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1999 Ron Paul Chapter 33

On Debating War Resolution

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28 April 1999


Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield 2 minutes to my friend from Surfside Beach, Texas (Mr. PAUL).

(Mr. PAUL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

1999 Ron Paul 33:1
Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, I rise reluctantly to oppose the rule, and I do this hesitantly, because it is difficult to write fair rules and I generally support the rules. But today I have to oppose this rule, mainly because we are going to be debating war, a declaration of war, and a full hour is not adequate to debate an issue of that magnitude. I know there was an attempt to provide for a lot of debate today, but, for instance, on the one issue of declaration of war, only one hour was given; that is just not enough.

1999 Ron Paul 33:2
The other reason is that it does preclude a House Resolution coming up again under an expedited procedure. This is not right. This is undermining the whole purpose of the War Power Resolution of 1973, and we should not be doing this.

1999 Ron Paul 33:3
This is taking more authority away from the Congress and giving more authority to the President and to the administration and for us not to have a say. The whole issue of war should be decided here in this Congress, and we are here today because we have been negligent on assuming our responsibilities.

1999 Ron Paul 33:4
I saw this coming, and on February 9 of this year, I introduced a bill that would have prevented this whole problem by making certain that our President could not spend one penny on waging war in Kosovo. That is what we should have done. We have not, and now we are in this mess.

1999 Ron Paul 33:5
But we do not need to be once again taking more responsibility from the Congress and giving it to the President. We have a policy problem, we do not have a resolution problem. We have a foreign policy that endorses intervention any time, anyplace, assuming that our Presidents know when to insert troops around the world. That is our basic problem. Until we in the Congress take it upon ourselves to assume our responsibility with the issue of war, this problem will continue.

1999 Ron Paul 33:6
So I applaud the gentleman from California (Mr. CAMPBELL) for bringing these resolutions to the floor, but, unfortunately, I cannot support this rule today as written.
Notes:

1999 Ron Paul 33:1 Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me time. Here, Ron Paul thanks The Honorable David Dreier of California.

1999 Ron Paul 33:4 I saw this coming, and on February 9 of this year, I introduced a bill that would have prevented this whole problem by making certain that our President could not spend one penny on waging war in Kosovo. See 1999 Ron Paul Chapter 6.

1999 Ron Paul 33:6 So I applaud the gentleman from California (Mr. CAMPBELL) Here, Ron Paul applauds The Honorable Tom Campbell.

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