lecture anyway to the Speaker in reference to what Mr. McGovern said.
I shake a lot of people's hands that I don't like. I definitely don't let them put their arm around me. There is a big difference. People with common sense recognize that. I wouldn't speak for him, but I suspect he would live life in the same way.
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Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, for every one of my colleagues on the other side, it is about drugs. It is about the drugs being prevented from going into their community, like Representative Castro's, who had 101 people die last year from overdose and somebody murdered by Tren de Aragua on June 16, 2024. It is absolutely about preventing those things. It is about preventing those things, and they are going to allow it in.
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Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time I have remaining.
Mrs. BIGGS of South Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong opposition to the resolution which seeks to limit the constitutional authority of the President under Article II and micromanage the Commander in Chief during a national security crisis.
While our Nation's first priority must always be the pursuit of peace over conflict, we cannot remain idle when an indicted drug trafficker weaponizes narcoterrorists to assault our sovereignty. Peace is maintained through strength, and it would be both unconstitutional and irresponsible to tie the hands of the President, who is protecting the American people from drug cartels and terrorist tactics.
Decades of executive branch precedent, affirmed by both parties, establish that restricted engagements involving no ground troops and limited operations do not require congressional authorization.
The President's targeted strikes on narcoterrorist vessels have been precise and targeted and have not put U.S. troops in harm's way.
Passage of this resolution would set catastrophic precedent. It would define any defensive use of force as an act of war, effectively stripping the Commander in Chief of his constitutional mandate to respond to foreign threats and to secure our borders against a criminal regime.
Mr. Speaker, the War Powers Resolution was never intended to be a tool for the legislative branch to conduct tactical oversight of military operations.
We have one Commander in Chief for a reason. Which side are we on: keeping Americans safe or protecting narcoterrorists? I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''
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Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, I have three more speakers.
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Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, I have no additional speakers. I reserve the balance of my time until the gentlemen yield back.
The defense of America is what is on the table here. The questions are simple: Does the President have the authority to defend the United States of America against these cartels, against their drugs, their beheadings, their murders? Does he or does he not?
My Democrat friends are arguing that he does not have the authority to defend our country, to protect the people of the United States of America, to protect the people in their communities. That is their argument.
The fact of the matter is, the President has the authority to defend our country, and he has the duty to defend our country.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no,'' and I yield back the balance of my time.
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