January 18, 1973
Page 1413
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I am pleased today to cosponsor the war powers bill. I do so for two reasons. In the first place, the bill commends itself on its own merits. But more importantly, the bill is a first step toward reforming the role of the President in the making of U.S. foreign policy.
First, as to the bill itself. The earliest draft of the bill was introduced by Senator JACOB JAVITS of New York during the 92d Congress. He deserves the thanks of the Senate and the Nation. Other Senators introduced similar proposals. The Foreign Relations Committee conducted a long and serious study of the bills. It heard a number of distinguished witnesses. With only a few exceptions, the witnesses before the committee supported the need for legislation of this type, to redress the imbalance in the war-making power between President and Congress. Then, after extensive discussion within the committee itself, we voted the bill out unanimously.
The committee report summarized the purpose and effect of the bill this way. The bill, according to the report, requires "advance congressional authorization for the commitment of the Armed Forces to hostilities, by the President, except in certain designated emergencies, in the event of which the President would be authorized to commit the Armed Forces to combat for a period of not to exceed 30 days unless explicitly authorized by Congress." – Senate Report 92-606, page 7.
The bill thus confirms the President's right and duty to act quickly in specifically defined emergencies. He may, and must defend the Nation, its Armed Forces or its citizens, when they are truly threatened. This statement of unilateral Presidential authority, most agree, accommodates our historical experience and the constitutional balance of power.
Beyond that, the legislation engages Congress in all decisions which would commit us to hostilities. The legislature must act, or the President's hand is stayed. And Congress is compelled to speak directly. It may not weasel. It may not avoid the issue, as it has in the past, and there can be no argument as to whether Congress has spoken – whether appropriations, resolutions, and treaties have authorized the President to fight a war.
The bill further requires that when the President seeks the congressional authorization required by the act, and after such authorization is given, he must make full reports to the Congress on the situation. This would be an important step forward in improving the flow of information to the Congress on issues of war and peace.
I, therefore, consider the bill to be a long overdue effort by the Congress to regulate the exercise of the war power of the Nation.
The Constitution, of course, provides that Congress is to declare war and carry out other vital functions related to our Armed Forces. The President is the Commander in Chief. The exercise of the war powers is thus a matter for collective judgment, wisdom, and responsibility.
But recent decades have witnessed an increasing preemption of the war power to the Presidency. In part because of congressional failure to assume its full constitutional responsibilities; in part because of the quite natural willingness of Presidents to gather the reins of power; in part, because of the nature of the age in which we live, Presidents have caused, and Congress has tolerated, the commitment of this Nation to foreign hostilities.
With this legislation, Congress is attempting to write an end to that chapter of our experience and to start anew. In doing so, Congress is carrying out – for the first time in history – its duty to enact such legislation as is necessary and proper to the discharge of its war-declaring power and the President's Commander in Chief responsibilities.
It is not altering the Constitution. It is implementing it. No reallocation of function or duty is involved, only the ordering and regulating of the cooperative powers of these two vital constituent elements of our Government. By this legislation Congress is saying that war – if this Nation is to commit itself to war again – will be the joint responsibility of both elected organs of the National Government, both the Congress and the President. The day of unilateral Presidential war will at last have come to a close.
It is for this reason that I support the bill. I do not think it is the last word; indeed, as I have said, it is only a first effort toward the implementation of such sharing of constitutional responsibilities. And I am convinced that if Congress is indeed to take up the new tasks it is legislating for itself in this bill, Congress had best consider quite promptly what measures are necessary to reform itself. There are a host of things we must do to strengthen this body if we are truly to join hands with the President and carry out our constitutional warmaking responsibilities: improved committee staffing, improved organization of foreign affairs legislation, improved consultation within the Congress, and so forth. We are in some ways inadequate to the task at the moment. Therefore, I hope we can quickly turn to congressional reform. It would be wrong and misleading to the Nation to declare Congress a part in the making of war, and yet refuse to undertake the reforms which are necessary if we are to carry out that function as well as we should.
I am convinced that with a modernized Congress, prepared to shoulder these responsibilities, and with an Executive ready to cooperate with Congress, the Nation will be better off. I am fearful, however, that the present administration is not prepared to cooperate. Secretary of State Rogers was one of the few witnesses who counseled against the bill before the committee. In the Cambodian and Laos invasions, in the Bay of Bengal, and elsewhere, President Nixon has seemed intent on preserving, protecting and enhancing for himself a unilateral extension of personal power including the war powers and all the lesser powers over foreign policy, with little regard for the Congress, the public and the foreign affairs professionals. I believe this trend is a national danger, which must be corrected.
This leads me to my second and broader reason for supporting the legislation. There has been a steady White House preemption of foreign policy in this century and not just in matters verging toward hostilities. The White House is more and more drawing all major foreign policy issues into itself.
The trend did not begin the Nixon administration. Matters began to go awry during World War II. The wartime grasp on foreign affairs in the White House was carried forward through the postwar crises. President Truman ignored the Congress in Korea. John Foster Dulles created the structure of security treaties with little attention to Capitol hill – except for Senatorial ratification and congressional appropriation. The tendency toward more and more White House monopolization of our foreign affairs continued through the administrations of President Kennedy and President Johnson – highlighted by their unilateral decisions in Vietnam.
President Nixon has brought the process of Presidential monopolization of foreign affairs to a real culmination. The ceremonial trappings, the trips, and the personalized rhetoric are its symbols.
The consequences of this White House preemption of foreign affairs are palpable–
Deliberations on anything of importance confined to a small circle;
Inefficient Presidential preoccupation with the details of foreign policy, to the detriment of Presidential leadership on domestic affairs;
Immunization of foreign affairs questions from congressional debate – except on trade, or during the debates over aid and military appropriations when the Congress must expend almost all its foreign affairs energies;
Increased anger that Congress cannot question the real makers of foreign policy – particularly the President's Assistant for National Security Affairs – because of Executive privilege claims, although surely the Constitution provided that a dialog between the Congress and those making our foreign policy should take place;
The demoralization of the Department of State and the Foreign Service – witness Secretary Rogers' exclusion from the meeting with Mao;
Delight in surprise diplomacy, which dramatizes the personality of whoever happens to be in the White House, but dismays allies, unnerves the rest of the world and makes it hard to argue that we have a coherent policy, a steadiness of purpose, or a capacity for restrained commitment;
Increasing White House secrecy about foreign policy; and
A sense of moral certainty within the White House circle which makes it difficult to distinguish between honest debate and disloyalty – or between political advantage and national interest.
This is the temper of monarchs. It is not the way to conduct the foreign relations of the United States.
The war powers bill I take to be one step in the path back toward a better balanced, more democratic, less imperial conception of the role of the Presidency.
We must, I am convinced, begin that return journey. We must depersonalize our foreign relations. There is a coherence to U.S. policy which is above the accident of our domestic politics and the circumstances of election victories. It should be our purpose to demonstrate this to the world.
We must restore the professional service to its rightful role of advice and operation. The State Department must be made to work effectively.
Congress has a vital role to play, in consultation with the executive branch. Ways must be found to bring the serious minds in the Congress to bear on foreign affairs in a creative and constructive fashion, with hearings, advice, and a constant challenge to participation.
We have a duty to the Nation. It is our task to provide more information, earlier and fuller debate, narrower claims of executive privilege and the opening of the miles of secret file drawers to the scrutiny of the press and of the public.
All these measures, and others, are necessary to reform the role of the President, and bring our foreign affairs more closely into line with the original constitutional scheme and our historic experiences. The Constitution did not contemplate that the White House should act like the Court of Versailles or the participants at the Congress of Vienna. This is a democracy, in its foreign relations and in its domestic business. As we act like a royal court, so we depart from our essential genius. We must return. The war powers bill is a first step.