WASHINGTON — Sen. Tim Kaine says that after nine months of military action against the Islamic State terror group, his colleagues in the House and Senate, who still haven’t voted to give President Barack Obama authorization to take that action, don’t “have the backbone to do their job.”
In an interview Thursday morning with WTOP, Kaine, D-Virginia, says he’s going to make a speech later in the day “[challenging] Congress to undertake the responsibility that, by the Constitution, only we can do, which is to initiate war.”
Since military action began last August, Kaine says, “Congress keeps coming up with a new excuse not to act.”
First, he says, the general sentiment was to wait until after the midterms. When they were over last November, he says, taking up the matter in a lame-duck session was considered a mistake.
In January, when the new session began, Kaine says he was told, “’Well, the president hasn’t sent us a draft of the proposed authorization to do that,’ even though it is our power, not the president’s.”
Even so, Kaine says, the president sent a draft authorization in February — 2 1/2 months ago.
“And Congress still hasn’t acted on it — ‘Oh, there’s other things that we’re doing.’ Well, meanwhile, we’ve got service members — a whole lot of Virginians, a whole lot of D.C. and Marylanders — who are deployed overseas, who are fighting in a war, and we’re spending money on it,” Kaine says.
Congress is taking the easy way out, and not for the first time, Kaine says.
“Congress has only declared war five times. Presidents have started wars about 125 times prior to congressional approval, and sometimes Congress has never approved.”
The reason, he says, is simple.
“Wars are complicated, and they’re controversial, and they could be unpopular. And so this Congress, like Congresses before it, has chosen to stand back, even as thousands of American service members are deployed — even as we’ve lost American lives, both service members and hostages in the last few months, Congress has chosen to stand back and do nothing.”
He thinks that political ambition, including among those running for higher office, has something to do with it. And plain old opportunism is a factor as well.
“What Congress will often do is say ‘Well, we’ll let the president start it, and if it goes well, we’ll say we were with him the entire time, and if it goes badly we’ll say “How dare you do this.”’
Kaine adds that this last factor is particularly galling in the current atmosphere.
“Remember, this is the Congress that loves to jump all over President Obama: ‘How dare you take executive action? How dare you do things on immigration or health care without talking to us?’ But on the most solemn power, that is clearly Congress’s, they are willing to let the president do whatever he wants because they don’t want to go on the board and vote yes or no about it.
“But it is so unfair to the troops that serve — they’re over there risking their lives, but they don’t know whether Congress cares about them one iota.”
He says it’s “long past time that we had this debate,” since threats are growing around the world.
Referring to the recent attacks in Texas, he says, “Now we’ve got people carrying out attack in the U.S. claiming to be inspired by ISIL,” adding that it’s now in Afghanistan and Libya and Yemen as well as Iraq and Iran.
And Boko Haram recently declared an alliance with ISIS.
“This is not a threat that is going away, it’s only getting worse. And Congress still hasn’t said anything.”
