Providing for Consideration of H.R. 1540, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I raise this point of order not necessarily out of concern for the unfunded and unmet mandates, although there are many in this bill. I raise this point of order because we have one of the very few opportunities to actually talk about one of the provisions in the underlying bill. Thus far, this House has been denied the opportunity to properly debate this provision, and I believe we must illuminate what it actually does.

Section 1034 of this bill provides an unlimited opportunity for the administrative branch of government, the President, and the Secretary of Defense, to engage in war virtually anywhere, any place, anytime on this planet. That is an unbelievably broad opportunity that this House should never give to any President at any time.

There are three very specific problems that the authorization for the use of military force has, and I want to make sure that we understand what those problems are.

This provision is particularly dangerous because it does undermine the Constitution. Only Congress has the authority to declare war. Yet this authorization to use military force passes to the President the opportunity to engage in war anywhere anytime, really, without any particular reservations.

This thing was snuck into the Defense Authorization Act. No debate in committee. And had I not somehow been going through the bill and thumbing through and finding page 133 of the legislation, it would never have been discussed in committee. But some time near 12 o'clock, or actually after 12 o'clock, I was able to present an amendment in the committee to strike this section of the bill. That amendment did not pass the committee, and hopefully it will be before the floor as we discuss the entire legislation.

So let me begin the discussion now.

We ought not expand the executive authority to go to war. First of all, this particular section, 1034, is harmful because of three reasons: one, it's unlimited--anywhere, any place, anytime; second, it is very unclear as to who we're going to go to war against; and, third, it's not necessary.

First, section 1034 is unlimited. There's no geographic limitation in section 1034. All that needs to be found by the President or the Secretary of Defense is there is a terrorist out there somehow associated with the Taliban or al Qaeda. And we know that al Qaeda is spread throughout the world, including the United States. So the entire globe is the subject of this authorization to use military force. And it's not just force against an individual terrorist or an individual terrorist organization. It's force against any nation that harbors, supports, or provides some sort of aid to a terrorist organization.

What kind of a nation would that be? Well, certainly we would consider Yemen, Somalia, maybe even Pakistan. And we did successfully go after Pakistan--not Pakistan, but after bin Laden who happened to be hiding in Pakistan. But the point here is unlimited authorization to go anywhere in the globe to go after terrorists of any color, any stripe, anywhere. I don't suppose we intend to declare war against ourselves, so maybe America is not included in this.

Secondly, there's no temporal limit to this, meaning this authorization goes on forever. It's not limited in time. It can go for 1 year, 2 years, 10 years, one century or a millennium. We must never allow any President to have that unlimited opportunity to wage war on behalf of this Nation.

Third, this resolution and this section is unclear. It's unclear in several ways. What is an ``associated force''? What's the ``Taliban''? What is ``al Qaeda''? We know al Qaeda as it existed in Afghanistan. We have a sense of what al Qaeda is in Pakistan. But now we have al Qaeda in the Saudi Arabia Peninsula, we probably have al Qaeda in Somalia and, certainly, according to the FBI, we have al Qaeda in the United States.

So this particular clause, associated forces, is one that we should never allow to go into law and allow any President over any time in the future to use it to undertake a war somewhere.

Finally, the provision is unnecessary. The administration is not asking for additional power. We have a case in point. The administration didn't need additional power to go into Pakistan to get bin Laden. The administration doesn't need additional power to go to Yemen to deal with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, nor did the administration need power way back in the 1990s when President Clinton launched Tomahawk missiles into Afghanistan to go after bin Laden and al Qaeda in Afghanistan at that time.

The President, the administration, is not asking for this authority. They claim and the courts have provided them with sufficient authority to carry out the mission against terrorism as we know it today.

So in conclusion, I want to raise this issue to this House, to the Senate, and to the American public that in the Defense authorization there is an unlimited opportunity for any President now and in the future to wage war anywhere in the world against any nation that has a terrorist in that nation. That we should never do. We should aggressively maintain our authority under the Constitution to declare war and to authorize the use of military force.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source