(Optional Musical Accompaniment To This Post)
WASHINGTON—A couple of statements from public people to begin our day here in the nation’s capital. First, a little bit from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell concerning the immigration stone in the passway of funding the government. From CBS News:
"I'm looking for something that President Trump supports, and he's not yet indicated what measure he's willing to sign," he said. "As soon as we figure out what he is for, then I would be convinced that we are not just spinning our wheels to this issue on the floor, but actually dealing with a bill that has a chance to become law and therefore solve the problem."
And then a little somethin’-somethin’ from Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State, concerning our continuing presence in yet another country in the Middle East. From The New York Times:
“We cannot allow history to repeat itself in Syria,” Mr. Tillerson said during a speech at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University near San Francisco. “ISIS has one foot in the grave, and by maintaining an American military presence in Syria until the full and complete defeat of ISIS is achieved, it will soon have two.”…
Mr. Tillerson’s comments were the first time a senior Trump administration official pledged to keep American troops in Syria well after the current battle ends. They also marked another step in President Trump’s gradual evolution from a populist firebrand who promised to extricate the United States from foreign military entanglements to one who is grudgingly accepting many of the national security strategies he once derided.
“Evolution” is nice. The president*, as McConnell helpfully pointed out as regards immigration, is prone to evolving from one lie to another, and his positions are prone to evolving back over their own feet.
We can argue for days over what the Founders meant regarding, say, the individual right to keep a grenade launcher in the chifforobe. But there was one point on which they were absolutely clear: the power of the purse and the power to make war both reside in the Congress. Of necessity, these two powers occasionally intersect, but their proper place in the government never was in doubt. And the rationale for investing the Congress with these powers was clearly that to do so would be to rein in an Executive branch that was out of control, or incompetent, or both.
On the subject of the war powers, in 1789, Mr. Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson that:
The constitution supposes, what the History of all Govts demonstrates, that the Ex. is the branch of power most interested in war, & most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legisl. But the Doctrines lately advanced strike at the root of all these provisions, and will deposit the peace of the Country in that Department which the Constitution distrusts as most ready without cause to renounce it.
And, as to the power of the purse, Mr. Madison explained in Federalist 58 that it rests with the Congress precisely because the Executive can’t be trusted with it. He wrote:
This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.
So, as two frenzied days begin here, we see that the substantial Republican majorities in both Houses of the Congress have completely abdicated their constitutional functions simply because the Republican Party can’t get out of its own way, and because the president* is a grandiose simpleton who could be talked into cutting off his own head. Both McConnell, and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver from Wisconsin, theoretically could get pretty much anything they want passed. But Ryan has the Freedom Caucus leading him around by the nose, and McConnell is pretending that the White House has to move first, which turns the constitutional order on its head.
And, as to what Tillerson said, if the United States is going to embark on an open-ended military presence in Syria, then, clearly, if it is doing its job the way it was designed, Congress should demand that a new Authorization for Use of Military Force be voted on before that commitment is made. I will grant you that congressional war powers have leached away to the Executive in many instances, and that some of them are unlikely ever to return to their proper place in the Congress. But this is clear cut. There is no way that an AUMF passed in 2001 or 2002 to respond to al Qaeda can be stretched to cover a military incursion into Syria to fight a group that didn’t even exist at the time. Last June, Congresswoman Barbara Lee of California got a bill through the House Appropriations Committee that would have rescinded the 2001 AUMF. Rand Paul tried it in the Senate last fall, but that attempt got voted down resoundingly.
So, as these two frenzied days begin, the Republican Party, hamstrung by an ideology that never was entirely coherent on its best days, which were 35 years ago, controls the entire government, and has turned into the Bolshoi of stepping on one’s own dick. The grand jete is going to be to see if they can con people into blaming the Democrats. All politics is loco.
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Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.
