David Obey: “I have to tell you, some days it is very interesting to watch what happens in a place like this. This is the most…”

“I have to tell you, some days it is very interesting to watch what happens in a place like this. This is the most serious issue that this Congress will confront this year, and this motion is addressing that issue in the most unserious manner possible. This motion is presented by the distinguished ranking minority member of the committee, and then he says he is going to vote against his own motion. I would like for a moment to remind the body of what this House is supposed to be. The core purpose of this Congress, the main reason for its existence is to deal with issues like this. Today, the United States Congress is supposedly regarded as the greatest deliberative body in the world. We exist today, if we remember our history, we exist today because almost 800 years ago our British forefathers placed the first limitation on the absolute use of executive power in the history of the English speaking world when they forced the English monarch to sign the Magna Carta. Over 500 years later, that evolved into the United States Constitution, which created three branches of government, with checks and balances designed to prevent arbitrary and unilateral exercise of unchecked executive power in order to protect liberty. Because of that Constitution, and under the procedures defined by that Constitution, we are here in the fifth year of a war which this country was led into under false premises.”