A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency relating to "Air Plan Approval; South Dakota; Regional Haze Plan for the Second Implementation Period".

Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator from Maryland for his wise words. I was glad to be here for the end of his remarks because he is right about this moment that we are facing.

Donald Trump has painted himself as the peace President since 2016, promising that ``we will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about.''

In 2024, he said that ``I'm not going to start wars, I'm going to stop wars.''

One year into Donald Trump's second term, we know how false those promises were. Just in the last 12 months, President Trump has ordered military action against seven countries, blown up alleged drug boats in the Caribbean without any authorization, deployed Federal troops to at least 10 cities in the United States of America, all without congressional authorization.

Now, he has bombed and invaded Venezuela to capture its dictator, Nicolas Maduro. I have said over and over and over again, for years, how illegitimate Maduro was as President of Venezuela, and that is not up for debate.

And by the way, it is also not up for debate what an excellent job the U.S. military did in its effort to get him out of there. It was extraordinary to learn exactly what they went through to get there. They did their job. They did their job. They did it excellently.

And now Congress has the responsibility to do our job here. As we meet here today, President Trump is blockading Venezuela's ports from exporting oil while threatening to collapse their economy and also to threaten future military strikes against the country if they don't comply with his will.

Despite what the President claimed on the campaign trail, war and threats of future wars with Colombia, with Cuba, with Mexico, and even our NATO ally Denmark, when it comes to Greenland, are now animating features of his foreign policy.

The President's team claims their operation to oust Maduro was a ``law enforcement'' operation about drugs. That is the legal pretext for the action that they have led, but Maduro is now in jail in New York City and 15,000 U.S. troops and an American armada are still hovering off Venezuela's coast.

We already captured Maduro. He is in jail. So what are our troops doing down there? Clearly, this is not about law enforcement. This is not about democracy. No, as my colleague from Maryland was saying, this is about oil. The President has made that painfully clear.

President Trump mentioned oil 20 times in his January 3 press conference after Maduro was captured. He complained that Venezuela ``stole'' oil from the United States, and we must ``run'' the country to take the oil back.

But the United States doesn't need the oil. Even U.S. oil companies didn't want this invasion, nor did these U.S. companies ever own oil or own land in Venezuela. The Venezuelan Government definitely nationalized its oil industry in the seventies. That is true. From that point forward--by the way, that was when I was about 6. I am so old.

But that did happen in the seventies when I was about 6. From that point forward, Venezuela was certainly not an easy place to do business. I don't think anybody here would say that, but American companies stayed, stayed

there despite the nationalization and lack of full compensation they should have had that was ordered by international courts.

In fact, American companies never pressed for higher compensation during that initial nationalization. And I would say failing to reimburse American companies is surely outrageous, but a decades-old legal dispute over a compensation is not a legitimate justification for the United States to go to war. And very few Americans--very few Americans--would support putting boots on the ground to secure Venezuela's oil.

It would be shockingly irresponsible for the President to send American troops to ``run'' Venezuela as he promised this weekend, seemingly, with the sole goal of accessing that country's oil.

Bolivia, Ecuador, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Mexico, Angola, Peru, and countless other countries have nationalized some American oil assets in the 21st and 20th centuries. All of them took advantage of American companies.

Would the Trump administration have us invade and occupy and govern all these countries to reverse that history? Would the President wield our military as tax-funded security for the expansion of American oil giants in these markets?

Remarkably, incredibly, this seems to be his plan. President Trump has floated sending American troops to secure U.S. companies to rebuild Venezuela's oil infrastructure. He has even said the U.S. Government could subsidize these oil companies. Estimates suggest it will cost a staggering $110 billion to bring Venezuela's oil and gas infrastructure back to peak production levels and take at least a decade.

I, for one, can think of a lot better uses for that money. And instead of ``no new wars,'' this President has plunged us into a quagmire--paid for by the American taxpayer--seemingly, with the primary goal of giving expensive handouts with respect to oil.

Why should the American people foot the bill for this misadventure? Why should our tax dollars fund private interests in Venezuela? Why should American troops risk their lives for any of this? Perhaps the greatest irony is that Chevron, America's only remaining major oil company in Venezuela, was not even asking for any of this to happen. Instead they simply asked the Trump administration, as they had the Biden administration, to allow their continued operation in Venezuela, which President Trump had restricted during his first term.

Other American oil firms weren't asking for this either. Few have much desire to go back into Venezuela, which helps explain why Chevron and other American companies have no plans--no plans--to spend, as the President says, ``billions and billions of dollars'' rebuilding Venezuela's oil industry as the President has declared.

Despite the President's promises to not start new wars nor pursue regime change operations abroad, today there are 15,000 brave U.S. troops and an American armada off of Venezuela's coast all without congressional authorization. And the President is threatening more attacks on more countries, including every time you turn the TV on, it is another country: Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, and Greenland, part of Denmark, a NATO ally.

Congress has not authorized any of these dangerous potential operations which risk destroying alliances and relationships that have long kept the American people safe. The Trump administration, however, continues to trample on our Constitution with unauthorized military actions while threatening others, weakening U.S. democracy, and making the world more dangerous in the process.

Congress cannot allow this to stand. I congratulate the Senator from Virginia for his leadership to make sure the American people's voices are heard in this moment, on this floor, in this Chamber. We must reassert our role to prevent the President from his continued irresponsible conduct.

And I think it is really important for us, as I have heard the Senator from Virginia say--it is critically important for us to hold public oversight hearings in which the administration explains to the American people what they plan to do with the thousands of U.S. troops off Venezuela's coast, with their plan to ``run'' Venezuela, and with the regime in Caracas over which they now claim to have control.

The unusual thing about where we are right now is this is not some after-action report where kinetic activities is already done and now Congress is complaining that it hasn't been brought into the loop. Fifteen thousand troops are off the coast of Venezuela today. The administration should be here today explaining to the American people what the plan is for those troops.

And if it is, in fact, to secure oil assets for the United States of America in Venezuela, which I don't believe the American people will support, I know the American people will never support putting boots on the ground. The President said I don't mind using the words ``boots on the ground.'' I think the American people will mind it.

With so many troops and assets still in the region, this is the opportunity for Congress to help determine what our path forward is going to be in our backyard, right here in this hemisphere.

The American people did not vote to send U.S. troops on President Trump's project to Venezuela, but I don't think they voted to dominate the Western Hemisphere either, which is what President Trump says his overall mission is.

And as my colleague from Maryland said, he is willing to twist the Monroe Doctrine. He is not even following it. He is twisting the Monroe Doctrine, which the United States actually used to keep colonial powers out of our hemisphere, to justify his own colonial intentions to exploit Venezuelan oil.

That is a complete inversion of what the Monroe Doctrine is. So I guess the President has rightly amended it to call it the ``Donroe'' version of the Monroe Doctrine. But in any case, it is gunboat diplomacy, a 19th century foreign policy we have not seen on this scale since President McKinley was the President of the United States. And it will normalize a world in which ``might means right,'' as the White House is saying today, doing away with the rules-based international order that we helped build, that has served the United States so well since World War II.

All of this would seem to be part of the President's embrace of a ``spheres of influence'' arrangement with China and with Russia. The President seemed totally fine with allowing China to dominate Asia and Russia to dominate Europe, as long as they let us dominate the Western Hemisphere. That is a 19th century idea if there ever was a 19th century idea.

He clearly sees little reason to compete or constrain them as demonstrated by his willingness to accept the trade deal with China's Xi Jinping that overwhelmingly--overwhelmingly--favored Beijing. He was giving Xi Jinping stuff that he didn't even ask for the minute he was worried that somehow we were going to get cut off from his critical minerals.

But as an unrestrained Chinese Middle Kingdom will inevitably expand outward, as will Russia with its imperial design, history shows us the result will be a global conflict when these ambitions collide, as they inevitably will, a global conflict that ultimately will implicate the United States and put America in danger.

This begins to show you how out of the mainstream this President's view of the world is. His constant abandonment of basic principles of international law and order are, again, going to eventually reverberate against America's national interests. The only question is when.

Indeed, the kind of ``spheres of influence'' arrangement on which the President seems to be so obsessed or focused is exactly the arrangement that produced two world wars. It is exactly why, after World War II, the United States and our allies established the rules-based order to peacefully resolve conflicts, regulate global trade, and ultimately ensure rules-based international exchange. That order was never perfect.

And the United States often undermined it with our own hubris, particularly the invasion of Iraq--which I opposed. And we need to learn from our own mistakes, including by avoiding reckless new wars like the one President Trump has launched.

Nevertheless, the postwar order that prevented war between the great powers, among the great powers, and for

all its flaws, it largely kept the American people safe. And criticizing that order seems pretty easy, given its imperfections. But the critic's task becomes harder once they are forced to compare it with what came before, the anarchy that preceded the Second World War and what China and Russia offer for the future of this world.

This is what President Trump risks with his 19th century foreign policy, with his actions in Venezuela, his lawless strikes across the Caribbean and Pacific, his threats to invade Colombia, Cuba, Greenland, and Mexico. These actions and threats will have serious implications for U.S. national security today and tomorrow.

In the case of Greenland, the President's threats risk the unity of NATO, our most vital alliance, the most successful alliance in world history. They risk setting precedent for authoritarian regimes all over this world to intervene militarily under the guise of going after leaders accused of criminal conduct or simply to access valuable natural resources or critical technologies under their control.

Donald Trump, President Trump, says he wants to dominate ``our hemisphere,'' he calls it. Surely, China's Xi Jinping wants to dominate what he would describe as his region in Asia, and Vladimir Putin would like to dominate what he sees as his region in Eurasia. President Trump's recklessness risks normalizing such imperial aggression, putting us on a pathway toward a more dangerous world in which ``might means right'' and the rule of law is abandoned.

Colorado cannot allow this President to create such a world for our children, which is why we need to continue to fight on a bipartisan basis when possible to prevent another forever war in Venezuela or beyond and to constrain the President's dangerous, dangerous ambition because our country deserves better than this administration's recklessness and our children surely do as well.

Thank you for allowing me to speak here today, and I hope this will be a moment when we come together and fulfill the demands that our Constitution requires of the people fortunate enough to serve in this body.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator from Virginia for leading this effort. There is likely no issue more important that confronts us as a nation, as a people, as a Congress, than whether or not to send our young men and women to war.

I take a backseat to no one in my disdain and loathing of state- sponsored socialism. In fact, I wrote a book, ``The Case Against Socialism,'' describing the historic link between socialism and state- sponsored violence.

I wish the people of Venezuela well and sincerely hope that they will not repeat the mistake of electing socialists that have plagued the nation since the 1970s.

Whether or not socialism is evil, however, is not the debate today. The debate today is about one question and one question only: Does the Constitution allow one man or one woman to take the Nation to war without the approval of Congress? Full stop.

That question is bigger than regime change in Venezuela, bigger than the claims that the ends justify the means, bigger even than the depredations and evils that multiple socialist autocrats have perpetrated upon the once great country of Venezuela.

Even those who celebrate the demise of the socialist, authoritarian regime in Venezuela, as I do, should give pause to granting the power to initiate war to one man. The power to initiate war is so vast a power that it must be confined by checks and balances.

The debate today would not be happening if our leaders read and understood the Federalist Papers. The constitutional power to initiate war is placed squarely on the shoulders of Congress.

Current congressional leaders squirm and would like to shift the burden of initiating the war to the President. Less than courageous Members of Congress fall all over themselves to avoid taking responsibility to avoid the momentous vote of declaring war.

But make no mistake, bombing another nation's capital and removing their President is an act of war, plain and simple. No provision in the Constitution provides such power to the Presidency.

No Supreme Court has allowed the Congress to abdicate its role in the decisions of war and peace, and no Congressman of any self-respect will argue otherwise.

Our leaders debated fully whether or not to grant this power to the President. To a man, from Jefferson to Hamilton, the spectrum of our Founding Fathers, they all agreed with the words that Madison wrote that the executive is the branch most prone to war, and, therefore, the Constitution, with studied care, vested that power--vested the power to declare war in the legislature.

Founding-era arguments in support of ratifying the Constitution demonstrate that our government does not entrust the decision to go to war to just one person. At the Constitutional Convention, Charles Pinckney argued that uniting the war powers under a single Executive would grant to the President monarchical powers.

It would make him like a King. They did not want a King. They were tired of the endless wars of Europe. They took that power and placed it with the people's representatives. They didn't want to make it easy to go to war. They wanted to make it hard to go to war.

Some will argue--they will say that Congress is so feckless. They will never declare war.

Well, guess what, when we have been attacked, we have been virtually unanimous. When we were attacked on 9/11, the vote was virtually unanimous to go after the people who attacked us. When we were attacked at Pearl Harbor, once again, the vote was virtually unanimous to go to war.

James Wilson, one of the Founders, assured Americans at the Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention that the proposed Constitution would not allow one man or even one body of men to initiate hostilities.

In Federalist 69, Alexander Hamilton stated the Constitution gave the Presidency fewer war powers than those of the British Monarch and that the American President would be restricted to conducting the operations of the Armies and Navy. In other words, the Constitution, the declaration of war, that power would remain with the legislature. The execution of the war--how many troops are stationed here; how many battleships are stationed here--that would be the prerogative of the President.

The beginning of the war, the initiation of the war, the declaration of the war would reside with the people and their representatives to make it less likely that we go to war.

The founding generation was largely united in the opinion that the American President would not be endowed with the monarchial powers to initiate war unilaterally. These Founders were not just engaged in a sales pitch; they were accurately representing the Constitutional Convention's decision on how to divide the war powers. Initiation, declaration of war, would be the prerogative of Congress; execution, fighting the war, would be the prerogative of the President.

An early draft of the Constitution gave Congress the power to ``make war'' rather than to ``declare war.'' This was debated, and during the debate over this, South Carolina's Pierce Butler rose to defend the proposition that the new American Government should vest the war-making powers with the President.

So this one man from South Carolina rose and said, not only should the President execute the war, he should initiate the war also.

But others stood up. Elbridge Gerry, a delegate from Massachusetts, was so aghast by Butler's suggestion that he rose to say that he ``never expected to hear in a republic a motion to empower the Executive alone to declare war.''

And in response to Butler's proposal to vest all the war powers with the President, Gerry joined with James Madison to successfully propose amending the draft of the Constitution to give Congress the power to ``declare war.'' They specified that Congress would have the power to initiate or declare war, but the execution of a war would be the President's power.

But they wanted to make sure that the President would be able to defend the country against foreign attack without awaiting congressional action.

This comes up all the time about: What if we are being attacked? What if it is an emergency? Can the President act without Congress?

Of course, he can. No one has disputed that. Military action in defense from another military attack has always been the prerogative of the President.

People say: Well, this had to be a secret.

Well, guess what. It was no secret that we had an entire armada lined up outside and across the coast from Venezuela. They knew we were there. They knew it was a possibility that we were coming in. Had we voted to declare war, yes, they might have been chastened even more. They might have even decided to negotiate before, had the entire Congress said: We are declaring war.

So in some ways, a declaration of war actually is more potent if you are trying to effect diplomacy. But, instead, we didn't vote. People said: Oh, they wouldn't be surprised.

If we had voted to declare war, the President still doesn't have to divulge the time or place of the war. Those secrets can still exist.

And, in fact, it is even more justified for the President not to tell us anything about the attack until afterward, if we have already given him permission to initiate a war.

And people say: Oh, this is just a technicality. Why should we care?

Well, if you have sons or daughters, you should care, because if we have unlimited war, if we have no limitations on the war-making power of one person, what happens when you get someone who will run amok with war?

I am not even talking about this President. I am talking about ``what if.''

That is why the rules are in place. The rules are in place to prevent a President, at one point in time, from running amok and having millions of our soldiers strewn around the world.

Does anybody remember the Battle of the Somme? A million soldiers died over an 18-day period in World War I. Now, that war was authorized, and it was still awful. But can you imagine a million soldiers dying without a declaration?

And people say: Well, what are you talking about? They are already gone. No one is in Venezuela.

What we are talking about is taking a country to war. We aren't just talking about Venezuela. We are talking about the power of a President to have a million soldiers die in an 18-day war.

People say: We are not talking about that.

Then we would declare war. You have to declare war at the beginning.

And then people say: Well, it is not a war. All it was was an arrest warrant. It was just a drug crime.

Oh, he was guilty of possessing machineguns. That sounds like that is being made up as humor.

In 1934, we passed a law in our country saying you can't own machineguns. It is an American law. Does anybody in their right mind-- does any sane individual who can read in our country--believe that it applies to the security forces of a foreign dictator or a foreign President; that if their guards have machineguns, they are guilty of breaching a 1934 U.S. law? What kind of world would we live in if we could accuse people around the world and simply go arrest them and send the military to quiet down all of their defense systems so we could arrest them?

We had intelligence reports in our country that reported that, per our intelligence, the leader of Saudi Arabia was guilty of or was involved with killing an American journalist. What if a President decided they wanted to arrest him? Can they do that without a congressional vote or permission?

There are arguments that the current President of Brazil has unfairly imprisoned the previous President of Brazil. Now, you can have an argument on both sides. You can listen to the facts, but would you want your President to be allowed to go to Brazil, free the former President, and put the current President in jail without a vote of your representatives? What kind of world would that be? Who could be for that?

The Constitution empowers the President to defend the country against sudden attacks initiated by any foreign power. The initiation of hostilities by the United States that requires deliberation and authorization must be voted upon in Congress.

Our Founders' intent was not a close call open to equivocation. Pundits argue that Presidents have been ignoring this restriction for decades. That is true. But that is not an argument. That is just an excuse, and a lame one at that.

The Constitution is clear: Only Congress can declare war. The power to declare war was too important to be left to the competence of one man. As Jefferson wrote, ``in questions of power then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.''

See, the Constitution isn't chains on the people; it is chains on your representatives so they don't usurp the power, so your representatives don't take you to war without careful deliberation.

Our Founding Fathers were explicit, and yet they still worried that a branch of government might resist the chains of the Constitution. So in pondering how they would enforce these checks and balances, they took to heart Montesquieu's maxim that if the powers of the Executive and the legislature, if they are combined--if there is no difference between the legislature and the Executive, if they are combined together--there can be no liberty. Those are strong words. They felt liberty would be endangered or imperiled if all the power resided in one person.

Madison wrote that by dividing the powers, by separating the powers within the Constitution, within the branches of government, that would pit ``ambition against ambition.'' The ambitions of a President to usurp power would be pitted against the natural ambitions of the legislature to keep power. The natural allure of power would be checked by each branch jealously guarding the prerogative of power.

Who among the Framers would have ever guessed or conceived of a time when Congress would lack any ambition--any ambition at all? Who would have predicted a time when Congress would be so feckless as to simply and obediently abandon all pretense of responsibility and any semblance of duty so as to cede the war power so completely to the President?

It is as if a magical dust of soma has descended through the ventilation systems of the congressional office buildings. Vague faces, permanent smiles, and obedient applause indicate the degree that the majority party has lost its grip and become eunuchs in the thrall of Presidential domination.

A President is never truly checked by the minority party, other than through elections. Meaningful checks and balances require the President's party to stand up and resist unconstitutional usurpations of power. Until that happens, the dangerous precedent of unlimited war- making power will continue to be abused by Presidents of both parties.

I recommend a ``yes'' vote on this resolution.

Mr. President, I come down to the floor in support of the resolution, but I am hoping to use my few minutes to step back from the dizzying torrent of news that we have been delivered, often contradicting sources of news from the President and his advisers, and just ask some basic questions about the wisdom of this extraordinary military endeavor and the administration's future plans in Venezuela.

I think the basic question that people are asking in my State--and, I imagine, the same is true all over the country--is, Why did we invade Venezuela? Why is our entire national conversation today seized by this question of Venezuela? Why does Senator Kaine have to come to the floor and offer a very simple resolution to clarify that the President doesn't have the authority, unilaterally, to take military action overseas without the consent of the people? Because for people in Connecticut, they haven't been spending a lot of time, over the last 12 months, thinking or talking about Venezuela. Venezuela isn't terribly relevant for the people I represent, who are worried about an economy that seems to be stagnant; healthcare premiums that are doubling, tripling for many people in my State; prices that are going up on all the stuff that you need to afford to live. And, all of a sudden, the President is talking only about Venezuela.

So why did we invade Venezuela? Why are we still talking about Venezuela?

Well, let's rule out the reasons we know don't hold water. It is not because Venezuela presents a security threat to the United States.

There was a reason we went into Afghanistan. However badly that occupation ended, there was a reason we went into Afghanistan. They were harboring a terrorist group that had attacked the United States.

Venezuela is not harboring any nonstate actors that have plans to attack the United States. The Venezuelan Government is not a security threat to the United States of America. So you can cross off that reason. It is not because Venezuela is a security threat to the United States, and everybody basically understands and knows that.

Now, the administration spent a lot of time talking about drugs. Their initial forays with respect to military intervention in and around Venezuela were targeting these boats that they

claimed were carrying drugs. And, you know, that makes a little bit more sense to the American people because there are thousands of Americans that are dying every year due to overdose.

But those overdoses, as people know, are mainly from a drug called fentanyl. Well, Venezuela doesn't produce any fentanyl. What Venezuela produces and ships is cocaine.

Now, cocaine can kill you. But that cocaine isn't even coming to the United States. Reports are that 90 percent of that cocaine is going to Europe.

So to the extent we were targeting drug boats off the coast of Venezuela, to the extent that any of the rationale for the action against Maduro had to do with the drug trade, that drug trade doesn't really have anything to do with the American epidemic of overdoses. That will continue unabated, no matter what we are doing in Venezuela.

And, then, it doesn't have anything to do, apparently, with the restoration of democracy in Venezuela or the best interests of the people of Venezuela, because immediately after the action was taken against Maduro, the Trump administration lined up behind Maduro's second in command, who is, as we speak, ramping up the repression of political speech and political activities in Venezuela. All the bad actors in the Maduro regime, with the exception of Maduro and his wife, are still there, running a kleptocracy, stealing from the Venezuelan people, shipping drugs out of the country, while continuing to destroy the Venezuelan people's ability to protest.

So this doesn't have to do with a security threat to the United States. It doesn't have to do with the flow of drugs to the United States. It doesn't have to do with restoring democracy inside Venezuela.

And so, in those moments and days after the invasion of Venezuela, we were left to wonder: What is it all about?

And Donald Trump basically told you. I mean, he did tell you. He said it was about oil. He said that he wants access to Venezuela's oil. He wants the companies that are close to him to have access to Venezuelan oil.

Remember, there was this meeting in Florida in which the oil companies came down to see him during the 2024 campaign, and they told him--this is a report. This is not an allegation. This is a mainstream media report. The oil companies said they would give him a billion dollars for his campaign in exchange for favorable treatment when he became President.

Now, he has already given them a lot of favorable treatment, but, boy, this would be a coup--the oil industry having full access to the world's largest petroleum reserves.

But, today, this morning, in our briefing, we did learn that there is another objective.

Yes, Trump wants control of the oil for his friends. But today in our briefing--and also in public remarks so there is no issue with me sharing this with you--the administration made clear that there is another purpose for seizing the oil, and that is nation building.

This is the business we thought we were getting out of. Donald Trump promised the country that he wasn't going to repeat the mistakes that we made in the past in which we tried to impose our will on a foreign country through military intervention or the threat of military intervention. But what they are proposing to do is exactly that.

It comes in a slightly different form than what we did in Afghanistan and Iraq, but it is from the same playbook. Here is their plan: They are going to seize control of Venezuelan oil under the threat of gunpoint, and then they are going to use that oil as leverage to micromanage the Government and economy of Venezuela. Let me say it again: We are going to seize Venezuelan oil by gunpoint. We are going to use control of that oil to micromanage the country.

That is nation building. That is nation building.

And as much as it should worry you that there is not a good national security justification and the only justification for this invasion is to get control of their oil, it should worry you more that now the plan is not just to seize the oil for the purposes of enriching Wall Street and the oil industry, the purpose is to seize the oil so the United States can manage and run the country of Venezuela.

Why should regular Americans care about that?

Well, first, it is this perpetuation of the same Bush-Cheney fantasy that America can impose its will on a foreign nation through the power of American military force.

Now, for now, this looks and feels different than Iraq or Afghanistan because there aren't hundreds of thousands of troops inside Venezuela, but let's make it clear. This is just a different kind of military force because the only way that we get the oil is through a military blockade--that is absolutely an act of war--and the threat of another invasion if the leader--whomever it turns out to be; today it is Delcy Rodriguez, who knows who it will be tomorrow--doesn't comply with our wishes. So we are essentially encircling Venezuela with the American military and telling them that if they don't to do what we want, we are going to stop and board their ships. We are going to attack their country again.

And, again, this is not speculation. Donald Trump has said this is the plan; that if they don't do what we want, we will be right back inside Venezuela.

This doesn't work. It has never worked in the past. It is the essence of the quagmire that we got ourselves in, in Iraq and Afghanistan; the belief, this myopic belief that neocons, that hawks have, that warmongers have, that the United States can use its military to impose our will on a foreign country.

And let me tell you, every country is unique and difficult to micromanage from afar, but Venezuela is a complicated country. We are talking about 30 million people. We are talking about active, armed insurgency groups. What happens when you try this Iraq-Afghanistan strategy is that, in the short term, it breeds resentment and extremism. That is what we saw with the growth of ISIS and the regrowth and reconstitution of the Taliban.

And in the long run, the country essentially just decides to wait you out. They knew in Afghanistan we were going to tire at some point and leave. So will the kleptocrats in Venezuela. They will play ball with us, but at some point the warships are going to leave. At some point, America can't devote one-third of its Navy to the waters around Venezuela. And as soon as we leave, the kleptocrats and the corrupt leaders will be right back in charge. If they don't want to change their country from within, if there isn't a viable mechanism to do that domestically, it is almost impossible to impose that from the outside.

The second reason that Americans should care is that it is illegal, and that is the subject of the resolution. It is illegal. An embargo is an act of war. Repeated military strikes followed on by invasion is an act of war.

And this engagement is not just a hostile act against Venezuela, it will inevitably draw increased frictions with Russia and China. Now, we shouldn't be afraid of friction with Russia and China as a principle. They are our adversaries.

But the reason that the Constitution says the people should be in charge of the decision as to whether to enter into military activity in a far-off nation--no matter whether it is a big nation or a small nation--is because there are often spillover impacts and affects. And if we are going to run a long-term naval blockade of Venezuela, if we are going to be running the economy of Venezuela from the White House, the American people have to have a say in that. The Founders, in fact, required that.

And lastly, the reason that the American people should care about this new plan, the nation building of Venezuela through the threat of military force, is because it is an enormous distraction from what actually matters to the people of this country, and so I will just end where I began. Nobody in the State of Connecticut was asking me for an invasion of Venezuela prior to the Christmas break. Everybody in my State knows that this has nothing to do with their interests.

Lives are going to be lost in this country when millions of people lose their insurance in the coming weeks. There are kids who are going hungry, who are being fed lunch and dinner but not breakfast or just dinner and not

lunch and breakfast because of the nutrition cuts that have been imposed by Republicans.

The problems that Americans are facing require a White House that is intent on running the United States of America. But this White House, under the plan that they have revealed today, is going to be running the country of Venezuela. And it is just true that when we were involved in the quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan, it occupied an enormous amount of time at that White House. The amount of time that the President and his team spent worrying about Baghdad and worrying about Kabul--it was a distraction from the job of running the United States. And so maybe more than any of the other reasons that people should care about this plan to nation-build in Venezuela is that it is just even more reason to doubt that this President is sincere at all about doing what he said he was going to do, which is lower costs for people.

Costs are going up. Healthcare insurance is disappearing. And the President is telling you that, for the foreseeable future, he is going to be spending just as much time thinking about running Venezuela as he is about running the United States.

Finally, I will just say, if the Energy Department bill does make it to the floor of the Senate--it is being debated this week in the House--I will offer an amendment to that bill to prohibit the requisition of Venezuelan oil for the purposes of nation building.

That will, of course, be an endeavor that the Energy Department will be involved in. They will likely have to spend millions of dollars, enormous amounts of resources, to take control of that oil to sell it on the open market. That is a disastrous plan, as I have outlined, for America and the world. And so I will just tell you that we will have a chance to debate this plan if that appropriations measure reaches the Senate, and I would commend my colleagues to take a look at it and support it.

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.