Wendy Sherman: “Given that, how can it be said that it is a good use of Congress' time to pass some formal resolution attacking the…”

“Given that, how can it be said that it is a good use of Congress' time to pass some formal resolution attacking the President for not applying to this situation a code section so infirm? I think that what we are doing today is dodging the real responsibility of Congress. We are engaged now in bombing ISIS. The Constitution says that Congress should play a role in making that decision. Many of our colleagues would prefer to dodge the issue. It is safer to attack the President for what he did in the past than to participate in the decisions of the future. We should be dealing with an authorization to utilize military force against ISIS. We should be debating the term that that applies. We should be debating whether it applies to airpower alone or whether, under some circumstances, we should have boots on the ground. But, no, we are not dealing with that. That is too tough a vote. That is a vote on which members of both parties might disagree. Instead, we are playing around with this resolution. Mr. McKEON. Mr. Speaker, just a little reality check here. I offered the points that went into the National Defense Authorization Act. One of the reasons I did it was because we specifically did not want any detainees to be taken from Guantanamo without alerting the Congress, because they had tried it before and it had pushback from the Congress and we felt like we should have a part in that protection of our people.…”