Political Quotes

“this Chamber has before it a very important question: Will Congress embrace and exercise its constitutional responsibility to decide, as Madison put it, the question of war? That is a heavy responsibility. It is no small matter to decide whether or not the United States should go to war or to decide whether or not to end a war. It is a question of blood and treasure. The lives of thousands can hang in the balance--the lives of soldiers on both sides, the lives of civilians. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan resulted in the deaths of more than 5,000 American servicemembers and the deaths of approximately 250,000 civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq and they resulted in massive use of American treasure, some $8 trillion. It is tempting for Members of this Chamber to shirk this responsibility. The question weighs too heavily on us. 'Let's let the President decide.' But if you took an oath to the Constitution, as every Member here did, then you know that letting the President decide is unconstitutional. The Constitution did not assign this weighty issue of war to the President. It assigned this weighty issue to all of us here in Congress. As Madison summarized: The Constitution supposes what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war and most prone to it. The Constitution has accordingly, with studied care, vested the question of war in the legislative branch.”