A joint resolution to direct the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran that have not been authorized by Congress.

Mr. President, I think the real danger is that over time, this Congress has conceded and delivered its constitutional responsibilities to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue and President Trump and other executives. It is time for Congress to take seriously its responsibilities, including the constitutional responsibility to decide when to declare war.

Here at home, our fellow Americans are facing higher costs for virtually everything: for groceries, for electricity, childcare, healthcare. The list goes on and on. Folks all over the country are working nonstop just to make ends meet.

So you would think that President Trump would be focused on keeping his campaign promise to bring down prices. He said he was going to do that on day one of his administration, but that is not what he is doing. He is doing the opposite.

He and Republicans right here in the Senate and in Congress are actually driving up costs, including healthcare costs across the country. Members of Congress on the Republican side voted against extending tax credits to help middle-class Americans afford their healthcare. In fact, those tax credits expired at midnight on December 31, and 20 million Americans are seeing their healthcare costs spike.

President Trump is also breaking another promise. He is breaking his promise to keep America from being dragged into costly foreign conflicts. He is not focused on nation building here at home. He is focused on nation building overseas--exactly what he said he did not want to do.

First of all, he bailed out Argentina, and now, he says he is running Venezuela. He says he is in charge of Venezuela. In fact, just this morning, President Trump's Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said the United States would be overseeing the sale of Venezuela's oil production ``indefinitely.''

Here is a Washington Post story: ``U.S. vows to control Venezuela oil sales `indefinitely'''--Energy Secretary says.

That is what this has been about from the beginning, grabbing and controlling Venezuela's oil for the benefit of Trump's billionaire buddies. That is why Wall Street appears to be drooling at the prospect of making more money in Venezuela.

So I think we should start by pointing out the fact that the Trump administration has been engaged in a long campaign of deception and lies to the American people about the reasons for this adventure in Venezuela.

They lied to the American people when they said this was all about stopping the flow of drugs into the United States. We all support that goal. But that is not what this has been about. If this was about stopping the flow of drugs into our country, the Trump administration would not have proposed big budget cuts to the Drug Enforcement Administration. They would not have shuttered the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. They shut it down.

President Trump talks about deaths caused by fentanyl in the United States. He is absolutely right about that. What he does not tell the American people is that the fentanyl killing Americans is not originating or even transiting through Venezuela.

And, of course, if President Trump was serious about fighting drugs, he would not, just as he did weeks ago, have pardoned the former Honduran President and notorious drug kingpin Juan Orlando Hernandez.

I should say, even closer to home in December, we learned President Trump also pardoned a Baltimore City drug kingpin whom the DEA called ``one of the largest cocaine and heroin dealers to be arrested by the DEA in recent history.''

That sends a signal to everybody that Donald Trump is willing to pardon people who have been engaged in poisoning our people.

So this has not been about stopping drugs for Donald Trump. And it certainly wasn't about removing an illegitimate leader--and Maduro is an illegitimate leader--but Donald Trump cozies up to dictators all over the world.

Of course, yesterday was the fifth anniversary of Donald Trump's efforts to overturn a free and fair election right here in the United States.

The President himself has made clear that this is all about the oil. When he announced the fact that the United States had seized Maduro, he said: ``We're going to get back our oil'' and ``We need total access . . . access to the oil and to other things in their country,'' meaning other natural resources in Venezuela. He uttered the word ``oil'' 19 times when he announced the seizure of Maduro.

Indeed, while President Trump did not consult or notify Congress about his plans, as is required, he revealed that ``the oil companies were absolutely aware that we were thinking about doing something.''

So colleagues, Donald Trump wants to grab the oil, and he wants to do it to help his billionaire buddies. Case in point is Paul Singer. He is the billionaire head of Elliott Investment Management and a Trump megadonor. He recently acquired Citgo, the U.S.-based subsidiary of Venezuela's state-run oil company in November 2025, just a few months ago. He acquired it for approximately half the company's estimated value.

Now, according to the Wall Street Journal in an article on January 5:

Now Elliott appears poised to reap the rewards of owning

Venezuela's most valuable foreign oil asset. The regime

change could lead to an increase in Venezuelan oil

production, which would likely provide cheap feedstock to

Citgo's Gulf Coast refineries and increase the company's

value, analysts and refining experts said.

So a huge win for one of President Trump's biggest donors.

Now, I think we all need to acknowledge and salute our troops who took part in this operation. They performed magnificently, flawlessly, bravely. I want to thank them on behalf of my fellow Marylanders.

But it is also outrageous that President Trump would put the lives of American service men and women at risk to grab Venezuela's oil to enrich his friends on Wall Street. At least six of our American service men and women were wounded, approximately 80 Venezuelans were killed in this operation, including civilians, not to mention the over 100 people who were on those boats over the last couple of months who had been killed.

And while the Trump administration and congressional Republicans attempt to bask in the euphoria of Maduro's removal, the hangover of running Venezuela is still to come. In fact, it has started.

In recent remarks on Venezuela's future after Maduro's capture, President Trump said:

You know, rebuilding there and regime change, anything you

want to call it, is better than what you have right now.

Can't get any worse.

Well, actually, colleagues, it can, and we have seen it before; two decades in

Afghanistan, years in Iraq stand as a warning: The United States spilled blood and treasure on state-building fantasies that failed, undermined American interests, and left a more fractured and unstable region in their wake.

The United States has no mandate to decide Venezuela's future. That is up to the Venezuelan people, not to be imposed through U.S. military regime change efforts that are really motivated by oil company interests and not to be dictated by threats of occupation.

This time, President Trump has co-opted the U.S. military in service of those goals, benefiting oil companies and his billionaire buddies. And in doing so, he has charted a dangerous playbook that they say they may employ elsewhere.

As we all know, since seizing Maduro, President Trump has threatened further action against Cuba, Colombia, and Greenland. After being asked about an operation in Greenland, which he has threatened several times with invasion since beginning his term, he said--President Trump said:

We need Greenland.

Just yesterday, the White House confirmed in a statement that they are discussing ``a range of options'' to acquire Greenland, not excluding military force.

When asked about a U.S. operation against Colombia, President Trump said:

It sounds good to me.

Look, what we have seen is President Trump resurrecting a policy from a bygone era, one which would be better left in the dustbin of history, the Monroe Doctrine.

That was encapsulated in his recent press conference as well when he said that ``American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.''

What he means by that is that he will deploy U.S. forces wherever he wants for whatever purpose he wants--and, again, trying to leave Congress out of the equation. You know, you listen to our Republican colleagues here who apparently just want to give the Executive a blank check.

If you look at the National Security Strategy that the Trump administration unveiled a few weeks back, you will see how serious a change their proposal is because it essentially throws overboard the idea that the United States will employ a foreign policy based on values and principles, that we will support a rules-based order, human rights, freedom, and democracy.

However imperfectly we have done that--and we have been far from perfect--that has been one of the guiding lights for U.S. foreign policy. And when you throw that overboard in favor of this new policy, which says we will essentially reassert a dominance in the Western Hemisphere, it is clearly a signal to others around the world--or at least this is the way they will hear it--that they get free rein in their neighborhoods, which explains why President Trump has been so weak when it comes to negotiating with Vladimir Putin over Ukraine.

We can explain it when we understand that when Donald Trump says ``Ukraine is your neighborhood,'' you, Vladimir Putin, get to do what you want in Ukraine. So he invites Vladimir Putin to a summit in Alaska, thinks he is going to sweet talk Putin. As soon as the summit is over, Russia and Putin escalate their attacks against Ukraine.

Maybe in Donald Trump's mind it is like: Well, you know, Ukraine is in your neighborhood, none of my business. That is a very dangerous signal to send.

Of course, President Xi--I mean he is looking at Taiwan 90 miles away and saying: Well, that is in my neighborhood.

So Donald Trump has unleashed this idea that we are going to focus only on the Western Hemisphere--or mostly on the Western Hemisphere-- and that we are essentially going to live by the rule that might is right. When you unleash that idea around the world, other significant powers will listen and it will make the world a lot more dangerous and it will undermine American interests.

So I do want to close where I started, which is instead of engaging in these costly foreign adventures that cost billions of dollars and put American lives at risk, we should be doing what Candidate Trump said he was going to do, which is focus on making sure we improve the lives of American people right here at home.

That is not what the President is doing. That is what we should be doing, and we should start by saying no to this foreign, illegal adventure by supporting Senator Kaine's resolution.

And then we should get about making sure that we work to bring costs down here in the United States, including, after the House passes later this week, legislation to restore those tax credits that help people afford their healthcare. We should take that up in the Senate and get it passed.

Let's focus on helping the American people here at home rather than putting Americans and their lives at risk in costly foreign adventures to get our hands on Venezuela's oil for the benefit of Donald Trump's donors and billionaire buddies.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, Donald Trump has taken us back to the era of gunboat diplomacy over the last 4 months, back to that era when a powerful nation would station its gunships off the coast of another nation in order to compel them to do what we wanted to enable us to have access to their resources, to force them to enable our corporations to take over their economy. It is a deeply powerfully resented strategy for nations to say: Hey, that militarily powerful other nation came and threatened us with their gunboats in order to take our resources and profit the more powerful nation--gunboat diplomacy. And yet here we are.

This is hot off the press from CNN. Two senior White House officials told the CNN reporters: ``During conversations led by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the Trump administration told Venezuela's interim president Delcy Rodriguez that the country must cut ties with China, Iran, Russia and Cuba, and agree to partner exclusively with the US on oil production.'' And that ``Rodriguez,'' the Acting President, of Venezuela, ``must also agree to favor the Trump administration and US oil companies for future oil sales.''

Gunboats off the coast. Threats to say we will keep grabbing your oil tankers to prevent you from selling your resource on the international market unless we, the United States, take control of your oil. Sorry, Venezuela.

Well, this certainly wasn't about the future of a better Venezuela for Venezuelans. You know, just 18 months ago, the people of Venezuela voted in a Presidential election, and they voted for a man named Gonzalez, who was a stand-in for the champion of democracy, Maria Machado, who just received the Nobel Peace Prize for her work. They voted, according to the estimates of monitors, about a ratio of 2 to 1--2 to 1--for democracy.

No, Venezuela is no stranger to democracy. They had a democracy for three decades, and they lost it to the internal corrosion of the separation of powers and the checks and balances of a democracy. And certainly that led to the current tyranny, the authoritarian state that they live in now.

But did the Trump administration say: We want to help Venezuelans reclaim their country? No. They said: We like dictatorships. We just want a pliable dictatorship. So they said: We are leaving in place this entire structure of corrupted military and government officials with massive corruption, and yet we will have a new Acting President, who has assured us that she will do what we want.

And what do we want? We want your oil. We want it under the control only of U.S. corporations.

That is hardly a message that helps the United States in our standing or our interests in the world. First of all, it produces enormous hostility from countries that faced that type of coercion in the past. They well remember the United States using its economic might, its military might, to try to exploit their resources through our U.S. corporations. So it undermines our collaboration around the world.

You know a second thing it does, it undermines the respect we are held in--or used to be held in--for advancing the vision of democracy, of government by and for the people, kind of the light that we brought to the world to say: The world shouldn't be in a situation where citizens are ruled by powerful people for their own gain. No, they should be able to make their own decisions for their own future, for their own better future.

But you didn't hear any discussion about honoring the will of the Venezuelan people who voted 18 months ago, 2 to 1, for democracy.

So now we are looking at a situation where we see other challenges that flow from this, this continuation of a dictatorship by Delcy Rodriguez, the Vice President, who Secretary Rubio has said is more pliable, more manipulatable, will more service our interest than the predecessor, and yet all the corruption of that authoritarian government, all of the repression left fully in place.

President Trump said:

If she doesn't do what's right, she is going to pay a very

big price, probably bigger than Maduro.

Leave the dictatorship in place. Put a person in charge we think is more going to bend to our pressure, and threaten her--the President of the United States threatened her with something worse than what he did to Maduro.

Trump's goal is clear: He doesn't mind if there is a dictatorship, as long as it is our dictatorship, serving us, the American corporations, and the Trump administration, rather than the Venezuelan people.

The people of Venezuela deserve free and fair elections.

And then let's talk about how this entire setup for this gunboat diplomacy was based on a massive lie to the American people. The Trump administration said: This is about stopping drugs coming into the United States that have done so much damage to our families.

Well, we are all very sympathetic to stopping every bit of drugs that come into our country. We have cocaine. We have fentanyl. We have meth.

But here is the story: On the Venezuelan exports of cocaine, expert after expert says, overwhelmingly, that is the path of drugs to Europe, not the United States.

And then the Trump administration said: But--wait, wait, wait--there must be fentanyl down in Venezuela. We are stopping fentanyl from coming into the United States.

But that, too, was another lie. The fentanyl comes from Mexico. It comes across our southern border. It is made with precursors from China. We are pressing China to end their distribution or their importation or exportation of those precursors into Mexico, and we are working with the Mexican Government to stop the flow into the United States, doing everything we can to find those places where the fentanyl is made. We need to stop fentanyl in every possible way, but Venezuela is not the source of the fentanyl problem.

I think about how it was the case with George W. Bush that he created a fake story about weapons of mass destruction to lead us into a massive regime-change strategy and nation-building strategy in Iraq. Huge amounts of American treasure and lives paid the price. Four thousand U.S. servicemembers died, and $2 trillion of our American treasure that could have built our schools, could have built our healthcare system, could have built our infrastructure was wasted because of a big lie told to the American people.

And now we have the Trump administration with this big lie that this was about drugs, when it turns out that it is about regime change and it is about oil.

What bothers me is a lot, but it is the fact that the administration directly lied to the American people and lied in the classified hearings that they held up here on Capitol Hill, saying: Nope, no plans for regime change.

Well, it turns out those plans had been developing over a very significant period of time.

So if it was about drugs, by the way, the President wouldn't have pardoned Juan Orlando Hernandez, a drug kingpin, right in the middle of the process of saying he is trying to stop drugs. Here is a guy who was sitting in our prison because he was the architect of a cocaine superhighway into the United States of America, delivering an estimated 400 tons of cocaine, devastating hundreds of thousands of American families, and Trump busted him out of prison while he was saying he was absolutely trying to stop drugs. You don't send a message about stopping drugs by taking a kingpin and setting him free, and yet that is exactly--exactly--what happened.

And then we have this issue of the administration saying: Hey, this isn't a military operation--no, no, no. It is a judicial operation.

If it is a judicial operation, then what we are talking about is an American indictment supported by an extraterritorial rendition, a fancy term for going abroad and kidnapping the person whom we have an indictment on.

Is that a principle that we abide by in the law? Are we saying: Hey, Canada, if you have an indictment, come to the United States of America and grab an American citizen. We are fine with that.

I say: Hell, no. We don't want any country coming to the United States of America and grabbing people off our streets, and yet that is the principle that Donald Trump just promoted and exemplified to the world: We are going to go kidnap somebody we have an indictment for.

And if it was about an indictment, then it would have ended the moment that he was on the plane being brought to the United States. But it doesn't end--does it?--because we are hearing from the administration that it is about us now running Venezuela.

Obviously, this was a military operation--a military operation not in support of an indictment; a military operation in support of a regime change and in support of taking oil.

That is why my colleague from Virginia is bringing forth the War Powers Resolution--because if it is a military operation, it should go through Congress because our Constitution says so.

If we go back to how the Founders viewed this situation, we can turn to James Madison, who wrote to Thomas Jefferson and said:

The constitution supposes, what the History of all

Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of

power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has

accordingly, with studied care, vested the question of war in

the Legislature.

That is our Constitution--vested in the legislature because issues of war and peace should never be entrusted to one person. It is too tempting. That is why our Founders put it in the responsibility of this Congress.

So to my colleague from Virginia, thank you for bringing forth this War Powers Resolution.

Under the leadership of the last year, the House and the Senate have failed their article I responsibilities in three very significant ways. First of all, they have not defended the power of the purse placed here with Congress, not the President. Every time the President shuts down a program and says, ``It is authorized, it is funded, but I am ending it because it doesn't align with the priorities of the administration,'' that is an authoritarian statement, breaking our Constitution, and all 100 Senators should be down here on the floor and saying: Hell, no.

We failed.

Second is in oversight. It has now been 4 months that the administration has been preparing their war plan, striking ships in the Eastern Pacific, striking boats in the Caribbean. Not a single oversight hearing--not one. That is our responsibility, and we failed it.

And now we are failing on the third key provision, which is that it is Congress that carries the responsibility for declaring war or authorizing war, not the President.

So this week, due to the resolution being brought forth by my colleague from Virginia Senator Kaine, we have a chance--all 100 of us--to weigh in and correct this failure on this third point and reclaim the responsibilities that we took on when we took the oath of office to become a U.S. Senator. That is our responsibility.

This should pass overwhelmingly to tell the President: no more military action in Venezuela unless Congress provides an authorization for the use of military force.

Mr. President, this is an important debate we are having, and I will give you my view on how all of this works.

Under the Constitution, two things occur: The President of the United States is designated as the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, not Congress. So the Commander in Chief is one person, the President. Declaring war is a duty of the Congress. In the case of modern times, it requires 535 people to vote.

The question is, Can you use military force as the Commander in Chief without a declaration of war?

The answer is yes.

There have been five declarations of war in the history of the country: the

Spanish-American War, the Mexican-American War, the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II. Only five times in the history of our Republic has the Congress exercised its responsibility and right to declare war--five times.

Now, does that mean that other actions taken by the Commander in Chief don't exist where there were no declarations of war?

The answer is no. They do exist. We have been able to find 130 examples of a Commander in Chief using military force without a declaration of war by the Congress and also without congressional authorization under the War Powers Act.

One example is in 1989, when President Bush 41 literally invaded the country of Panama. He sent ground forces in, sustaining casualties, to take down Noriega, who was the leader of Panama, who was a drug kingpin. Panama was being used as a drug safe haven when President Bush 41 authorized the military without having congressional approval to go in and take him down--take him out of Panama and put him in an American prison. We used ground forces, and we lost people in that endeavor.

Things like this, President Clinton used and threatened military force to take a military coup in Haiti down and returned power back to the elected leader of Haiti.

I could go on and on and on about how different Presidents have used military force that has sometimes involved casualties without their having congressional approval. So I don't want to hear anybody tell me that this has never been done before. It is actually the norm.

What is odd in America is to declare war by the Congress. The norm is for the Commander in Chief to use military force as he or she deems necessary to protect the national interests.

The 1973 War Powers Act is a congressional statute, not a constitutional provision, that has a series of reporting requirements when military force is used, crescendoing with an approval process by the Congress, and if that approval is not given, the operations must cease.

In my view, it is patently unconstitutional. You are creating, through the War Powers Act, 535 Commanders in Chief. The Members of Congress sit in judgment over the Commander in Chief, and under the War Powers Act, they have a veto under the law. I think that violates the constitutional structure that has been around since the founding of the Republic.

Now, what can Congress do?

If Congress doesn't like a military operation, the Constitution says that it is Congress that appropriates money, not the President. So, for instance, in Venezuela, if you don't want any American boots on the ground, I think you could come forward and pass through the appropriations process a prohibition of funds to be used to have American ground forces in Venezuela. If you don't like the seizing of the oil for the mutual benefit of Venezuela and the United States, you could say that no money could be used on behalf of the American Government to seize the oil. We would win the day because that is the way you check what you think is an out-of-line action by the President when it comes to using military force. You can do those two things.

What we can't do is substitute our judgment for the decision itself. We can't all sit around up here and say: You know, I don't know if we should use troops here or troops there. I don't like the way this thing is shaping up.

That is chaos.

President Trump is well within his legal rights under article II to use military force to advance the national interest, which is to end the drug trafficking dictatorship of Maduro, which every Republican and Democrat condemned, and President Trump finally did something about it. He was flooding our country with drugs, and it was a safe haven for Hezbollah and other drug cartels. Everybody said he should go. Well, President Trump made those words real. He used military force in the advancement of a national security interest of this country: to stop Venezuela from being a safe haven for drug dealers and international terrorists.

He has a plan to rebuild the country and eventually transition it, through an election, to a new regime. Regime change will come to Venezuela through the ballot box. In the meantime, he is threatening military force to people who want to undercut this effort.

He is taking the oil and selling it and creating an account for the benefit of Venezuela, which is basically out of money. He is telling those people who are holdovers from the regime: I want to work with you to get to where we need to go, which is to rebuild the country and have a free and fair election, but if you don't work with me and you try to undercut what I am doing, then you can meet the same fate as Maduro.

Maduro was an indicted drug guy. He had indictments for being a drug trafficker. The argument is that this operation was to enforce the warrant. It was more of a law enforcement activity because he was the President of the country--not legitimate, by the way, and everybody pretty much denied that he was the legitimate President when he stole the election.

So the bottom line here is--the theory that some of my colleagues are hanging their hats on is that this is legitimate because it is actually a law enforcement function. I respect what you are saying, but I don't agree. This is clearly beyond issuing a warrant. This is clearly beyond using law enforcement power. The game plan is not only to take the indicted leader of the country--who is a horrible person--and put him in jail but to change the country in a way that doesn't threaten America in the future, in that it will not, in the future, be a drug haven for cocaine to be dumped into our country, and it will not be a safe haven for Hezbollah and other drug cartels.

That is the goal. Well, that is going to take a while. That is not about the warrant; that is about our national security interests.

People ask about ``America First.'' What does it mean?

Here is what I think it means: ``America First'' means that we are not going to tolerate--in Venezuela, Colombia, Cuba--countries in our backyard that are run by international drug cartel leaders, who are not legitimate in terms of being elected, to poison this country; that we are going to clean up the drug caliphate in our backyard; and that we are going to use a combination of tools to do that, including military force.

So there will probably be another one of these War Powers Act resolutions. I want to tell my colleagues where I am going to be on that: If you don't like what you see coming about threatening force in the future to have a transition to make Venezuela free and fair and if you don't like taking the assets of the country and selling them to prop up a failing economy, then limit the President's ability to do that by denying funding for those operations. That would be lawful.

The War Powers Act, in my view, is unconstitutional because you are not denying funding; you are basically vetoing the decision of the President to enact a national interest, and the national interest is far beyond taking Maduro down and putting him in jail. It is about transforming the country so we will never live again with Venezuela threatening America by dumping cocaine into our country--killing tens of thousands of people--and being a safe haven for international terrorist groups like Hezbollah. They are aligned with Russia. The goal is to make sure that it never happens again, and that will be a process that involves military force, potentially, and diplomatic engagement.

What the Congress, I fear, is going to do is to limit the President's ability to achieve that national interest by misapplying the War Powers Act--by substituting our judgment for his when it comes to how to change Venezuela.

The bottom line is, if you don't want troops on the ground--right now, there is no need for them--and if you think that is a bad idea, then let's pass an appropriations bill that denies funding for that. If you don't like taking the oil, selling it, and putting the money in an account to get Venezuela back on its feet and to help pay us for the operations, then say through the appropriations process: No money can be spent to do that.

That is within our lane.

The idea that we are going to reject the plan of transforming Venezuela that has been drafted by the Commander in Chief because you don't

agree with it means that he is not the Commander in Chief; we are. So, if a congressional enactment can veto the Constitution, then we are really off script here.

A congressional statute has to give way to the Constitution. The Constitution names the President as the Commander in Chief--only the President. The Constitution says that Congress and only Congress can declare war.

After 250 years, what have we learned?

There have been five declarations of war. They are unusual. There have been over 130 military actions without congressional authorization that have used military force to advance the national interests. That is the norm. The War Powers Act throws that into chaos.

So I look forward to future debates. President Trump has all the constitutional authority he needs to execute the game plan against Venezuela and to advance our national interests.

Again, if you don't like what he is doing, there is a constitutional process available to you, and that is to cut off funding. The other process would be impeachment. If you think he is doing something unlawful under international law, you can impeach him. Those are your two options.

So I will be voting against this idea, and I will be voting against this idea in a new form in perpetuity because I think it creates a constitutional imbalance of where the Congress, over time, becomes the Commander in Chief, not the President, and we cannot run this country having 535 Commanders in Chief.

With that, I yield the floor.

I appreciate the comments of my colleague from California and particularly appreciate that my colleague from Virginia Senator Kaine has proposed this War Powers Resolution, a resolution that reaffirms a basic principle: The decisions of war and peace belong under our Constitution to Congress, not to the President.

But on June 21, President Trump ordered strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities. There was no congressional authorization. There was no debate in this Chamber. There was no vote in this Chamber. The President made a unilateral decision that risked bringing the United States into another extended war in the Middle East.

That is not how our Founders designed our Nation through the architecture of the Constitution. In fact, each Member here swore an oath to uphold that Constitution that places the responsibility for declaring war upon this body, not upon the individual who sits in the Oval Office. To be sure, the President, as Commander in Chief, has the responsibility to protect the Nation from an imminent threat. But in this case, there was not an imminent threat.

First, according to our own intelligence, Iran was not pursuing a nuclear weapon. Second, even though Iran possessed a significant amount of 60-

percent-enriched uranium--more than the 3 percent to 5 percent that is utilized for civilian energy--it was still not enriched to the level to build a bomb. It would have had to be enriched to 90 percent. It would have had to be converted to metallic form. It would have had to be arranged with an extensive system of explosives that compress it in order to start a chain reaction. That is a very difficult engineering feat. Third, prior to the U.S. strikes, Israel's Foreign Minister said Israel's attacks had already set back Iran's nuclear weapon program for at least 2 to 3 years.

So let's be clear, the threat was not imminent. It was not a situation where there was no time for the President to observe the Constitution, to honor the Constitution, to seek an authorization for the use of military force from the Congress of the United States.

The administration, instead, acted precipitously, putting American lives at risk, including the over 40,000 U.S. troops in the region, as well as diplomats and American civilians stationed or visiting the Middle East.

Wars are easy to start, but they are often hard to end, and the consequences can be enormous. Look, for example, at the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq: more than 7,000 deaths of American men and women serving in uniform, more than 50,000 serious injuries--often life-altering injuries--to America's sons and daughters serving in uniform, more than $8 trillion of American treasure spent.

That is why the Founders said the consequences of conflict, of entering into war, are so significant they must never be entrusted to a single person, not even the person who sits in the Oval Office. That is why they wrote the Constitution, placing the responsibility for that here where it can be wrestled with; where it can be debated; where different perspectives can be brought to bear; where experts can be interviewed; and all can be taken into account in making such an important decision for our Nation.

From where we are right now, two things need to happen: First, Congress needs to reassert its constitutional authority over matters of war and peace; second, we need to double down on diplomacy to secure a lasting peace.

And a lasting peace includes at least three elements: Iran does not develop a nuclear weapon; second, Iran stops funding militias across the region; and, third, Iran's economy is freed up to prosper. Those are the three elements that need to be addressed.

Let me begin, first, by addressing in some greater detail Congress's need to reassert its constitutional authority. On ``Meet the Press'' on Sunday, Senator Lindsey Graham said:

You can't have 535 Commanders in Chief.

He is exactly right. And that is why the Founders designed the Constitution with a separation of powers. Congress has the responsibility to decide if we go to war, and then the President commands our military to go to war.

Article I gives Congress the power to declare a war and article II gives the President the power to be the Commander in Chief to execute the war. Senator Kaine's War Powers Resolution says hostilities in Iran must be explicitly authorized by Congress, but that does not, in any way, prevent the United States from defending itself from an imminent attack should that need arise.

This is a privileged resolution, meaning that we will have the opportunity to wrestle with it. And we will be voting on whether to do so later today.

This resolution is urgently needed. We are already in the throes of a slide into an authoritarian state. Our President has been ignoring the Constitution or violating the Constitution by violating the rule of law that applies to the executive branch; by ignoring or suppressing or circumventing due process, the very issue that protects all of us from an overbearing Executive. In fact, it is the defender of our freedom; third, stiff-arming the courts; and, fourth, seizing Congress's power of the purse.

And then just this week, it was reported that Trump will limit intelligence sharing with Congress, another brazen attempt to centralize powers in the executive in a strongman Presidency.

With this resolution, Senator Kaine's resolution, Congress can reassert its constitutional authority as a coequal branch of government. It can stop this President from seizing even more dangerously unaccountable power.

In addition to Congress taking this action, there is an urgent need for diplomacy in order to secure a lasting peace in the Middle East. That lasting peace includes the three elements that I mentioned: that Iran does not have the path to developing a nuclear weapon; that it stops funding militias across the region; and that Iran's economy is freed up to prosper. They can reenter international commerce.

It is already clear that diplomacy is not just essential but that it is effective. In 2015, the United States helped negotiate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, better known as the Iran nuclear deal, which blocked all paths for Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. It blocked the plutonium path; it blocked the uranium path; it blocked the covert path.

That deal was so important for global security that it involved the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and France, all working together to create that framework in partnership with Iran. And Iran accepted massive inspections and oversight from the International Atomic Energy Agency to make sure that you not only had an act of trust, but lots of acts of verification. The deal worked. Iran was not developing a nuclear weapon. Instead, they dismantled their plutonium- based Arak heavy water reactor. They agreed not to enrich uranium beyond 6.7 percent, and they didn't do so. They shipped all of their more highly enriched uranium out of the country--some 25,000 pounds--to be stored abroad.

But 3 years later, President Trump tore up that agreement. He did so over the objections of his own national security officials; over the objection of his Secretary of Defense General Jim Mattis; over the objection of his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson; over the objection of his National Security Advisor General McMaster; and over the objection of his Chief of Staff General John Kelly.

Had President Trump, in his first administration, not torn up that agreement, we would be celebrating Iran's tenth anniversary under the nuclear deal with no path to a nuclear weapon. By ripping up the Iran nuclear deal, Trump opened the pathway for Iran to enrich beyond 3.67 percent, leading to the concerns that prompted Israel to attack Iran's nuclear facilities and that led Prime Minister Netanyahu to ask President Trump to use our planes and our abilities to bomb Isfahan, Natanz, and Fordo.

To create an enduring agreement now that stops Iran from having a path to a nuclear weapon, restrictions like those that were in the Iran nuclear deal back in 2015 have to be recreated. And, in fact, we learned over the last few days how diplomats from President Trump's team have been working on this, were in conversation with Iran before Israel's attack to create such an arrangement. In fact, they continued those conversations even as bombs were dropping.

We have to succeed to put in place a permanent, detailed, enforceable plan for peace which Iran agrees to, that stops funding for militias outside Iran and blocks all those paths to a nuclear weapon.

Colleagues, we wouldn't be here today discussing this if President Trump hadn't torn up the first agreement that was working against the advice of his entire foreign affairs and security staff. That is what happens when you scoff at diplomacy--diplomacy that works, agreements that worked--and unleash events in the world that lead to circumstances that realized themselves this year in 2025.

The decision to strike Iran without authorization from Congress was wrong because there wasn't the imminent threat and, thus, there was time to go through the process of seeking authorization for the use of military force necessitated by our Constitution.

Wars are easy to start, but they are hard to end, and that is why the Founders wanted us to debate them before the American people. We must reassert Congress's congressional authority. We must double down on diplomacy to secure long-term peace. We cannot allow our servicemembers in uniform to be sent to war if we are not even willing to debate and vote on that war.

I urge my colleagues to support this resolution.

Mr. President, this is a debate worthy of the body, and I would like to give my belief about what we are doing here--my opinion.

Senator Kaine has introduced a resolution that basically requires President Trump to come to the Congress before any other military actions can be taken against the Islamic Republic of Iran. I think that would be a disaster for the country. You can only have one Commander in Chief, not 535.

Mr. President, you have been in it. You have been right close to the face of the enemy, and you, probably above all others, know what warfare is like dealing with radical Islam, and I applaud your service as a Navy SEAL.

So it says in the Constitution:

The President shall be [the] Commander in Chief of the Army

and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the

several States, when called into actual Service of the United

States.

Well, they left out the Air Force because, back then, we didn't have one.

Since the founding of this country, it has been understood that the Commander in Chief can act as the Commander in Chief to protect our Nation from threats; that he is in charge of the military. He sits atop of the--he is the civilian in charge of the military, and it is his decision to use military force.

It is Congress's decision to declare war. How many times do you think we have declared war since the founding of our Nation?

I will give you the answer: Five.

Just think about all of the military conflicts that have existed in the history of our country, and we have only declared war five times: the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War against Spain, World War I, and World War II.

So to my colleagues, if Congress has only declared war five times, does that mean all of these other military operations are illegal? No. That is ridiculous.

Because we have power to declare war--us, the Congress only--it doesn't mean the Commander in Chief can't be Commander in Chief.

This country cannot be put in a legal state of war unless the Congress decides to do that, but to suggest that means the Commander in Chief can't do anything without our approval makes all of us Commanders in Chief.

Do you think they had that in mind? Do you think they really meant for the Congress to be the Commander in Chief, not the Commander in Chief?

The logic of this is as follows: Because we have the ability to declare war, therefore, the President can't act unless we agree. You have taken his power to be Commander in Chief away.

The War Powers Act of 1973, referenced by Senator Sanders, is not worth, in my view, the paper it was written on. It was an effort by the Congress back then to limit President Nixon's involvement in the Vietnam war.

The way you do that constitutionally is that Congress has the power of the purse. If we don't like what a President is doing in terms of military engagement, we can stop the funding for that engagement.

Just think of the chaos that would ensue in this country if there were not one Commander in Chief but 535, and we had to sit down and talk among ourselves and debate as to whether or not we should go forward with the military operation in question. That would paralyze this country.

And this leak of the defense intelligence assessment tells you exactly what would happen if they brought this problem over to us to solve.

So it has been clear to me that only five times in the history of the country have we declared war, and we have had hundreds of military operations that the Founders never envisioned. The ability to declare war means the President of the United States, as Commander in Chief, cannot act unless we agree because that makes us the Commander in Chief. And that is not what they were trying to do.

They were trying to make sure the country could not go into a legal situation involving war without the body as a whole making that decision. But when it comes to how to use the military, when to use the military, we have a single person who does that. That is the Commander in Chief, and that person can be limited by Congress's ability to cut off funding for military operations they don't approve of.

So the War Powers Act, I think from its very founding, is unconstitutional, but this is a case study of the chaos that would be created if we accepted the proponents' version of this: that President Trump would have to come to the Congress as a whole before he decided to strike the next nuclear facility that maybe we don't know about, or there is some imminent threat to our troops in the region.

That is just not practical, and that is not what the Founders meant. They put a single person in charge of the military, and that was the President of the United States. They made sure that going to war was a group decision. And in this country, we have used that process five times in 250 years.

So not only did President Trump have the constitutional authority to engage in Operation Midnight Hammer; it was an incredible success.

If you look up ``obliterate'' in the dictionary, it means to destroy utterly and wipe out. These three facilities were destroyed utterly, and they were wiped out. They were obliterated.

Now that doesn't mean that the threat from Iran is over. The desire of the regime still exists, and we will have to deal with Iran down the road. But on this vote, I think, we all need to vote no because what we are doing here, if we don't watch it, is having 535 Commanders in Chief. That would paralyze this country.

But something, maybe, we can agree on very quickly: Since the attack, the Iranian regime has gone on a terror campaign against their own people. They have arrested at least 700 people for ties to Israel. Dozens of people been hanged. They were basically drug out of their houses and hanged.

``Iran turns to internal crackdown in wake of 12-day war.''

I will be doing a resolution condemning this regime's action. What they are doing is they are trying to maintain power over their people after this attack. People in Iran are getting fed up with the Ayatollah. Instead of listening to the people and changing the behavior of the regime, the regime is engaged in a terror campaign of extrajudicial killings, imprisonment, and beatings to suppress the people. And I think this body and the civilized world should condemn what is going on in Iran right now.

As to negotiations to solve the Iranian nuclear ambitions, to try to get a deal with Iran that we can all live with, count me in for that. But you have got to remember, the people you are negotiating with, as you talk to them, are killing their own people to try to keep them in control.

I have got one idea. Before we negotiate with Iran, they need to say one thing: We don't like Israel. We don't agree with Israel. But we recognize the right of the State of Israel to exist.

The policy of the Iranian regime is to destroy the State of Israel, purify Islam, and come after us, the infidels. Until they change that policy, nothing is really going to work.

So what I want to hear, before we sit down and talk to the Ayatollah and his henchmen, is that, for the first time ever since the founding of the Iranian regime, they recognize Israel's right to exist. Is that too much to ask?

Finally, this is the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. Eighty years ago this past month, the Nazis surrendered. And one of the hallmarks of the Nazi regime was to kill all the Jews. Eighty years later, we are having a debate about a regime that wants a nuclear weapon to kill all the Jews, and we are wondering what to do.

You know what we should do? We should make sure they can't kill all the Jews. We should make sure that this homicidal maniac, the Ayatollah, who is a religious Nazi, is not allowed

to get a nuclear weapon and reign havoc on the region and come after us.

It is hard to believe that 80 years later, we would be having this debate: What should we do?

To my good friend Senator Sanders, your solution will lead to World War III. You will appease evil.

World War II happened because people like Senator Sanders did not stand up to Hitler. They did not choose wisely, and they did not stop him when they could. That is exactly what is going on now.

Until this religious Nazi regime gives up their desire to destroy the State of Israel, to wreak havoc on the region, and to come after us, chanting ``Death to America,'' then we should stand up to them. I am not advocating invading Iran, but I am advocating being tough--no sanctions relief and don't reward this behavior.

Vote no to Senator Kaine's proposal. Stand up for the Constitution as it has been implemented for over 250 years. And all of us pray for the Iranian people and for our friends in Israel that better days are ahead. And these better days only come with sacrifice.

And as I speak, people in Iran are sacrificing because they just want to live free.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I rise today in support of Senator Kaine's resolution for the simple and compelling reason that it upholds our constitutional duty. Regardless of what people may think of the military's execution of its mission last weekend--and our servicemembers performed with courage, with professionalism, with extraordinary precision--or their views of its effectiveness--and I hope and pray the mission was effective--Iran is a malevolent regime, it is the paramount sponsor of terrorism in the world, and it must never be allowed to obtain the bomb.

Regardless of whether you support the President's decision to engage in preemptive strikes in the first place, regardless of whether or not you support the President generally or you do not, the Constitution charges the Congress, not the President, with the power to declare war.

Now, there may be a fog of war and a murky uncertainty concerning the battle damage assessment, but there is no ambiguity here when it comes to the Constitution. Article I, section 8 provides that ``Congress shall have [the] Power . . . To declare War''--not the President, or the President if it is not convenient to the Congress, but the Congress. And this body, for far too long, has been allergic to the responsibility it has to govern the use of military force.

Not since the very early part of this century has Congress approved any authorization for the use of military

force. Nevertheless, a great deal of military force has been, in fact, used by the United States, since then, in far-flung places in the world.

In fact, post-World War II, the war powers have been utilized by an increasingly strong Executive and an increasingly deferential and fearful legislature.

Now, during the last several weeks, it has been apparent to anyone watching that the conflict in the Middle East had the potential to draw in the United States of America--when missiles began striking Tehran and Tel Aviv; when the President of the United States, with signature bombast, began to telegraph the possibility that we would enter the fray; when countless American families were forced to consider whether their children would be the next to bear the burden and carry the sacrifices of another potentially endless war in the Middle East.

And so with those families and our servicemembers in mind, Senator Kaine introduced this resolution to ensure that the President did not risk committing the United States to yet another open-ended conflict in the region without a debate in Congress and a decision by Congress as to whether the country should go down that dangerous road.

Now, at that time, many Senators, myself included, pushed for an intelligence briefing from the administration. We had significant questions we needed answered: Had Iran made the decision to build a bomb? Had Iran begun the process of building the mechanism of a bomb? Was there an imminent threat to the United States or our forces? What were the threats to U.S. personnel and facilities in the region, should Iran respond? How might Iran and its proxies escalate and harm U.S. interests, not only in the region but here at home and in other parts of the world? How much damage could U.S. military action do to the Iranian nuclear and missile programs, and for how long would it set them back? And, most important, what was the risk that such a bombing campaign could escalate into all-out war?

Days passed, no briefings. Even after last Saturday's strikes, still no briefing. Not until yesterday did the administration come to Congress to answer the most basic of questions, and only after suggesting, it was reported, that they would potentially choke off further information to the Congress.

The Constitution demands otherwise. The Founders split the government's wartime powers, just as they divided responsibilities for so many other things. It is Congress which declares a war, which raises an army and a navy and pays for the financial cost of defense and war.

And keep in mind that the need for congressional approval of warmaking was not hypothetical to the Founders. The United States had just fought a war against a King, and the Founders did not want to put the power to start another war in the hands of any single person.

The Framers put their thinking on parchment, and in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, in the summer of 1789, James Madison reflected on how they had approached this question of war power, which was the subject of much debate in Philadelphia at the Constitutional Convention. He said:

We have already given, in one example, [an] effectual check

to the Dog of war, by transferring the power of letting him

loose from the Executive to the Legislative body, from those

who are to spend to those who are to pay.

``From those who are to spend to those who are to pay''--that is because a decision as consequential as entering into war requires informed debate and buy-in from the people's representatives and the public, from us here in the Senate and from our colleagues in the House, because we need to weigh the benefits and the risks for our constituents and for the country as a whole, because a decision like this one should be insulated from partisan politics and not made with haste or with blinders on.

There are, perhaps, Senators in this body who will say: This debate is no longer needed. The mission is over. Iran has backed down. A lasting cease-fire is in place. The threat has passed.

And I would say to them: I don't know that to be true, and neither do you.

And on behalf of all those who could and would pay, we should not allow this great and solemn power to make war to be usurped any longer. The only way for us to know whether the United States might be drawn into a broader conflict is if we exercise our authority to prevent it or to determine that the Congress wants to affirmatively provide a President with the authorization to use force.

So I am a yes on this resolution.

And if the Senate votes to bring this resolution before the body, which I hope it will see the wisdom of doing, I will move an amendment that I have filed with Senators Kim and Kaine that I would hope would receive all of our support. Our amendment makes clear what is implicit in Senator Kaine's resolution already, and that is that terminating the use of U.S. Armed Forces against Iran does not affect the ability of the United States to defend itself, to share intelligence with Israel or our other partner nations, or to assist them in taking defensive measures to protect themselves from an attack by Iran or its proxies.

Our intent in this amendment is to make it crystal clear that calling up and passing this resolution would in no way restrict the United States' ability to defend itself or our partners.

And with that question settled, we should be able to turn to the real need for this debate: Should this Congress continue to abdicate our constitutional duty to an administration that, at every turn--at every turn--has deemed us irrelevant; an administration that, for too long, deferred its obligation to brief Congress and has reportedly threatened to take steps to choke off the amount of information we have and need to assess the impact and the consequences of unilateral military action; an administration that openly disdains and threatens a free press, ignoring the fact that our fourth estate exists to ask questions for the people, even if those questions are uncomfortable--especially when those questions are uncomfortable--and shine a light on the places where tyranny and despotism can grow and foster and fester?

Because here is the bottom line: Article I, section 8 says that ``the Congress shall have [the] Power . . . To declare War.''

And every American should know that Congress is not giving up on its most basic constitutional right to debate and determine whether U.S. forces undertake further operations--offensive operations--against the Iranian regime or any other.

This resolution, with my amendment, would give Senators confidence that a vote on that question will in no way put American troops or our allies at increased risk, and the underlying resolution would give the American people the confidence of knowing that they will not be dragged into another war without their consent.

There must be a check on the dogs of war. There must be a voice for those who will pay the costs of going to war, and the Senate must be that voice.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, in a 1793 letter to William Cabell, James Madison said this:

In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found

than in the clause which confides the question of war or

peace to the legislature, and not to the executive

department.

A few years later, in another letter, this time to Thomas Jefferson as part of their famous correspondence, Madison expounded on that very simple superlative, naming the war powers clause in the Constitution as the most important. He said:

The constitution supposes what the History of all

Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of

power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has

accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in

the Legislature.

Our Founding Fathers didn't get everything right. They didn't see ahead of time that this Chamber would be divided in two: Republicans on one side, Democrats on the other side. But they knew, having watched the course of human history, that Executives--in their day, mostly all Monarchs and Kings--had all sorts of reasons to drag their Nation into war. Power often came from war, the funding that could be raised for war, the loyalty commanded by war, the glory that occasionally came to the leader, the ruler, through war and through conquest.

There was great risk in war, but there was also great reward in war. And there was far too much of it in the era in which our Constitution was being formed.

The purpose of the Founders was to give the American people a voice in government--a revolutionary idea at the time--but it was also to order our government in a way that war would become less likely, would become less frequent. They imagined a world--this new America--in which peace would be the rule, not war, as it was at the time for the citizens of Europe who lived under the rule of Kings prone to war, incentivized to war, as James Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson.

So this part of the Constitution, with more wisdom in it than any other part of the Constitution, according to James Madison, is this section of our Founding document that says it is not up to the ruler; it is not up to the executive branch; it is up to the branch of government most connected to the people to decide whether we go to war; to require that there be a debate, a conversation that involves everyone in this Nation; that requires, that necessitates, a collective decision as to whether to put the brave soldiers of this country and the collective security of the Nation at risk.

So we are here today because we still find wisdom in that clause of the Constitution. We still see great risk in moving into a world, which we are quickly moving to, in which that clause that James Madison named as the supreme clause of the Constitution, is a dead letter--is a dead letter.

That is the risk because there are very few wars that are planned so far in advance that there is time to come and have a monthlong debate. Wars happen quickly, and they necessitate quick action, according to the Constitution.

Yes, we have always accepted that there has to be an exception--but a limited exception--to that supreme clause in the Constitution. If there is an imminent attack against the United States, of course--of course-- the people of the United States want the ability of the President of the United States to respond to that imminent attack. But in the absence of an imminent attack, there is no exception. There is no ability to go around Congress.

In the case of the hostilities against Iran that the President began last weekend, there was no imminent threat against the United States. There was no Army marching in this Nation. There was no nuclear bomb that even existed that could be dropped on the United States or our soldiers in the region.

So it was required--it is required under the Constitution--that the President come to Congress. If the President doesn't need to come to Congress to attack another Nation preemptively, preventively, absent an imminent threat, then that provision of the Constitution is dead letter. Period. Stop. And the most important piece of this document, according to our most revered Founding Father, is no longer operational.

And if we lurch into a world in which any Executive can send us to war without the participation of the American people, then we are in a world that our Founding Fathers could never have imagined.

So I am very glad to be on the floor today, as a big fan of the wisdom of our Founders, to support Senator Kaine's resolution. I appreciate his consistency in bringing this question before us.

I don't want to live in a world in which the greatest question that this country could envision, whether or not we send our brave men and women to fight on our behalf, is not a question that doesn't involve the collective conversation of this body and of the people of this Nation.

I think it is an important resolution to debate here, and I hope my colleagues will support it.

It doesn't really have to do with whether you think there is wisdom in this action or not, whether you think the President was right or wrong; this is an opportunity for us to stand up for our responsibility under the Constitution to be a coequal branch in setting foreign policy.

I have my thoughts on the wisdom of this action. I have stated that I think it is very dangerous when the President of the United States deliberately misleads the country about the efficacy of our military operations overseas or the threats presented to this country. It is unforgiveable anytime a President doesn't tell the truth, but it is especially unforgiveable when the President doesn't tell the truth about national security intelligence.

I know my colleagues here come to different conclusions, but if the reporting is correct that Iran, even after these strikes, still has centrifuges and still has enriched uranium and still has scientists who know how to put those things together, then it just is not true that the program has been obliterated. That is a program that can be reconstituted in a relatively short amount of time because, of course, knowledge is not able to be destroyed by bombs.

The only way that you are going to make this country and this world safe from Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions--and they have them--is diplomacy. I hope that diplomacy got easier because of these strikes, but I don't think they did. I don't think diplomacy got closer because of these strikes and whatever follow-on strikes may come as President Trump is currently threatening. So if diplomacy is the only path, if you can't bomb out of existence knowledge, then I don't think this is a very good week for American national security.

But I come to a different conclusion than many of my Republican colleagues do, even some of my Democratic colleagues. But Senator Kaine's resolution is so important because that is the debate that we should be having. That is the argument that we should be having in public.

That debate over the wisdom of dropping bombs in a far-off land that could put our troops at risk, that could drag us into a war, that is not a debate that the Founding Fathers thought should take place behind closed doors at the Department of Defense, at the CIA, and the White House. That is actually the debate that they thought that this body should have--the U.S. Senate--that the House of Representatives should have, and that is the chance that we have today: to bring that debate out of the shadows, out of the secret, to the place where the Founding Fathers thought it should exist.

That is why I urge my colleagues to support Senator Kaine's resolution.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, everyone knows that our country faces enormous crises. We have a healthcare system that is broken and is wildly expensive. We have a housing crisis in which millions of people are spending far more than they can afford to put a roof over their heads. We have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on Earth and a childcare system which is dysfunctional. Millions of our kids cannot afford to go to college or are leaving school deeply in debt, and over 20 percent of our seniors are trying to get by on $15,000 a year or less. And oh, by the way, we have an existential threat in climate change, which might very well make the planet uninhabitable for future generations. These are just a few of the crises that Congress and the President should be addressing.

In the midst of all of that, going to war against Iran and supporting Israel's unprovoked attacks against that country is not something that we should be doing. We do not need another unnecessary and costly war. We have had enough of them.

In 1964, Congress voted, with little debate, for a Gulf of Tonkin Resolution giving President Johnson the authority to escalate American military involvement in Vietnam. As a result, the United States expanded its presence in that country, and we were dragged fully into Vietnam's civil war. Eventually, some 2.7 million Americans served in Vietnam; and more than 58,000 died, and over 300,000 were wounded. The Vietnam war devastated an entire generation; it killed millions of Vietnamese; and it destabilized the region. It cost U.S. taxpayers hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars.

The Vietnam war was based on a series of lies. Years later, the U.S. Government concluded that the supposed attacks that prompted the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution did not happen as reported. The so-called domino theory, the ideological foundation of that war, was bogus. That was a war that never should have been fought.

In 2002, as a new Member of Congress, I can recall vividly how politicians and the media relentlessly beat the drum about the need to go to war against Iraq and its leader Saddam Hussein. Over and over again, we were told that Iraq was building weapons of mass destruction and that if we did not act quickly, nuclear weapons would be falling on America. Among those pushing for war in Iraq in 2002 were none other than Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who testified to Congress:

There is no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking . .

. nuclear weapons. If you take out . . . Saddam's regime, I

guarantee you that it will have enormous positive

reverberations.

That was Netanyahu in 2002.

The U.S. Congress, against my vote, invaded Iraq and became involved in a brutal sectarian war that lasted for almost a decade. No weapons of mass destruction were ever found. That war was based on a lie, a lie that cost us 4,500 brave young Americans, 32,000 wounded, and $3 trillion in taxpayer dollars. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis also died.

War often has awful and unintended consequences. It should only be considered as a last resort. We should not go to war against Iran.

First, let me state the obvious. Trump's attack against Iran is unconstitutional. Congress, alone, has the authority to take this country into war, not the President. Trump does not have that authority.

Second, Iran did not pose an imminent military threat to the United States that would justify a preemptive attack. Just a few months ago, Trump's own Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, testified to Congress that the American intelligence community ``continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons programs he suspended in 2003''--from Tulsi Gabbard.

Trump dismissed that finding, saying:

Well then, my intelligence community is wrong.

Really? On what basis does he think that the entire U.S. intelligence community is wrong?

Third, diplomacy offers a better path to durably address Iran's nuclear activities than a military attack. This was proven in 2015, when the United States and world powers made an agreement that strictly limited Iran's nuclear activities and put in place blanket inspections. That agreement was working, but Trump pulled out of that deal in 2018, and Iran restarted its activities.

To his credit, Trump returned to diplomacy this year, and U.S. officials held five rounds of talks with Iran to address this issue. A sixth round of talks was scheduled for June 15, but Israel derailed those talks with a surprise attack and, in the process, assassinated the Iranian official overseeing those negotiations.

Fourth, Binyamin Netanyahu should not be dictating U.S. foreign and military policy. Trump's attack on Iran would not have occurred if Israel had not launched an illegal, unprovoked, surprise attack on Iran on June 13, sabotaging U.S. diplomatic efforts.

If the people of Israel support Netanyahu's decision to start a war with Iran, that is their business. That is their war. The United States should not be part of it.

Fifth, the United States should not be allied with the Netanyahu government in any military effort. Netanyahu is a war criminal indicted by the International Criminal Court for starving and killing civilians in Gaza. His government is systematically destroying the Palestinian people, killing over 55,000 and wounding nearly 130,000--two-thirds of whom are women and children.

Israel has destroyed the entire physical infrastructure of Gaza-- housing, hospitals, schools, and water systems--and continues to prevent the delivery of humanitarian aid to starving civilians in violation of U.S. and international law.

Sixth, this war is about more than Israel and Iran. It is about the very concept of international law and preventing a world where every dispute is settled with force. Whatever you think of the brutal, authoritarian, and terrorist-supporting Iranian regime, Netanyahu's surprise attack was a clear violation of international law and the U.N. Charter.

The world appropriately condemned Russia for its unprovoked attack against Ukraine. The world appropriately condemned Hamas for their unprovoked terrorist attack against Israel. Israel should be condemned for its unprovoked attack against Iran, and the United States should not be part of that illegal action.

Finally, wars are expensive. We need funding to address the healthcare crisis, the childcare crisis, the education crisis, and many other crises our people face every day. We should be investing our resources in improving life for

the American people, not wasting money on illegal and unnecessary wars.

Last year alone, the United States provided $22 billion in military aid to Israel. Enough is enough. It is beyond absurd that we continue to finance Israel's wars, while neglecting the needs of our own people.

Mr. President, for all of these reasons, I strongly support Senator Kaine's War Powers Resolution to make clear that only Congress has the power to declare war; that there is no legal basis for war with Iran; and that the American people do not want more unnecessary costly wars.