On the recordJune 3, 2011
I thank the gentleman for yielding. I have been here a long time, and I have never come to this floor for the purpose of opposing innocuous resolutions. In fact, I've voted for every piece of innocuous legislation and post office renaming in the last 15 years, as far as I can remember. And this is innocuous legislation. First, it starts with a sense of Congress about our opinion as to what should or shouldn't be done. It has a sentence that purports to prevent the President from putting ground forces in Libya, but in fact just states that's our policy. It is certainly not designed to prohibit the President from doing so; it just says that it's our opinion that he shouldn't. And, by the way, in the Defense authorization bill, we have real legislation that already prohibits putting ground forces in Libya. It then goes on to ask that a number of questions be answered. There are some who think, that's important. Those who think that the questions propounded in this resolution are actually going to get us useful information are insulting the faculty of the law schools of America, because both the Pentagon and the State Department have lawyers capable of writing long and meaningless answers to every question we propound. And as for getting documents, some of the documents demanded we already have, and as for the rest, those same lawyers will be writing long documents about executive privilege.…
