Mario Cuomo: How Congress Forgot Its Own Strength

[babylonsister]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/opinion/07cuomo.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

How Congress Forgot Its Own Strength


By MARIO M. CUOMO
Published: October 7, 2007

SENATORS Jim Webb of Virginia and Hillary Clinton of New York are right to demand that the president go before Congress to ask for a “declaration of war” before proceeding with an attack against Iran or any other nation. But there is no need for this demand to be put into law, as the two Democrats and their colleagues are seeking to do, any more than there is need for legislation to guarantee our right of free speech or anything else protected by the Constitution.

Article I, Section 8 already provides that only Congress has the power to declare war. Perhaps the founders’ greatest concern in writing the Constitution was that they might unintentionally create a president who was too much like the British monarch, whom they despised. They expressed that concern in part by assuring that the president would not have the power to declare war.

Because the Constitution cannot be amended by persistent evasion, this mandate was neither erased nor modified by the actions or inactions of timid Congresses that allowed overeager presidents to start wars in Vietnam and elsewhere without making a declaration.

Indeed, asking for more legislation now would imply that the Constitution doesn’t mean what it already says.

It would repeat the mistake made by Congress in 2002 when it tried to delegate to President Bush the non-delegable power that the founders chose to give to the legislative branch. Congress’s eagerness to shed the burden making the decision by passing resolutions that purportedly “authorized” the president to decide whether to start a war denied the nation the careful Congressional inquiry intended by the Constitution.

That deliberation might have revealed Iraq’s lack of complicity with Al Qaeda and the nonexistence of the country’s alleged cache of nuclear weapons. The members of Congress would have had to vote specifically on going to war (instead of on allowing the president to make that decision), which would have assured closer scrutiny than they actually gave the question.

Proceeding with the proposed legislation would also create the likelihood of still another failed Democratic legislative effort, because it would probably not get enough votes from Republicans to override a veto. Such a failure might have some political value as another reminder of the Republicans’ eagerness for war, but it would also remind voters that the Democrats have not been as effective as they promised in 2006 they would be.

Congress’s refusal to comply with Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution has led to a catastrophic aftermath. Such a tragedy should never be allowed to happen again. Rather than enact new legislation that would create constitutional ambiguity, the Democratic leadership in Congress should assert its strength by simply announcing it will allow no “resolutions” or “authorizations” purporting to delegate to the president Congress’s constitutional power to declare war against any other nation. Nor will there be any new war without Congress’s solemn deliberation and declaration of war.

The Democrats should go still further and announce that no money will be appropriated for any military action against another nation without a proper declaration of war. And this should be the position of the Democratic presidential candidates as well. How else can they make the case that they are less likely than President Bush to wage dangerous, improvident wars?



Mario M. Cuomo, the governor of New York from 1983 to 1995, practices law with Willkie Farr & Gallagher.
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[Cha]

1. Yeah, instead of so Undercover.. like

it won't be recorded in history that they were the congress that developed a tragic case of amnesia.

Mario Cuomo is so intelligent and able to convey what he means so eloquently..Lucky person who needs a lawyer and has this former Gov of New York.

[bleever]

2. His point that Congress can NOT delegate the right to declare war

is one of the most powerful lessons of the IWR debacle.

K&R.

[babylonsister]

5. Hi, bleever. I wish more people were reading/listening to that message

and act accordingly.

[bleever]

6. The war was illegal in so many different ways.

If Congress makes the same mistake again, the whole disaster could be repeated.

Cuomo should be on the short list for the next Supreme Court vacancy.

[Lucinda]

3. Kicking and Rec

I'm a long-time Mario C fan. Thanks for posting this!

I have to wonder though, if they aren't proceeding, for a complex list of reasons. Everything from a CYA point of view in mistrust of the Admin, to being on the record as "tough" and looking as though the are backing * down.

I'm probably not saying this correctly. I'm super hungry and am waiting on ingredients so I can make General Tso and Sesame Chicken. :)

[bemildred]

4. They know perfectly well what they are doing.

It's stupid, but then so is the Congress.

[intheflow]

7. I used to listen to Cuomo on the radio a lot.

I lived in Massachusetts, about 100 outside of Albany. Cuomo used to talk with local NPR broadcaster Alan Chartok on a regular basis. He always spoke the most common sense of any politician I ever heard.

Thanks for posting! :kick:

[slipslidingaway]

8. Great article, short and to the point. And this from 2004...

January 28, 2004 by TomPaine.com
The First Lie
by John C. Bonifaz

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0128-08.htm

"...It is time to set the record straight. The United States Congress never voted for the Iraq war. Rather, Congress voted for a resolution in October 2002 which unlawfully transferred to the president the decision-making power of whether to launch a first-strike invasion of Iraq. The United States Constitution vests the awesome power of deciding whether to send the nation into war solely in the United States Congress.

Those members of Congress-including certain Democratic presidential candidates-who voted for that October resolution cannot now claim that they were deceived, as some of them do. By unlawfully ceding the war-declaring power to the president, they allowed the president to start a war against Iraq based on whatever evidence or whatever lies he chose. The members of Congress who voted for that October resolution are as complicit in this illegal war as is the president himself...

Now more than ever, the Constitution and the rule of law must apply. And, now more than ever, the truth must be told. The first lie about the Iraq war was not that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or ties to Al Qaeda. The first lie told to the American people is that Congress voted for this war.

In the midst of the rushed congressional debate in October 2002, U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va.) warned that the resolution under consideration was unconstitutional. "We are handing this over to the President of the United States," Byrd said. "When we do that, we can put up a sign on the top of this Capitol, and we can say: 'Gone home. Gone fishing. Out of business.'" Byrd added: "I never thought I would see the day in these forty-four years I have been in this body... when we would cede this kind of power to any president."

The Iraq war is in direct violation of the United States Constitution. The president and the members of Congress who voted for that October resolution should be held accountable for sending this nation into an illegal war..."

[Senator]

9. And When That Fails ... Then Can We Impeach?

It's good that Cuomo actually "gets it" -- that there's no need (and is actually damaging) to "legislate" what is already inviolably provided in the US Constitution. (Note to Leahy: You can't "restore" habeas corpus. It never got deleted.)

The sad irony is that he doesn't fully "get it" -- that the US Constitution is just some words on a page to these neofascist war criminals -- as would be even a unanimous act of Congress or ruling of any court.

Only Impeachment For Torture Can End The War.

And we already "have the votes."

Can't we just get on with it?

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