Congress has the power to set the budget for any Executive action or even the entire DoD budget to ZERO dollars... they just don't have the guts or consolidated willpower to do it (either Dems or Repubs).
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Originally Posted by Sackett
1: If that is the argument, then Obama should just say that! Say: "The War Powers Act is unconstitutional and I won't obey it." Don't try and feed me some crap about how shooting missiles at people aren't "hostilities".
2: I'm don't agree with that interpretation of the constitution. The American Constitution say that Congress has the power to declare war. It says nothing about the President being able to make war without Congressional authorization. How is it meaningful to say that only Congress can declare war if the President can just go make war regardless of whether Congress has declared war or not?
If anything I tend to think that the War Powers act gives the President authority to act without Congressional approval- but only for a period of 60 days. After that he needs to get Congress to declare war. This is probably because Congress decided that modern warfare doesn't always allow congressional deliberation and sometimes needs immediate action.
And understand, I'm not a purist on this "declare war" stuff. If Congress authorizes the use of force but does actually call it a declaration of war- just semantics in my mind, Congress declared war. Or even if Congress doesn't formally authorize force but just votes to provide funds for the war. I can see that as Congressional approval.
But with Lybia, Congress has not voted to provide funds. Obama is just diverting money from a different fund authorized for other purposes.
And lets consider the practical implications. Do we really want the President of the United States to be able to attack other countries and make war on them without Congressional approval? Should one man really have that authority?
He doesn't even need to get Congressional approval for funds? Didn't we learn anything from the Iran-Contra affair? Didn't we learn from Vietnam?
No President has claimed this level of authority or power since Lyndon B. Johnson (and he was the first to claim it). Even Nixon assumed he needed Congress to explicitly fund the war.
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