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.
