Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask that we commence with the previously scheduled vote.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, instead of a clean CR, this bill contains language that has been air-dropped in that will destroy hemp farming in Kentucky and across the United States.

Tucked away on page 163, title VII, division B of this spending package is a provision that will shut down the hemp industry across the United States. My amendment would strip the provision designed to regulate the hemp industry to death.

The bill as it now stands overrides the regulatory frameworks of several States, cancels the collective decisions of hemp consumers, and destroys the livelihoods of hemp farmers. And it couldn't come at a worse time for America farmers. Times are tough for our farmers. Farmers' costs have increased as the price of fertilizer and machinery have jumped, while prices for their crops, like soybean, corn, and wheat, have declined.

For many farmers, hemp has proved to be a lifeline, a new cash crop. Farmers turn to growing hemp to mitigate the losses they endured during this season of hardship. But that lifeline may soon be extinguished by this very legislation.

The effective hemp ban included in this spending package is a result, we are told, of bad actors skirting the legal limits by overly enhancing the concentration of THC in their products. The hemp industry, myself, and others have come together, and we have been willing to negotiate to get rid of the bad actors. Yet, instead, we are met with legislation that would be prohibition.

Members of the industry, myself, and others who are advocates of this have been willing to get rid of synthetic cannabinoids, willing to compromise at every turn, but we are met with the numbers in this bill, which will eradicate the hemp industry.

For the last several weeks, we have offered proposals with the goal of creating an environment in which the hemp industry could thrive and sell products, and we have been met with those who want to prohibit the industry from continuing.

This bill's per-serving THC content limit would make illegal any hemp product that contains more than 0.4 milligrams. That would be nearly 100 percent of the existing market. The numbers put forward in this bill will eliminate 100 percent of the hemp products in our country. That amounts to an effective ban because the limit is so low that the products intended to manage pain or anxiety will lose their effect.

The States have done what they are supposed to. The States have instituted laws. Twenty-three States have instituted laws on hemp. None of them have limits anywhere close to what is being proposed in this bill. So what will happen is most of the things that your States have regulated, are regulating, and have made legal will be made illegal by this bill. This bill will effectively preempt and nullify all State laws concerning hemp.

Currently, Maine limits THC to 3 milligrams per serving; that will be overruled. My home State limits THC to 5 milligrams in beverages; that will be overruled. Minnesota, Utah, and Louisiana also have 5 milligrams per serving. Alabama and Georgia have 10 milligrams. Tennessee has 15 milligrams. The bill before us nullifies all these State laws and makes the hemp industry kaput.

The language in this bill will outlaw all current hemp plants and seeds. It changes the definition of what a hemp plant is. It makes it so low that there may not even be an existing plant that can meet the parameters. But every plant in the country will have to be destroyed. Every hemp seed in the country will have to be destroyed. This is the most thoughtless, ignorant proposal to an industry that I have seen in a long, long time.

The States have made progress, and more progress is coming. Most States have age limits.

To add insult to injury, we are given this legislation in an appropriations bill. We have Senate rules against this.

So I would recommend that we vote for this amendment, and my amendment would strip out the language.

I would transfer the remainder of my time to Senator Merkley.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I think it is time that instead of closing the government down further, we begin to open up government.

What I will offer is legislation that instead of closing government down further, begins to pay those who are working. It pays our soldiers, pays our air traffic controllers, pays everyone who is showing up for work. I think this should become a permanent feature of our government.

I think it is disruptive, I think it is unfair, and I think it is wrong that we don't pay the workers that show up. A better way than isolating different groups and punishing different groups is actually to pay those who are working. I think, if we do this, pass this legislation, this would never be a problem again.

We are going to run into disagreements in the future. We are going to have times when the government shuts down. There is no reason we shouldn't be paying our government workers.

I ask the Senator to modify his request, so, instead, the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 191, S. 3012; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, in reserving the right to object, I think it is actually not clear at all that the President wouldn't sign a bill to continue paying Federal workers. I think it is actually a universal sentiment among both parties and among the American people, particularly among the soldiers, that we ought to continue to pay the soldiers and continue to pay the workers.

I am, perhaps, the most conservative Member of the Senate. I vote to cut spending on everything--I think we spend way too much--but I am not for cutting the salaries of people who have a contract and who are doing their work. Now, I probably would not hire new people, and I would probably let the Federal Government shrink gradually through attrition because I think we need to be smaller, but if you work for the government and you are doing your job and you have a contract, I think you ought to be paid.

So I don't think it is clear that the President wouldn't support this. I think it is actually quite confusing that this is being objected to by the Democrats, and I think, actually, it would be nice to let the Democrats, you know, have a round at this and explain to us why they don't want to pay the air traffic controllers.

Look, we can have a dispute over spending. I think the Republican proposal spends too much, and I think the Democrat proposal spends too much, but I think we ought to pay the workers while we are working out the debate over what the spending level ought to be.

I think it is actually an untenable position of Democrats to come before

this body and say: Oh, we want to give subsidies to people who make $225,000 a year. That is what they are arguing for. The ObamaCare subsidies are not the basic subsidies. These are add-on subsidies that started 2 years ago. If you make $100,000 a year, the Democrats want to give you $13,000. Meanwhile, people who make $20,000 and are on food stamps are not going to get food stamps, but somebody making $100,000 is going to get $13,000. That doesn't sound like the Democrats are for the working class or for the poor. It sounds like the Democrats are for the people making $200,000 a year to get a subsidy.

But in the midst of all this, with pressure, I think the Democrats could be made to understand and support paying the government workers. I mean, I just think it is something eminently reasonable, and I think it is something very passable. I don't see the President objecting to this. I think the President would sign this in a heartbeat.

So I object.

Mr. President, in reserving the right to object, I think the answer is to pay more people and not fewer people and to try to get through shutdowns without having people go without pay who are doing their jobs.

Now, the proposal was made, and I just simply made a proposal that would pay everybody. So the Senator from Louisiana has objected to paying everyone, and I don't quite understand this. We could pay everyone. We could have paid everyone had he agreed to my motion. My motion was to pay everyone--to pay the soldiers; to pay the air traffic controllers; to pay the staff; to pay everybody who is working. Yet there was an objection. So I don't understand what is going on here.

Should the emphasis be to pay fewer people or more people? Why would we try to punish certain groups of people instead of paying all of the people who are working? Why would we not do that?

So I don't understand the process we have gone through here. We just had a chance to pay all of the people. We had a chance to pay the air traffic controllers; we had a chance to pay the soldiers; we had a chance to pay all of the government workers--and then there was an objection. So I don't understand what we are going through here.

I, for one, believe that the workers should be paid. I, for one, believe that we should fix this permanently. The bill that I have presented is not just to pay them one time; it is to pay all workers all the time who are under contract and who show up for work whether there is a shutdown or not. It is a permanent payday for those who do their jobs. That was the fix. It is not a niche bill. It is not to punish one group or the other group. It is to say, if you are working and there is a disagreement on the spending levels, that all workers are paid. I don't understand the objection, and I will continue to support paying all the workers all the time they are at work whether there is a shutdown or not.

I object.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, for decades, the globalists in Washington have led our country into one disastrous foreign war after another. Whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and now potentially Venezuela, the formula is always the same: Proclaim that the regime of the targeted country poses such a threat to the American way of life that the only thing we can do is go to war. Tell them that our intervention is a noble effort, one that would bring security at home and liberty to foreign lands. Topple the government and declare a new age of freedom. The warmongers have recycled these experiments in regime change again and again. And what has it brought? Instability, chaos, suffering, and resentment.

It is the height of arrogance to think we can forcibly remove the dictatorship in Venezuela and expect a different result. We should learn from history. Liberty cannot be imposed at the point of a foreign bad act. The United States maintains the most formidable military in human history. Of course, we have the capability of overthrowing the Maduro regime, just like we had the power to overthrow Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qadhafi.

But what comes next? Is anyone thinking about the potential blowback that such a campaign could entail? Overthrowing the Maduro regime risks creating more regional instability, not less. The breakdown of state authority may create a power vacuum that the very drug cartels the administration is ostensibly trying to destroy could exploit.

Just as our misguided interventions in the Middle East led to the proliferation of terrorist organizations, this could happen in Venezuela, but this time with the proliferation of organized crime. We could swell the ranks of the cartels with new recruits. Remember what happened in Iraq, the de-Baathification of Iraq. Removing all of the previous government soldiers, they had no place to go. They were used to being paid, they wanted money, and they went and worked and became terrorists.

Where do you think the tens of thousands of Venezuelan soldiers and desperate civilians will turn when their livelihood suddenly disappears? It may be the drug cartels. In its hubris, Washington may very well empower the cartels and make the drug problem in our hemisphere worse. Certainly, any war will exacerbate the already precarious humanitarian crisis in Venezuela and lead to mass migration into neighboring countries already struggling under the strain of millions of refugees. And rest assured, many of those who flee the disaster of the war that will come will make their way to the United States.

Most consequentially, any military operation comes with the risk that American servicemembers will be killed or wounded. We owe it to our servicemembers to only send them into harm's way when vital American interests are at stake. Who is in charge of Venezuela does not constitute such an interest.

We have seen chaos emerge from our misguided wars before. We overthrew Saddam Hussein thinking Iraq will be transformed into this great Jeffersonian democracy. Instead, what occurred was an insurgency that led to some of the most brutal sectarian violence in living memory. Washington's foolish invasion empowered radical jihadists and ultimately led to the rise of ISIS, which posed a much greater threat to Americans than Saddam Hussein ever did.

A similar story unfolded in Libya. In 2011, our forces aided the rebels to oust Muammar Qadhafi. The result was a brutal 6-year war that saw the proliferation of jihadist groups and widespread human rights violations, including the resurgence of slavery. Weapons were spread throughout Africa. Our intervention helped spur mass migration into Europe and contributed to widespread instability across Africa as weapons flowed from Libya into the Sahel and Sub-Sahara, where they continued to fuel conflicts and terrorism to this day.

Libya is still highly unstable, and the conflict constantly threatens to reignite. Like Saddam and Qadhafi, Maduro is unmistakably a dictator. He

is a bad guy. He suppresses freedom of speech. He controls his people. There is no free voting. He treats people poorly, and that is an understatement.

But there are a lot of bad guys in the world. There are a lot of dictators. There is a lot of socialism leading to starvation. It doesn't mean that the United States should carelessly risk its blood and treasure to go and topple every one of them. As we have seen all too well in recent decades, foreign military interventions often end up making things worse. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Imagine the anarchy that followed our wars in the Middle East. Do we really want to risk creating similar conditions in our own backyard? With over 10,000 U.S. troops, 8 warships, a Virginia-class submarine, and dozens of F-35s already in the Caribbean, the USS Gerald Ford strike group surging toward the region, the stage for folly is set. We are told that only drug dealers are the target of U.S. operations, but the consolidation of the largest U.S. force in the Caribbean in 35 years suggests that regime change may very well be the intended goal.

The use of lethal force and our massive military buildup is an invitation to retaliation. Attacked countries often attack back. It is our soldiers in the field of battle--not the Senators on this floor-- who will bear the brunt of the retaliation. By then, the time for debate will have passed. The Senate will have once again excused itself from the responsibility of governing, and the United States will once again be at war.

Those who argue that small boats in the Caribbean are so dangerous that they warrant being blown out of the water must explain why, when some of the individuals happen to survive, they are not detained. The drugs are not scooped up and tested. The survivors are simply sent back to their country of origin. Wouldn't we ask whom they work for? Wouldn't we detain them? Wouldn't we present evidence to a court and say what should be done with these survivors? We summarily shoot them when we don't know who they are. But once we pick them up, we don't summarily kill them. We don't even try them.

The United States has now repatriated two survivors to Colombia and Ecuador. If, as we are told, these groups constitute a threat to our security equal to al-Qaida, that they are somehow narcoterrorists, then why are we allowing these individuals to go home? The truth is that these arguments are nonsensical. Drug traffickers aren't equivalent to al-Qaida, and the executive branch does not have the authority to kill at will anyone, anywhere, at any time, for any reason.

Repatriating survivors of the strikes suggest that the administration's lawyers are not so confident that their arguments about article II authority will survive legal scrutiny--or perhaps they are not confident that they could even bring drug convictions in a court.

In addition to the strategic malpractice of pursuing regime change in Venezuela, there is also the inconvenient fact that the President simply does not have the authority to unilaterally launch wars. The Founders had the foresight to recognize that the executive branch is the branch most prone to war, and they therefore made it clear in the Constitution that Congress maintains the exclusive power to declare war.

Part of President Trump's broad appeal was his strong contempt for the neocons on the right and the liberal internationalists on the left who never met a war they didn't want someone else's children to fight. He rightfully criticized those in Washington who supported nation- building fantasies throughout the Middle East; yet now certain individuals within the administration seek to lead the President astray.

I would advise President Trump to remember the wise words of his inaugural address, when President Trump said:

[W]e will measure our success by the wars we never get

into.

President Trump, do not allow the warmongers in Washington to drag you into an unnecessary war of choice. Washington has spent decades, trillions of dollars, and thousands of lives trying to remake other countries in our image. The American people are sick and tired of their elected representatives in Congress standing idly by saying: Nothing to see here; the President can do whatever he wants, while their sons and daughters are sent to fight wars in distant lands.

As the administration authorizes covert CIA action in Venezuela and surges U.S. forces to the region, including our most advanced aircraft carrier, the risk of imminent involvement in hostilities is evident.

It is time that the first branch of government puts America first. The majority party of this institution should stand by the principles of restraint as espoused by President Trump's promise to the American people. Honor and statesmanship should prevent the Senate from sitting idly by while elements within his administration blunder America into another foreign war. The American soldiers, their families, and the American people deserve a debate and a vote before we send our Armed Forces into war.

If you agree that our soldiers and their families deserve at least this much, vote yes on this resolution.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

I object.

Mr. President, ``Taxation without representation is tyranny.'' This was the rallying cry of our Founding Fathers. This was the rallying cry of American patriots in the years leading up to the American Revolution. It was the rallying cry of militiamen at the Battles of Lexington and Concord. And it still should be the rallying cry of Congress. ``No taxation without representation'' is embedded in our Constitution. The Constitution forbids any one man or woman from raising taxes.

Revenue is not only a question for Congress, but the Constitution commands that taxation legislation originate in the House of Representatives. This is the only issue that specifically has to originate not only in Congress but in one specific House. Our Founders thought that the House of Representatives, elected every 2 years, was closer to the people, and the things they feared the most were big taxes and big government. They said taxes must originate in the House. Yet these taxes are originating with the White House.

The idea that no one should have taxes imposed on them without their consent is central to the ancient concept of what constitutes a free people. That principle is enshrined in the Magna Carta, that taxation should be

imposed only after obtaining the common counsel of the kingdom. It was reaffirmed in the 1689 English Bill of Rights when it declared that there shall be no taxation without the consent of Parliament.

In 1765, the American patriot who helped formulate the grievances against the British crown, James Otis, called for a defense of this principle by popularizing the phrase ``Taxation without representation is tyranny.'' This principle was said by many to have been the principle--the spark--that sparked our Revolution.

Yet, today, the Senate is compelled to act because one person in our country wishes to raise taxes without the approval of the Senate, without the approval of the House, and without the approval of the Constitution.

The idea that one person can raise taxes is contrary to our founding principles. The Constitution forbids it.

As Montesquieu wrote in ``The Spirit of the Laws":

When the legislative and the executive are combined and

united in [one] person . . . there can be no liberty.

Our Founders took that lesson to heart and embedded that in the Constitution--the principle of the separation of powers as well as a system of checks and balances. They knew that combining the legislative and executive powers would lead the country down a path to tyranny.

Allowing taxes to be levied, doubled, tripled, and then one day perhaps forgiven is a recipe for chaos. The tariffs are implemented. The tariffs are canceled. The tariffs are delayed. The tariff rate changes daily. Just this week, the President added a special 10-percent import tax on Canada because he was mad about the nation's Ronald Reagan ad--an ad, by the way, which was showing Ronald Reagan verbatim speaking.

News flash to the administration: Reagan was a free trader. Reagan believed ``that protectionism costs consumers billions of dollars, damages the overall economy, and destroys jobs.''

Ronald Reagan's vision for America can be seen in our trading relationship with Canada. In 1986, President Reagan said that ``our trade policy rests firmly on the foundation of free and open markets.'' Further, he said, ``I recognize . . . the inescapable conclusion that all of history is taught: The freer the flow of world trade, the stronger the tides of human progress and peace among nations.''

It was Bastiat, who wrote: When trade and when goods don't cross borders, armies will.

It is not a guarantee of peace, but one way to achieve peace is to attempt to have good relations and trade with all nations.

No country, no business, no family can plan a budget when the tax rates--the import tax rates--and the costs of every commodity are determined by the whims of one man. There are now tariffs on steel; there are tariffs on aluminum; there are tariffs on lumber, and they change day to day. But not one of these tariffs was voted on by the people's elected representatives in Congress. These tariffs are simply announced by Presidential proclamation.

Perhaps more fundamental than a debate over what these tariffs are, what the rates are, and what they do to our economy is the question of whether Americans ought to perpetually live under emergency rule. This administration has declared emergencies with over 100 nations. With these emergency declarations, the President claims the unilateral right to levy import taxes.

Think about this. What do you think of when you think of an emergency? You think of a war, a tornado, a famine. You don't think of trade policy that all of a sudden we have to give up on all of our constitutional prerogatives, all the separation of powers, all that is embedded in the Constitution because there is an emergency in trade policy. If that were true, imagine what emergencies might come forward; imagine where we would be and what lack of restraint would happen. And for Republicans, imagine what it is going to be like when someone from the other party is elected and they declare an emergency over the climate and ban cars and whatever might happen. We shouldn't be living this way.

People say Congress is messy; Congress goes to gridlock. It is called debate. It is called discussion. The only way we typically get somewhere is we have to agree with some people on the other side. That is one of the things we are trying to overcome now.

Our Founding Fathers anticipated a President might attempt someday to usurp the powers--the constitutional powers--of the legislature. Madison wrote that our constitutional government would pit ambition against ambition; the ambition of a President or ambition of a Congress to usurp power be checked by the other guarding their power; that we would limit the power of any one branch through checks and balances and prevent abuses of power.

Madison, if he were here today, would be aghast to witness today's Congress that seems to lack any ambition to defend the constitutional separation of power.

Emergency rule rejects the premise of a constitutional republic with limited powers and full accountability. Emergency rule is rule by one person.

We will perpetuate emergency rule that provides the President extraordinary powers to tax us without our consent. Is that what we are going to allow or will we restore constitutional government in which taxes are debated and voted on by the people's representatives? I, for one, still believe in the principle of no taxation without representation and will vote to terminate this contrived emergency and end these unconstitutional import taxes.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the previously scheduled vote occur immediately.

Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

I object.

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

I ask unanimous consent to waive the mandatory quorum call with respect to the cloture motion on the motion to proceed to Calendar No. 168, H.R. 5371.

I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding rule XXII, at 2:20 p.m. tomorrow, the Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the Moe nomination and if cloture is invoked on the Moe nomination, all postcloture time be expired and the Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the Mercer nomination; further, that if cloture is invoked on the Mercer nomination, all postcloture time be expired and the Senate vote on confirmation of the Moe nomination at 5:30 p.m. tomorrow and the Senate vote on confirmation of the Mercer nomination at a time to be determined by the majority leader, in consultation with the Democratic leader, no earlier than Wednesday, October 22; further, that if confirmed, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's actions; finally, that the remaining clotures filed on October 16 ripen at a time to be determined by the majority leader, in consultation with the Democratic leader, on Wednesday, October 22.

I ask unanimous consent that the scheduled rollcall begin immediately.

Cloture Motion

Mr. President, I object.

I object.

Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 3761 and ask that it be reported by number.

I ask unanimous consent that the debate be 4 minutes, equally divided.

Mr. President, the Federal Reserve pays both foreign and domestic banks to simply park their money in Fed accounts--in other words, to not loan money at all.

Over the past 5 years, the Fed's big bank bailout amounts to over half a trillion dollars. This bailout causes the Fed to operate at a loss, which means the Fed cannot remit profits to the taxpayer as it normally does. According to the economist Judy Shelton, if these payments stopped, ``banks would [buy] Treasury Securities,'' and it would bring interest rates down. Some people say that this program is a floor to interest rates.

My amendment ends these subsidies. Let's end the Fed's big bank bailout. Let's lower interest rates. Please vote for my amendment.

I object.

Mr. President, somewhere off the coast of Venezuela a speed boat

with 11 people on board is blown to smithereens. Vice President Vance announces that ``killing cartel members that poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military.''

When challenged that killing citizens without due process is a war crime, the Vice President's response was that he ``didn't give a shit.''

Sometimes, in fits of anger, loud voices will say they don't care about the niceties such as due process. They just want to kill bad guys. For a brief moment, all of us share that anger and may even embrace revenge or retribution.

But over 20,000 people are murdered each year in the United States, and somehow we find a way to a dispassionate dispensation of justice that includes legal representation and a trial.

Why? Because sometimes the accused is actually not guilty. Even with the best of care, even with the best of justice, sometimes we find out it is the wrong person.

As passions subside, a civilized people should ask questions. To be clear, the people bombed to smithereens were guilty, right?

If anyone gave a you-know-what about justice, perhaps those in charge of deciding whom to kill might let us know their names, present proof of their guilt, show evidence of their crimes. The administration has maintained that the people that they blew to smithereens were members of a gang, members of Tren de Aragua, and therefore narcoterrorists.

Why? Because we say so.

But certainly, then, if they know that they belong to a particular gang, then someone must surely know their names before they were blown to smithereens. Is it too much to ask to know the names of those we kill before we kill them, to know what evidence exists of their guilt?

At the very least, the government should explain how the gang came to be labeled as ``terrorists.'' How did the people who you say are in a gang, how did they come to be labeled as a ``terrorist''?

U.S. law defines a terrorist as someone who uses premeditated, politically motivated violence against noncombatants.

Show us evidence of that. Show us evidence of their guilt. Show us evidence that they are terrorists, perhaps before we blow people to smithereens.

Since the U.S. policy is now to blow people to smithereens if they are suspected of being in a terrorist gang, then maybe someone should take the time to explain the evidence of their terrorism.

Critics of this whole terrorist-labeling charade, such as Matthew Petti at Reason, explained that, in practice, what we are doing in practice ``means that a `terrorist' is whoever the executive branch decides to label one.'' You are a terrorist because you are labeled one. You can be killed because you are called a terrorist.

But where in all of this is some sort of evidence that you are guilty of something?

While no law dictates such, once people are labeled as ``terrorists,'' they appear to be no longer eligible for any sort of due process--no, the blow-them-to-smithereens crowd, at this point, will loudly voice their opinion that people in international waters don't deserve due process.

Vice President Vance asserts:

There are people who are bringing--literal terrorists--who

are bringing deadly drugs into our country.

Which, of course, raises the question: Who labeled them as ``terrorists''? And what is the evidence of these specific people who had names before they were blown to smithereens? What is the evidence against them individually? What are their names? What, specifically, shows their membership and guilt? Were they armed at the time they were blown to smithereens?

The blow-them-to-smithereens crowd also conveniently ignores the fact that death is, generally, not the penalty for drug smuggling.

The mindless trolls that occupy much of the internet whine that such questions show weakness or commiseration with drug pushers who are killing our children, a ludicrous assertion to most sentient humans but one I fear that requires a response: International law and norms have always granted due process to individuals on the high seas not actively involved in combat. U.S. maritime law explains in detail the level of force and the escalation of force allowed in the interdiction of drugs. You realize we interdict hundreds of ships off the shore of Miami, off the Pacific coast, and we don't always blow them to smithereens. Why? Because some of them don't actually have drugs on them. Hundreds of ships are stopped daily, yearly. The blow-them-to-smithereens crowd might stop to ponder that a good percentage of these ships that we actually search turn out not to be drug smugglers. Coast Guard statistics show that one in four interdiction finds no drugs.

So far, the administration has admitted to blowing up four boats suspected of drug smuggling. So there is a one-in-four chance, statistically speaking, that one of these boats may not have had any drugs on it. We will never know because they were blown to smithereens. We may never know the names of the people because they were blown to smithereens. We may never know whether they had arms because they were blown to smithereens.

It seems someone should ask, if the U.S. policy is to blow up all suspected ships, should that policy really be extolled as the ``highest and best use of our military?'' What an insult to our military.

Jake Romm puts the dilemma of whom to designate as a terrorist into sharp relief. Jake Romm writes:

The hollowness and malleability of the term [terrorism]

means that it can be applied to groups regardless of their

actual conduct and regardless of their actual ideology. It

admits only a circular definition . . . that a terrorist is

someone who carries out terrorist acts, and a terrorist act

is violence carried out by a terrorist. Conversely, if

someone is killed, it is because they are a terrorist,

because to be a terrorist means to be killable.

It is a circular definition which no one ever bothers to say: Why are they a terrorist? What is their name? What are they guilty of? What have you accused them of?

We say just say: You are a terrorist; therefore, you are killable.

It devolves to madness.

Can you imagine a doctrine in which we just blow up ships off of Miami and say ``whoops'' if they didn't have any drugs on board? Twenty-five percent of the ships that we board currently don't have any drugs on them. It is a mistake. And we allow it because it is a search, and typically it is a voluntary search. But we allow searches. But we don't kill every suspected boat off of Miami suspected of having drugs because 25 percent of them don't have any drugs.

There is a shortage of independent legal scholars who argue that these strikes are legal. Even John Yoo, a former Deputy Assistant Attorney General under George Bush who infamously offered the Bush administration's legal justification for waterboarding, has criticized the administration's justification for the strikes, saying:

There has to be a line between crime and war. We can't just

consider anything that harms the country to be a matter for

the military. Because that could potentially include every

crime.

John Duffy, a retired Navy captain, eloquently summarizes our current moment:

A republic that allows its leaders to kill without law, to

wage war without strategy, and to deploy troops without limit

is a republic in deep peril. Congress will not stop it. The

courts will not stop it. That leaves those sworn not to a

man, but to the Constitution [to stop this].

Congress must not allow the executive branch to become judge, jury, and executioner.

Often, people will say: What about the Barbary pirates? What about the Barbary pirates? Jefferson went after them; it should be OK.

But Jefferson understood that the Framers' intention was that the President defer offensive war to Congress, to authorization.

So while there was always a justification and still is a justification for violent defensive maneuvers to protect your shipping, there was never an authorization for offensive unless approved.

This is why President Jefferson, when faced with the belligerence of the Barbary pirates in 1801, recognized that he was ``unauthorized by the Constitution'' only with the authorization of Congress ``to go beyond the line of defense.'' Jefferson wanted the authority

to act defensively against the pirates, but he respected the intentional checks placed on the Executive within the Constitution. Only after Congress had passed the Act for the Protection of Commerce and Seamen of the United States Against the Tripolitan Cruisers in February 1802 did he change it from defensive maneuvers to protect the ships to offensive maneuvers.

Our history is prescient. If the Trump administration wants to use military power, they should seek authorization from Congress. There is a difference between war and peace. There is a difference in the rules of engagement. There has to be. Our police don't shoot people on sight. We have a process. Even off of the coast, we have a process.

We have longstanding maritime laws that we obey as well as every other civilized nation in the world obeys. We board ships after announcing who we are and that we are going to board the ship. There is an escalation if there are weapons fired, if there is a reason where the Coast Guard can escalate, but we don't just blow ships to smithereens.

The vote before us today offers every Member of this body an opportunity to reverse the decades-long abdication of this critical responsibility, of leaving this to the executive branch. Our Founding Fathers said Congress shall authorize war. The Executive is not authorized to do this.

I encourage my colleagues to support this resolution.

Madam President, I object.