Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2012

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Chairman, for more than 3 months, our Nation has been amidst a quiet constitutional crisis that carries immense implications. My friend, the gentleman from Florida, is sadly mistaken to dismiss this as a meaningless philosophical discussion. This strikes at the very heart of our constitutional form of government.

On March 19, completely without congressional authorization, the President ordered an unprovoked attack against another country. In so doing, he crossed a very bright constitutional line placed there specifically to prevent so momentous and fatal a question as war being made by a single individual.

The American Founders were explicit on this point. For centuries, European monarchs had plunged their nations into bloody and debilitating wars on whim, and the Founders wanted to protect the American Republic from that fate.

James Madison explained why in this passage in a letter to Hamilton. He
said: "In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confines the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. The trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man. War is, in fact, the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war a physical force is to be created and it is the executive will which is to direct it. In war, the public treasures are to be unlocked, and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them. In war, the honors and the emoluments of office are to be multiplied, and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed. Those who are to conduct a war cannot, in the nature of things, be proper or safe judges whether a war ought to be commenced, continued, or concluded.''

The President has tried to justify this act in a variety of ways: that bombing another country is not really an act of war, that there wasn't time to consult Congress--though more than enough to consult the United Nations Security Council--or that it was a humanitarian act.

Mr. Chairman, never was there a greater provocation or clearer moral justification for war than the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. And never was there a more activist President than Franklin Roosevelt.

Yet within 24 hours of that attack, President Roosevelt appeared before a joint session of Congress in this very Hall. He clearly recognized that as Commander in Chief his authority only extended to ordering that ``all measures be taken for our defense.'' He recognized that under the Constitution, anything more, even in this most historic attack, required an act of Congress, which he sought and obtained.

The unprovoked attack on Libya was not authorized by this Congress, and it is accordingly unconstitutional and illegal. Indeed, 2 weeks ago, the House considered a resolution authorizing a war with Libya, and it rejected that measure by a nearly 3-1 margin. It then considered a second measure to authorize acts of war against Libya just short of actual combat, including refueling tankers on their way to targets. The identification and selection of targets, operational support, operational planning, it rejected that measure as well.

The precedent being established right now by the President's deliberate defiance of the Constitution and the clear will of Congress has profound implications for our Nation's future. If this act is allowed to stand unchallenged, it means that the checks and balances painstakingly built into the Constitution on the supreme question of war and peace have been rendered meaningless.

Weeks ago, the House voted to deny authorization for the use of funds for the war on Libya effective October 1. This amendment simply follows through on that decision in the actual appropriations act.

Frankly, we need to do much more than this. Clearly, one of the conditions for increasing the debt limit must be to ensure that no funds, either borrowed or raised, should be used to continue to support this illegal act.

And we need to remember that a war once started cannot always be turned off by an appropriations act. Once we have attacked another country without provocation, we have created an aggrieved belligerent that now has cause to pursue that war regardless of what the Congress later decides.

That's why this precedent is so dangerous. That's why the President's actions are so devastating to our very form of government, and that's why we need to speak clearly and unequivocally through measures like that offered by the gentlemen from Michigan and Ohio today.

I yield back the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source