Commerce, Justice, Science; Energy and Water Development; and Interior and Environment Appropriations Act, 2026

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, this year our Nation will celebrate its 250th birthday--250 years in which our country has built on the foundation that is our Constitution.

The Framers could not conceive exactly what the future would bring, but they did anticipate a great deal, in significant part because they could count on some of the immutable characteristics of human nature, of institutions, of communities--like the attraction of the accumulation of power--and how, unless that gravitational force is counterbalanced, one institution or one man can come to dominate the life of a country.

One power in particular concerned our Founders, and that was the power to make war. They had seen and been the victims of a monarch who used the power of war against them. So they made the radical decision-- so contrary to all the precedent at the time--not to invest such a vital attribute of state sovereignty in the Executive but to grant the power to declare war to Congress.

In April 1798, a future President, James Madison, wrote to another future President, Thomas Jefferson, underscoring the danger and the decision. He said:

The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, is 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.

``[M]ost prone to it''--words written more than 200 years ago and so fitting for today, when in but his first year in office, the President used military power in Iran, Nigeria, Syria, Yemen, and most significantly, in Venezuela.

After months of escalating military action against boats in the Southern Caribbean, after amassing a massive military armada on the doorstep of a foreign nation, the administration dispatched American servicemembers to invade and arrest the corrupt leader of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro--military action that we were repeatedly told would never come to pass, by a President who promised to avoid starting new foreign wars, engaging in nation building, or conducting regime change operations.

This operation was not about narcotics, nor was it about democracy, nor was it about oil. The military occupation in Venezuela captured the country's corrupt dictator but has left the corrupt drug-running regime in place instead of turning over the reins of governance to that country's legitimately elected leadership of Maria Corina Machado and Edmundo Gonzalez. And now our President has committed to running Venezuela for years in order to exploit its oil resources.

Today, we have the opportunity to exercise the power bestowed on us by our Framers to authorize the use of force--or decline to do so--but to reassert some constraint on an Executive grown too fond of the use of military power.

We took the first step last week when a bipartisan majority of this body voted to set before the Senate a War Powers Resolution on Venezuela. That was a strong bipartisan signal that this Chamber was unwilling to let the war powers of this body atrophy to the point where they are no more substantial than air.

Now we are on the precipice of that debate--whether we should again risk the lives of our servicemembers to procure access to another nation's oil--and the American people should see us weighing that cost.

The President has threatened the possibility of additional strikes in Venezuela if Venezuela does not ``behave.'' And by ``behave,'' I think we have to acknowledge that the behavior the President expects is for that country to share access to its oil wealth with American oil companies. Many of those companies are dubious about investing in Venezuela. Some believe it would take years or more than a decade to make that profitable.

Whether it makes good business sense to them is their decision, but whether we use the military might of the United States of America to safeguard their investment is our decision, and I say it is not worth risking the lives of our troops.

There are some deeply important questions as to the use of American military power that are implicated in this debate--questions that deserve answers.

Will we see years of American gunships parked off of Venezuela as part of some new, amorphous ``Donroe Doctrine''? How do we expect to run another country of more than 20 million people? Will U.S. forces be used to protect oil infrastructure in Venezuela? Will our President continue to stand by the illegitimate regime that Maduro's capture has left in place or will we support the outcome of the last election in which Maduro's opposition was triumphant? Are we better off spending our Nation's time and taxes on Venezuela or should we spend them at home to bring down costs and address the affordability crisis?

Our servicemembers and their families deserve answers to these questions before we ask any servicemember to put their life on the line. Let us make sure they get those answers. Let us have this debate. Let us move beyond a parliamentary point of order designed to hide from the American people the cost of our military involvement in Venezuela, the continuing cost of it. Let's have the fulsome debate that deserves because at the center of this debate is a question of whether we want to risk our servicemembers' lives in order to secure the oil resources of another country.

I do not believe it is worth doing so, but let those who believe that it is worth the risk and the danger to our servicemembers and their families--let them come to the Senate floor and make that argument. Let us have this debate. Let us not hide behind some parliamentary maneuver to even avoid a conversation here.

There hasn't been a single hearing in committee, an open hearing, on this subject, not a fulsome debate over the use of our military power. Let us do so now.

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