Al Franken: “I rise to speak on my pay-for-war resolution, which I am submitting today. This resolution would change the way we pay…”

“I rise to speak on my pay-for-war resolution, which I am submitting today. This resolution would change the way we pay for war spending, and it would change the way we deliberate about going to war. This is not a symbolic resolution. It would return us to the traditional American way of paying for wars, where the Congress and the Nation confront head-on the financial cost, commitment, and sacrifice of going to war. This is something I believe in strongly. It is an issue I have been working on for months. This did not start with Libya, though Libya certainly gives it a new urgency. A number of my friends on both sides of the aisle have expressed concerns about the potential costs of the war in Libya, but this resolution is broader than Libya. It is about how we are going to pay for any wars in the future. The resolution seeks to reestablish a fiscally responsible way of paying for our wars. It is fiscally responsible because it would require that war spending be paid for or offset, as we say in the Senate. It is also morally and politically responsible because it would reestablish the connection between the citizenry of the United States and the cost of going to war--a burden that is now shared solely by the men and women of the military and their families, while the rest is passed on to future generations in the form of debt.…”