Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas, Dr. PAUL, a member of our Committee on Foreign Affairs.
(Mr. PAUL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
2011 Ron Paul 28:2
Mr. Speaker, this is a resolution that endorses the policies that have been going on for 4 months. Not only has the Congress basically been strong in opposition to what has been going on, the American people are even more so. So what this resolution does is endorses exactly what has been going on—another unconstitutional war, involvement and justification under NATO and the United Nations, doing it secretly. There’s an attempt to restrain the funding of this effort over in Libya. How can we restrain it, because we’ve never authorized it. Restrain unauthorized funds? The funds weren’t authorized. The President just goes and does it.
2011 Ron Paul 28:3
What we’re talking about here is the challenge for the Congress on looking at the unitary President. The unitary President has been around for quite a few years. That means that Presidents do what they want, and the Congress just acknowledges it. So that is what we’re doing. This is what this resolution does. It acknowledges and gives authority to the President to pursue this war, which is actually what he has been doing. Obviously, H.J. Res. 68, for me, is a very, very strong “no” because the last thing we need to do is to be giving explicit support and explicit authorization for the very policies that so many people now think are ill-advised.
2011 Ron Paul 28:4
This resolution also says you don’t send in ground troops. Well, that’s fine, no ground troops. But in this day and age, war can go on for a long time without the ground troops. It happened to a degree in Bosnia. But it didn’t exempt such things as special forces, the CIA. The CIA has been in Libya, and I’m sure they will be, as they are in many, many other hundreds of countries. Contractors. When we can’t send in troops, we send in contractors. We have as many contractors in Afghanistan as we do the military. So a couple thousand troops come out of Afghanistan and nothing changes as we add more contractors. Nothing ever changes.
2011 Ron Paul 28:5
But this whole idea of this effort to legalize the bombing, at least give the authority to the President to continue this, is foolhardy. How many more wars can we withstand? What number is this? This is I think number five. Today, in the papers, number six is coming. How long before we’re in Syria? Go into Syria tomorrow and in 90 days we’ll start talking about Syria and proper authority.
2011 Ron Paul 28:6
Instead, we in Congress have given up our responsibility for war. Because the responsibility of going to war should have been and still remains constitutionally mandated that the Congress makes these decisions. The President is not supposed to get us engaged in war without Congress’ authority. Too often we say, Whatever you need, we’ll endorse it.
2011 Ron Paul 28:8
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
2011 Ron Paul 28:9
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. I yield the gentleman 30 additional seconds.
2011 Ron Paul 28:10
Mr. PAUL.
Unfortunately, I think the next resolution, H.R. 2278, isn’t much different because it has too many exceptions. It says: Deny funding. But there are too many exceptions, and the exceptions are to allow the very things the President is currently doing.
2011 Ron Paul 28:11
So both resolutions have serious shortcomings. Both resolutions should be defeated if you’re opposed to this war in Libya.
