Robert Torricelli: “Mr. Chairman, every American schoolchild learns to respect and revere the Constitution of our country and those who…”

“Mr. Chairman, every American schoolchild learns to respect and revere the Constitution of our country and those who wrote it. It is a near perfect document, an expression of extraordinary wisdom. But it was not without flaw. Among those flaws has been a 200-year conflict in authority between the commander-in-chief and the powers incumbent upon him and the war-making powers of this Congress. The problem was masked for many years. But time, changes in technology and diplomacy made a collision inevitable, the speed of war, the powers of weapons, the change of diplomacy. That collision came most dramatically in Vietnam. The result was not simply the loss of life of thousands of Americans after a constituency for that war in this Congress and among our people had evaporated. There was another price, the near loss of legitimacy of this Government in its actions. It has been suggested by the gentleman from Illinois that this Congress was not without recourse, at any moment we could have abandoned the providing of appropriations, withdrawn funding, and by doing so expressed the wishes of our constituencies and ourselves. And indeed in the final analysis, after more than 10 years of combat that is exactly what happened. But the War Powers Act was enacted because Members of Congress themselves found that that choice was inadequate.”