Removal of the Use of United States Forces for Hostilities Within or Against Venezuela

Floor Speech

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Mr. STEUBE. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this resolution because it is nothing more than a weak and pointless attempt to attack our President and undermine our national security.

We conducted a 40-minute operation to remove a drug-trafficking narcoterrorist, and Democrats are acting like we started world war III.

For that brief, targeted action, they now insist Congress must step in and tie the President's hands.

Let's be clear about how ridiculous this resolution truly is. It orders the United States to withdraw forces from Venezuela, yet there are no U.S. forces in Venezuela to withdraw. You cannot remove troops that don't even exist. That alone shows how unserious Democrats are in this effort.

They also claim the act to remove Maduro was unconstitutional, which ignores Article II and decades of bipartisan precedent where Presidents have undertaken limited military action without a declaration of war.

Clinton acted in Kosovo. Obama acted in Libya. Most similarly, George H.W. Bush captured drug-trafficker Manuel Noriega back in 1990. No one screamed constitutional crisis then. In fact, those acts were celebrated by both sides, and they were upheld by Federal courts.

The bottom line is that Nicolas Maduro is a criminal defendant charged by the United States Department of Justice for narcoterrorism and drug-trafficking offenses, including conspiring to import cocaine into the United States and related weapon charges. He has run his regime like a cartel: flooding our country with poison and destroying American lives.

This was not an act of war. It was an act of law enforcement. This resolution does nothing to protect the Constitution, nothing to make America safer, and nothing to stop the drugs killing our communities.

It should be rejected.

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