Limiting the President’s powers to take military action would alter the Constitution without an amendment, according to some experts. Nevertheless, that is what the Democrats are trying to do. They are conflicted over the best way to do it.
Senate Democrats are debating among themselves whether to take up a concurrent resolution passed by the House on Thursday limiting Trump’s war powers or to stick with a proposal sponsored by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), according to The Hill.
The concurrent resolution is a toothless concoction that doesn’t require the President’s signature. Pelosi insists it has the power of law as she obviously tries to evade the law. Pelosi might choose to go to the Supreme Court for a decision, which will likely be to strike it down.
The Senate bill would have the force of law, and it would be significant if approved by the GOP-controlled chamber. The President will veto it.
They Might Do Both
Pelosi is pushing her proposal.
“We’re taking this path because it does not require a signature of the president of the United States,” she added. “This is a statement of the Congress of the United States and I will not have that statement be diminished by whether the president will veto it or not.”
Kaine’s, which has the support of Mike Lee and Rand Paul, can be brought up quickly and can be passed on a majority vote.
If the impeachment trial begins, this might have to wait.
Kaine acknowledged Trump may well veto his war powers resolution but argued that the act of putting it on the president’s desk will send a more powerful message than the concurrent resolution.
“I want to put it on the president’s desk. We did that with the Yemen resolution and even though the president vetoed, they stopped fueling the Saudi jets on the way to bombings. They actually stopped doing the thing we ordered them not to do,” he said, referring to U.S. support of a Saudi-backed coalition fighting in Yemen.
Democrats might do both since it’s abuse Trump all the time over everything. And, after all, he did kill their favorite terrorist.
LEVIN BLASTS LEE & PAUL
As for Mike Lee and Rand Paul, Mark Levin calls them ‘Code Pink.’
“The War Powers Act of 1973 is unconstitutional,” Levin said at the very start of his January 9 program. Virtually every president who took office after that date believed that to be the case. “So to watch Mike Lee and Rand Paul and Matt Gaetz and others act as if it’s constitutional is quite appalling to me.”
He noted that they couldn’t care less when Obama went into Libya [actually, Rand Paul complained]
“As I explained to you, the constitution is not a libertarian document,” Levin said on the show. “It is what it is.”
He explained that the War Powers Resolution gives Congress powers that are actually reserved for the executive branch. That’s why Nixon vetoed the bill, although the Congress was a far-left majority at the time.
The U.S. Constitution clearly grants the executive the power to determine foreign policy and run national security on a day-to-day basis. Congress, not the president, has the right to declare war, but that’s something completely different from the powers suddenly granted to Congress by the War Powers Resolution.
“It’s the president of the United States […] who is responsible for initiating” military force, Levin went on to say. If Congress disagrees with the president’s decision, it can oppose him by cutting spending on certain military-related issues. The Pentagon’s budget can be decreased on a line-by-line basis, and a war effort can even be defunded entirely (see Vietnam).
YOU CAN’T HAVE 535 COMMANDERS IN CHIEF
Graham has called the War Powers Act blatantly unconstitutional.
“Congress has the power to declare war. That doesn’t mean the commander in chief can’t use military force to protect the country without Congress,” Graham told Jeanine Pirro on her show Saturday night. “We’ve had military engagements hundreds of times. What the president did is he took out [Gen. Qassem] Soleimani who was planning another attack against American forces in Iraq who were lawfully present. He has all the authority he needs to protect troops in the field.”
“The War Powers Act is blatantly unconstitutional,” he added. “You cannot have 535 commanders in chief. Can you imagine what our nation would look like if Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Rand Paul, and AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]… that we couldn’t defend the nation unless they all agree? That would be impossible.”
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