Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2015

Floor Speech

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Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and I respect all of my colleagues on the tough decisions that we are asked to make today.

I believe that America must use our military might any time that our families face an imminent threat. Though ISIS, like a number of terrorist groups around the world, would like to kill more Americans, our military leadership has made it clear that ISIS does not represent such a threat today. It is a regional threat without the capacity to do the harm it would like to do.

Rejecting this one amendment does not mean doing nothing about ISIS. The President already has the necessary authority to respond to this savagery when Americans are murdered.

Now the President's response, however, has been expanded, and he proposes a full-scale war. This amendment establishes a new objective for this broader war--to end the civil war in Syria that has already consumed almost 200,000 lives.

Approving this amendment is the one vote that has been requested to enable this broader war--but without a declaration by the Congress to approve that war and without knowing what commitment those in the region will really make in order to fight this war.

I got a communication from a constituent of mine in San Antonio. Her name is Gloria Flores, and she tells me this. She poses some questions that are not being answered today in Washington.

``In my view,'' she says, ``ISIS is just one more extreme group which, if destroyed, will be replaced with another group ..... I don't say `boots on the ground' because that phrase ..... takes away from the terrible toll that will affect a family if its son or daughter is killed. My nephew ..... was killed in Afghanistan, and we are still mourning his death ..... Any armed force should consist of almost entirely Middle Eastern soldiers. Why should American kids,'' she asks, ``carry the load for Saudis, Jordanians, et cetera?''

Why, indeed.

But this purported coalition does not carry its own load. Others may appear in photos. They may cheer from the rear, but nearby countries are not risking their young people in ground combat. In one case, we even have a neighboring country that will not even permit us to launch an attack by air from its soil.

With the number of our U.S. military on the ground already approaching 2,000 in Iraq and with General Michael Hayden, the former NSA and CIA head, expecting 5,000 by the end of the year, the danger of escalation is very real.

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Now, I do find it difficult to understand, with its hostility to Christians and brutal disdain for our American values, how Saudi Arabia can be a place for training anyone--certainly no Syrian women learning to drive there.

Ultimately, I believe that this resolution has to be evaluated on whether it secures our families in a stronger way. I think it entangles us in a conflict that we cannot get out of as quickly as those trained Iraqi soldiers dropped their uniforms and their guns.

Today is Constitution Day. Let us use our constitutional powers to consider a declaration of war before this entanglement.

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