00:00I rise to talk about the next vote the Senate will have on a War Powers Resolution, and
00:06this will be the eighth such vote, and I want to dig into the topic for a minute, why this
00:11vote is different than the earlier seven.
00:14Before I do, let me just kind of dig into the procedural nature of this vote.
00:21War Powers Resolutions, like other Senate legislation, get referred to a committee.
00:25In this case, the Committee of Jurisdiction is the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
00:29of which I'm a member.
00:32The committee does not have to take up legislation, and it is often the case, and I've often filed
00:39legislation that's never been taken up, not just by SFRC, but other committees as well.
00:43If there's not a critical mass, it may not get taken up.
00:46In matters of war, the drafters of the War Powers Resolution deemed the topic so important that
00:53they created a proceeding by which a single senator could ask that the committee be discharged
00:58from consideration of the bill, and the bill be reported out of the committee without a
01:03recommendation for actual consideration on the floor.
01:07And so War Powers Resolutions, in the instance of hostilities that have not been authorized
01:12by Congress, a senator can file a resolution, a certain number of days elapse, and then we
01:18can come to the floor and ask for the committee to be discharged.
01:21We've had seven earlier votes, all unsuccessful, asking that this war, which is now, I believe,
01:28on day 81, be, if the committee is not going to take it up, let's at least have the debate
01:35on the floor of the Senate that the Constitution intends.
01:38And so the formal vote that we'll have later is not a vote on the resolution itself, which
01:44says no war in Iran absent a vote of Congress.
01:47But it is a vote to discharge that resolution from the committee and allow it to be debated
01:54on the Senate floor.
01:55That's what we're voting on.
01:57Should a matter that is in committee, that's been held in committee with no action for now
02:0280 days during the midst of a pending war in which 14 American troops have been killed,
02:09hundreds have been injured, and we spent north of $29 billion.
02:13If we're not going to have committee action on the bill, can we not take it up on the floor
02:20of the Senate and debate it in front of the American public?
02:22So Mr. President, now to my question, why is this vote different than the vote we had
02:28last week?
02:28And I would argue there are a couple of reasons that make this vote different and the stakes
02:34higher that should suggest a need to finally take this matter up on the Senate floor.
02:39First, we are now well past the 60-day deadline in the War Powers Resolution that, under the
02:46view of some, provides a president the ability to unilaterally take the nation to war without
02:52a vote of Congress.
02:53I don't read the statute that way, but a number do.
02:56And we can have a good-faith disagreement about what the statute means.
02:59But last week was the first time we had a vote after the 60-day deadline.
03:05The clock keeps running.
03:06We're now, I believe, at day 81.
03:08We are well past the statutory time that might give a president an argument that I don't
03:15need to come to Congress to get a war approved.
03:17The fact that we're now well past that deadline, a deadline that many of my colleagues on both
03:23sides of the aisle say should be an important milestone in terms of congressional review, is
03:28important.
03:29The second thing that's important is we're in a ceasefire, but kind of a particular
03:34ceasefire right now.
03:36We're in a ceasefire where there is no active bombing, but there are still hostilities.
03:41The blockade of Iranian ports by the United States, the closing or significant closing
03:47of the Straits of Hormuz by Iran's military action, action taken against ships, both military
03:54ships and commercial ships were in a ceasefire, but we have not ended hostilities.
03:59But the ceasefire entered a new phase just within the last day or two.
04:04As you know, Mr. President, President Trump indicated he was with an hour of ordering the
04:10restart of the bombing campaign, but decided that it would be a good idea to engage in discussion
04:16with regional nations about could there be a path forward to find a diplomatic end to the
04:22war.
04:23And my argument, Mr. President, to you and to all of my colleagues and to the American public,
04:28is this.
04:29If we're in a ceasefire where we are trying to find a diplomatic path forward, rather than
04:35precipitously start a bombing campaign again, this is exactly the time where Congress should
04:41be having a debate about the rationale for the war, the status of the war, the plans to
04:47reopen the Straits of Hormuz, what a likely diplomatic off-ramp would look like, what the costs of
04:54the war are, how much U.S. munitions have been depleted, how much U.S. military facilities
05:01have been damaged.
05:02When we're in this ceasefire period trying to find a diplomatic off-ramp, this seems to me
05:08to be the perfect time for the Senate to have the deliberate discussion about the need for
05:14war that we should have had before the war began on February 28th.
05:18Let's take advantage of this moment.
05:20Mr. President, one issue in particular that's important right now is Iran is transmitting
05:27to the President of the United States proposals for a diplomatic solution.
05:31As all knows, Iran presented a proposal to the United States, to President Trump, that he
05:38immediately dismissed as garbage.
05:41Guess what?
05:42No one in this body or in the House has been shown what that proposal is.
05:47None of us know what was in the proposal that the President dismissed as garbage.
05:54This body contains many members who have served in the military.
05:57This body contains many members who have been on the committees of jurisdiction, the Armed
06:03Services Committee, the Foreign Relations Committee, the Intel Committee, not just for
06:08years, but in some instances for decades.
06:12I assert that in the Senate and in the House, there are many people who would have some significant
06:17expertise about analyzing a proposal from Iran and determining whether or not it had merit.
06:26Maybe it's 100 percent garbage.
06:29Maybe it's a good offer.
06:30Maybe it's somewhere in the middle where there are pieces of it that are good but more needs
06:34to be done.
06:36But thus far, not a single member of the 535 public servants serving in the House or the
06:43Senate know anything about the deal that the President has thrown out.
06:47And that's a very important fact.
06:49Do we want to let – we've let one President take us to a war that has caused the injury
06:55and death of American troops, the spiking of gas prices, the spending of $30 billion.
07:00We've let him do that on his own.
07:02Do we want to also give him the sole ability to review a peace proposal, a diplomacy proposal,
07:09an end to the war, and to make the decision on his own without any examination by this deliberative
07:16legislative body about whether the proposal is something that we can work with?
07:21Are we so willing to let this President tell our sons and daughters, you're going back
07:25to war because I've determined that the peace proposal, the diplomacy proposal is garbage
07:30without letting anyone in the Article 1 branch even renew it?
07:35I think the fact that there have been peace proposals presented to the President that
07:40we have not seen is also something that is extremely important as we contemplate this
07:47War Powers Resolution.
07:48Let's have the discussion, including analyzing proposals that have been made so we can offer
07:54our advice to the President about whether diplomacy seems like it's realistic or doable and not
08:01have him dismiss deals out of hand without sharing the contents.
08:04And finally, Mr. President, there's one additional matter that puts this in a different light
08:10than last week.
08:12It was only last week, right before the vote, that some of us were informed by the White
08:18House that the White House refused to share with Congress the legal rationale for this war.
08:26Any administration that takes the nation to war does so, bound to follow the law.
08:31And any administration that takes us to war does so on the basis of a legal opinion developed
08:37by the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice.
08:40And that's been the case during all the administrations that I've served under, including President
08:45Trump Term 2.
08:47The boat strikes that President Trump's administration are carrying out in the Pacific and Caribbean,
08:53the military operation in Venezuela, they were both justified by a legal opinion.
08:59Now I was disappointed that the President was unwilling to make that legal opinion available
09:04to the public.
09:05But the White House did allow us, the members of the Senate and House, to read it in classified
09:10settings.
09:10So we could at least read what the legal rationale was and reach our own conclusion about whether
09:16we thought the legal rationale made sense.
09:19To my knowledge, in my now nearly 13 years in the Senate, this is the first instance of
09:26a President taking us into military action and refusing to show the House or Senate the
09:32legal opinion.
09:33There is a legal opinion that has been drafted to justify this war, but the administration
09:38will not let any of us.
09:41I thought it might just be me.
09:43They turned down my request to look at the legal opinion.
09:46But I've gone to the leadership of the Armed Services Committee and the other key committees
09:50and they haven't seen it either.
09:53Are we really willing to go to war on the basis of a legal opinion that the administration is unwilling
10:01to even to show to us who are members of the United States Senate?
10:06It sort of raises the question, what are they hiding?
10:10If they feel confident about their legal rationale or about the factual assertions they would
10:14make in the legal rationale, they'd be willing to show it to us as they have with respect
10:19to other military actions as recently as the attack of Venezuela to depose the Maduro government.
10:27And so I would argue that one important feature of this motion at this time to discharge the
10:34committee would be it would force the administration to come forward and finally show us the legal
10:40rationale upon which they base this, in my view, illegal and unwise war.
10:46And so those are at least four or five reasons why this vote this week to discharge this matter
10:53from the committee and finally bring it to the floor of the Senate is different than any of the seven
10:58votes we've had before.
11:00We're well beyond day 60.
11:02We're in this fragile ceasefire that's the perfect time to have a discussion before we
11:06start up war again.
11:09The president is receiving peace and diplomatic proposals that he's throwing into the trash
11:15can without sharing them with us.
11:17We might have some ideas about the merit and validity of those proposals.
11:22And we ought to be able to decide whether they have merit enough that that is the path we
11:27should take instead of sending our sons and daughters back into harm's way by re-engaging
11:32in the bombing campaign.
11:34And finally, if the administration is unwilling to share with us the legal rationale for the war,
11:40that should be a flashing red light to every member of this body.
11:45And so, Mr. President, within a short period of time, I'll come to the floor and make the
11:50motion and we'll have this vote on an eighth motion to discharge.
11:54It is my hope that it is successful and we finally move to having a debate about this most
11:59consequential war in full view of the American public.
12:02And with that, I yield the floor.
12:16You
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