Arlen Specter: “Which is one of the grave difficulties of having a resolution which prohibits Presidential action, but tries to…”

“Which is one of the grave difficulties of having a resolution which prohibits Presidential action, but tries to accommodate to some special circumstance. In the articulation of the circumstances, it renders it absolutely meaningless and gives such latitude to the President, which may well be more latitude than he has under the Constitution. I come back for purposes of a question, which I am about to ask, what the Senator from Delaware has had to say about the many occasions where force has been used, where acts of war have been undertaken. I agree totally that simply a recitation of those occasions does not establish a constitutional norm. One of the grave difficulties is that as the Congress sits silent, the Senate sits silent again and again and again. There has been such a total erosion of the constitutional requirement that the Congress has the authority to declare war. The situation as to emergency, which is used so frequently to justify Presidential action, is totally absent here. This may be the clearest kind of case which we have seen where there has been time for a Congress to deliberate, to consider, and to act. I believe that the missile strikes in December of 1998 against Iraq should have required prior congressional authorization. But an argument can be made, tenuous as it is, that we are still operating under the resolution for the use of force from January of 1991. I think it is wrong, but one can make that argument.”