Constitution Project: Former Congressmen Urge House to Reclaim War Powers
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 13, 2008
9:48 AM
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CONTACT: Constitution Project
Corey Owens
Communications Director
(202) 580-6922
cowens@constitutionproject.org
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Former Congressmen Urge House to Reclaim War Powers
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WASHINGTON, DC - March 13 - Today, former Members of Congress Mickey Edwards (R-OK) and David Skaggs (D-CO) called on Congress to reclaim the constitutional authority to declare war. Edwards and Skaggs are the co-chairs of the Constitution Project's bipartisan War Powers Committee, which, in Deciding to Use Force Abroad: War Powers in a System of Checks and Balances, documented and criticized the consolidation of war powers in the hands of presidents of both parties.
"Kings used to be able to send their subjects off to war whenever it suited their purposes," Edwards told the subcommittee. "In a dictatorship, that power persists. It is central to the American republic, however, that the chief executive is specifically denied that prerogative."
Section 8 of Article I of the United States Constitution explicitly grants Congress the authority declare war, while Section 2 of Article II designates the President as the Commander in Chief of the nation's armed forces. However, since America's military intervention in Korea in 1950, several presidents have deployed troops overseas without the authorization of Congress. More recently, White House officials argued that President George W. Bush did not need to seek authorization for military operations in Iraq, and that he should seek such authorization only as a political maneuver and not a legal necessity.
"We have veered dangerously away from the constitutional division of powers and its critical checks and balances," said Virginia Sloan, president of the Constitution Project. "The authors of our Constitution did not require that Congress be involved in the launching of the machines of war only when it was polticially convenient. Quite to the contrary, they thought it essential that the American voters-through their representatives-should always control the decision to send their children to war."
To learn more about the work of the Constitution Project's War Powers Committee, visit http://www.constitutionproject.org.
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