Political Quotes

“I am humbled to follow my colleague from Illinois. No one is more articulate on the question of the cost of war than Senator Duckworth, and I agree with everything that she said about the importance of this moment. Listen, maybe the most sacred clause in the Constitution is the warmaking clause. Our Founding Fathers gave a lot of thought about the danger of allowing one individual to send this country into foreign conflict, to send our young men and women overseas to face harm and potential death. Our Founding Fathers decided that that had to be a question answered by the American public, and that is why the decision to go to war was vested not in an Executive or a Monarch or a King but in the Congress--in the people's House and in the Senate. I think this is probably the most significant military engagement of many of our lifetimes that has gone without a debate and a vote on the Senate floor. It is extraordinary not just that we have not had a vote, as is required by the Constitution, not just that the President persists in this action without an authorization by Congress, but that there hasn't even been a single public hearing in the Foreign Relations Committee or in the Armed Services Committee to require the administration to explain to the American people and to the U.S. Senate why we are in this war, what the goals are, and what the endgame will be.”