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Bridging the Divide in American Politics. | |
| Watch Ceasefire, Friday at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series. | ||
| Sunday with our guest Hall of Fame baseball player and best-selling author Cal Ripken Jr., who has authored and co-authored more than a dozen books, including The Only Way I Know, Get in the Game, and a series of children's books. | ||
| He joins our host, civic leader, best-selling author, and owner of the Baltimore Orioles, David Rubinstein. | ||
| I thought writing kids' books were a good way to broach certain subjects that might have been tough when you're kids or whatever else in the backdrop of a travel team, travel baseball team, because we all worry about things as kids, and it was a way to communicate a good message through books. | ||
| So I just enjoyed the process. | ||
| Watch America's Book Club with Cal Ripken Jr. Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific. | ||
| Joining us now to talk about Congress and War Power Authority is Sarah Burns. | ||
| She's author of a book called The Politics of War Powers, and she's also professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. | ||
| Sarah, welcome to the program. | ||
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unidentified
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Thanks for having me. | |
| Now, there is a current 1973 war powers resolution, and I just want to put it up on the screen so everybody knows what it says. | ||
| It says that the constitutional powers of the president as commander-in-chief to introduce United States armed forces into hostilities are exercised only pursuant to number one, a declaration of war, number two, specific statutory authorization, or number three, a national emergency created by attack upon the U.S., its territories, possessions, or armed forces. | ||
| That's what's currently on the books. | ||
| The Senate is expected to vote today on a war powers resolution that would block U.S. military action in Venezuela. | ||
| Can you explain what today's measure is, how that's different from what's already on the books? | ||
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unidentified
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Sure. | |
| The war powers resolution, also called the War Powers Act, if I switch back and forth between those, I apologize, from 1973 was a broader attempt by Congress to regain some of its war powers because as we saw with Nixon, the Congress had explicitly said Nixon cannot go into Cambodia to address the problems that he saw in Vietnam. | ||
| And then Nixon unilaterally just decided, no, I can and I'm going to. | ||
| And in response to that, Congress said we really have to restrain presidents more aggressively in every operation. | ||
| One of the issues that they didn't address effectively is that they said presidents have the authority to introduce troops for 60 days without any congressional authority as long as they inform Congress. | ||
| And then they have an additional 30 days to Congress to say there might be something that the president has to do quickly that they can't inform us about or they can't get authorization for before they do it. | ||
| So we'll allow that to happen. | ||
| Unfortunately, what that did is give a permission slip essentially to presidents to have short-term wars, what I sometimes call top gun wars, right? | ||
| Where you have a lot of airplanes flying around, but you don't have a lot of boots on the ground, right? | ||
| That's a term that we hear a lot. | ||
| And so we've seen president after president after president from both parties claiming the authority to engage in these shorter-term operations, which is problematic. | ||
| What we see in the current resolution is an attempt to specifically restrain this president against using the military in a specific country, Venezuela, or against Venezuela, no matter where, be it with book, like in the sea, in the air, on land, all of these things. | ||
| So it is more constrained in terms of what it's trying to address, but it is still an attempt by Congress to regain some of their congressional powers and congressional war powers and restrain a president who is acting very unilaterally. | ||
| So give us both scenarios. | ||
| If it does pass, what happens? | ||
| If it doesn't pass, what options remain for Congress to restrain the president? | ||
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unidentified
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It's a great question. | |
| So I had to take a deep breath to ensure that I answer it effectively. | ||
| If it passes, so it has to obviously pass the Senate and then it has to also pass the House. | ||
| The House is much more sympathetic to Donald Trump and much more sympathetic to Donald Trump acting unilaterally. | ||
| We might see that change a little bit once we pass the primary season for Republicans, because Trump has such a sway over the Republican Party that he could get people primary, meaning that he could run someone against a bunch of the people who voted for this restraint on his unilateralism. | ||
| And then the bill would have to go to President Trump's desk. | ||
| The only way that the House and Senate could then overcome a presidential veto, which we would inevitably see, is if they get a two-thirds majority in both houses. | ||
| So the likelihood of this passing, I don't see as very high. | ||
| However, it could be that there are enough senators and enough members of the House that are activated by this and activated by this sense that this isn't, this is a distraction. | ||
| This isn't really what it is the United States should be doing right now. | ||
| It could be that they get to that level of bipartisanship. | ||
| So if that passes, then Congress would have the capacity to limit the amount of funds that are going to the military. | ||
| They could limit the amount of funds that the president could use. | ||
| So he would have to find new ways of funding and operation in Venezuela. | ||
| If it doesn't pass, one of the things that Congress sometimes does is they go to the courts of many different tiers, all the federal courts, though, and say, please restrain the president, please restrain what he's doing. | ||
| And I'll mention another author named Jasmine Farrier who wrote very effectively that courts have very regularly said to members of Congress, you can't turn to us for this. | ||
| What you need to do is use your own legislative powers to constrain the president. | ||
| And Congress has fairly consistently, with a few exceptions, had a lot of difficulty doing that. | ||
| And we see that in both Democratic presidential regimes as well as Republican ones. | ||
| And when was the last time, Sarah, that Congress was able to approve a war powers resolution? | ||
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unidentified
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2002. | |
| Oh, sorry, war powers resolution. | ||
| So the last time that they approved a war powers resolution was 1973. | ||
| And then what happened in 2002? | ||
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unidentified
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I was talking there, I'm sorry, about the authorization for the use of military force. | |
| That was the authorization that facilitated or authorized President George W. Bush to go into Iraq. | ||
| But explain that. | ||
| What's the difference between that and what you just said, the AUMF, the authorization for use of military force? | ||
| Is that a different legal term? | ||
| Does that give the president different powers? |