On the recordDecember 19, 2019
Just a few hours ago, this body voted for impeachment, so I rise today to speak about an abuse of power. Congress has the sole power to declare war and the awesome responsibility to decide when, where, and for what purposes our soldiers will be asked to give their lives. Eighteen years ago, this body misappropriated that power by issuing an open-ended authorization to commit our soldiers to fight anywhere on the globe. The so-called war on terror has claimed the lives of more American soldiers than lives of civilians who were lost on 9/11, not to mention over 100,000 lives of foreigners not associated with terror. In the last week, this Chamber has passed over 6,000 pages of legislation, and it spent over a trillion dollars. Tragically, we just funded the 19th year of the war in Afghanistan, without changing or even defining a strategy for winning or ending that war. So I close by indicting this very body for an abuse of power: abuse of our war powers and abuse of our power of the purse. ____________________
